The far-left stronghold of San Francisco, California, may no longer be a “bastion of progressive politics” after its upcoming mayoral election, a Los Angeles Times editor wrote in a piece on Thursday.
In an opinion titled “San Francisco has shifted to the center. Can a progressive still compete there?” Defne Karabatur described the competition for mayor in the Bay Area city as a “race against progressive politics.”
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“Has famously liberal San Francisco moved too far right to embrace an old-school progressive for mayor?” Karabatur, who graduated from the Bay Area’s UC Berkeley, began.
The lead-up to the presidential election has brought the Californian “outrage” over the progressive agenda to play out in the “unlikely place” of San Francisco, the Times piece continued.
Karabatur and Hannah Wiley, a San Franciso-based LA Times reporter who covers the city, opined that only one of the race’s candidates is “running on a progressive agenda.”
“And he’s the underdog,” the pair concluded of San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin.
Karabatur posed a series of questions, “What does it all mean? Is San Francisco no longer a bastion of progressive politics? What even is progressivism?”
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An early August poll commissioned by the San Francisco Chronicle found that Peskin was the first choice for only 12 percent of likely voters, coming in fourth behind incumbent Mayor London Breed, former interim Mayor Mark Farrell, and anti-poverty nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie — all Democrats.
Breed faced accusations from the city’s “progressive wing” of leaning into conservatism after supporting two successful ballot measures to strengthen police and clamp down on drug use, according to the San Francisco Standard, and is described as more of a moderate than a progressive by the Chronicle.
She had 28 percent of likely voter support in the poll, followed by 20 percent for former interim Mayor Mark Farrell — a man whose platform was called “strikingly conservative for San Francisco” by Politico and “the most rightward leaning” out of all the Democrat candidates by the New York Times.
Lurie, who comes in at third place with 17 percent of the support from likely voters, has also been described as a “moderate” who draws in support from Republicans by the SF Standard.
Karabatur wrote that San Francisco’s “slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the city’s culture and shaken voters’ trust in the city’s leadership,” citing the recall of three school board due to parents’ frustration over school closures.
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The LA Times editor said:
While the city closed its schools for more than a year — longer than most in the nation — the school board persisted to engage in an effort to rename a third of the city’s public schools whose existing names, critics claimed, celebrated historical figures associated with slavery or oppression of women or ‘who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’” the LA Times editor said.
She also cited the recall of former District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was “criticized by opponents over progressive policies on sentencing and incarceration.”
“It just goes to show you: Few candidates fit under a neat box, even if they try to claim or eschew one,” the piece concluded. “It’s the policies, not the label, that will define the next few years of San Francisco’s political landscape.”
