In a historic first, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors now has four LGBTQ community members serving on it. Newly sworn in queer District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder is also the governing body's first elected Native American member.
Fielder was one of five new supervisors who took part in their first board meeting the afternoon of January 8. She and the other winners of the 11-member board's odd-numbered seats — freshman Supervisors Danny Sauter in District 3, Bilal Mahmood in District 5 and Chyanne Chen in District 11, along with returning Supervisors Connie Chan in District 1 and Myrna Melgar in District 7 — took their oaths of office Wednesday.
Spending the morning introducing herself to patrons of businesses throughout the Mission, Bernal Heights, and Portola neighborhoods she now represents, Fielder laid out a number of issues she plans to address in an Instagram post ahead of her officially being sworn in.
"I am very excited to start today with many priorities to tackle from day one," wrote Fielder. "Public safety, immigration defense, student homelessness, mental health, small businesses, clean streets, and accountability throughout city government are all big priorities for me that I will share more about in the coming weeks. Let's get to work!"
New District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill had been sworn in last month by former mayor London Breed, who tapped him to fill the vacancy created by the departure of freshman state legislator Catherine Stefani (D-San Francisco). In November, Stefani won election to the Assembly District 19 seat.
One of the supervisor's first orders of business was electing a new board president. (See related story.) Among the contenders was Melgar and gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.
The board's other two out members are gay Supervisors Matt Dorsey of District 6 and Joel Engardio of District 4. Due to his support for a successful ballot measure closing the Great Highway along Ocean Beach to traffic in order to become a public park, which was opposed by a majority of his constituents, Engardio is now facing an attempt to recall him from office two years ahead of the end of his first term.
At 30, Fielder is the youngest LGBTQ community leader to win a seat on the Board of Supervisors. Her election in November marked the first time in 27 years that an out female was elected to the board; lesbian former supervisor Leslie Katz was elected in her 1996 citywide race and departed four years later when supervisors reverted back to representing districts.
The last out woman to serve as a supervisor was appointed bisexual District 5 supervisor Christina Olague. She stepped down on January 8, 2013, after losing to Breed in the November 2012 election.
And it was another appointed District 5 supervisor, Vallie Brown, who was the first person with American Indian ancestry known to have served on the board. Brown, who is of Paiute and Shoshone descent, was tapped by Breed in July 2018 as her successor after winning a special mayoral election but lost her bid the following November to serve out the remainder of Breed's term.
Fielder's family roots trace back to the Lakota and Hidatsa tribes of South and North Dakota, and Monterrey, Mexico. Thus, she is the first Latina elected to the District 9 seat covering the city's Mission district and only the second Latino/a community leader to serve in it over the last 25 years, after gay former District 9 supervisor David Campos, who was termed out in January 2017.
At 5 p.m. Friday, January 17, Fielder will hold a community swearing-in ceremony at Mission High School, 3750 18th Street. She told the Bay Area Reporter January 12 that gay former District 9 supervisor Tom Ammiano will administer her oath of office.
Kaplan, for now, remains on Oakland council
Across the bay in Oakland, lesbian City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan is remaining on her governing body for a few more months. Last year, she opted not to seek reelection to her at-large seat with the expectation she would then depart in January when the winners of the council races on the November ballot were sworn into office.
Yet, with the departure this week of former council president and interim mayor Nikki Fortunato Bas due to her election to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, her District 2 council seat needed to be filled until a special election is held April 15 to decide who will serve out the remainder of her term. The council on Monday tapped Kaplan at its first meeting of 2025 to serve in the seat on an interim basis until the winner of the spring race is confirmed.
Kaplan will now serve alongside queer at-large City Councilmember Rowena Brown, who won the race to succeed Kaplan in the citywide position. Until Kaplan departs, the council will have a trio of out women, as queer City Councilmember Janani Ramachandran holds the District 4 seat.
Already the Bay Area's longest-serving out female elected leader, having spent 23 years in various offices, Kaplan will now extend her record by three and a half months. With Oakland not having term limits for council members, Kaplan had held the at-large seat since 2008 and before that spent seven years as an elected member of the AC Transit District Board of Directors.
Also due to Bas leaving for the county board seat, to which she was sworn into on Tuesday, the Oakland councilmembers picked District 6 Council Member Kevin Jenkins as their new president, meaning he will serve as the city's interim mayor until the winner of the April 15 contest for the mayoral position is sworn in. It is being held due to the recall last fall of former mayor Sheng Thao amid a wide-ranging federal corruption probe into Alameda County politics that saw FBI agents raid her home last summer.
Having opened a campaign account Monday, former congressmember Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) officially entered the mayoral race Wednesday. She left Congress last week after failing to survive last year's primary for a U.S. Senate seat instead of seeking another term in the House.
The progressive leader enters the contest seen as the frontrunner. Moderate former city councilmember Loren Taylor, who fell short against Thao in 2022, launched his bid late last year.
Meanwhile, filling in for Jenkins as the interim council president until a new mayor is elected is District 5 Councilmember Noel Gallo, as he was elected council president pro tem. Gallo won reelection in November to his seat representing Oakland's Fruitvale and San Antonio neighborhoods, which he has held since 2013.
Political Notes, the notebook's online companion, returns Monday, January 13.
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Got a tip on LGBTQ politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or email [email protected]
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