By Calvin Welch, HANC Board
September 14th at HANC will be all about District Election of Supervisors and just how and for whom it works. We are fortunate to have as our sole guest the longest serving district elected Supervisor in the modern history of San Francisco, President of the Board of Supervisors (for the second time), Aaron Peskin, who represents District 3 - Russian Hill, North Beach and Chinatown. Aaron is in the final year of his second two term stint as District Supervisor, a total of 16 years on the Board spanning four Mayors (Brown, Newsome, Lee and Breed, or five if you count the six month term of Mark Ferrell) making him, I believe, the longest serving locally elected official now in office.
The election of the Supervisors by districts had been repealed in San Francisco in the 1900 Charter with the creation of at large elected Board of Supervisors which lasted until 1977 when the first neighborhood districts went into effect after being passed in 1976.
The promise of district elections was that it would result in a Board of supervisors that looked like San Francisco. The last at-large elected Board did not have a tenant nor a person of color that was not first appointed by the Mayor. The first district elected Board had a majority of tenants and the first directly elected Black and Chinese Supervisors. Even though it lasted for but two and a half years the district board passed rent control, condominium conversion and public employee contract reforms causing business and real estate interests to view district election as similar to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
With the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and District Supervisor Harvey Milk, the daily press, lead by the Chronicle, blamed the assassinations on district elected supervisor Dan White, failing to report that White had campaigned against district elections in 1976 and supported at-large elected supervisors. District election of Supervisors was repealed in a special election in August 1980.
There the matter sat until the passage of district elections in 1996, setting the first district election in 2000. San Francisco has had district elections over the last 23 years.
Two years ago Mayor Breed, herself initially elected to public office as a district supervisor, began to blame the district elected board for most of the City's ills. Last year the Mayor headed up the most contentious re-districting process in San Francisco history, dramatically altering two key Supervisor districts, separating long standing neighborhood allies into different districts. Not long after that various tech bro movers and shakers began a pointed criticism of progressive supervisors attacking them in either their re-reelection campaigns or ballot measures placed on the ballot by Supervisors. District Supervisors opposed both the tech led recalls of the School Board and the District Attorney. Last month a "study" paid for by tech billionaire Michael Moritz called for the repeal of district elections (an analysis of the study can be found at Mission Local and 48 Hills). At large elections are dominated by big money and tend to disempower communities of color and lower income voters. Indeed, last week the California Supreme Court ruled Santa Monica at large city council invalid because of the negative impact at-large elections had on the political power of people of color.
Join us for an important conversation about this critical issue.