The decided underdog among the five major candidates in next month's San Francisco mayoral race, outgoing District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí said he's been getting a second look from some voters after strong showings in televised debates. He's also been a beneficiary of ranked choice strategy from one of the other major candidates.
"I can be in any corner of the city, people come up to me and say, 'Hey, saw you in the debate, I didn't know who you were, but I'm voting for you now, you've convinced me, you stand out.'" Safaí told the Bay Area Reporter. "There's millions and millions of dollars being spent on this campaign, but with the support from organized labor and every day San Franciscans, I've been getting momentum. I know that we're the dark horse in the race but I feel confident, at least, we still have a shot."
The B.A.R. caught up with Safaí when the candidate made a stop in the Castro LGBTQ neighborhood October 17 to go inside the Castro Theatre to see the ongoing renovation and restoration project at the movie palace, which remains closed for the work. The supervisors were closely divided on the matter before they decided they'd vote down an amendment that might have curtailed manager Another Planet Entertainment's plans back in June 2023. As the B.A.R. reported at the time, Safaí said he spoke with about 50 people before making a decision on how he'd cast his vote.
Safaí's visit to the space only reaffirmed his decision to support APE's plans, he said.
"I feel like this demonstrates my commitment to the LGBTQ community, but it also encapsulates what I'm about, why I'm running for mayor," Safaí said. "I came down, I listened to members of the community, and given my background in planning, the work I have done on economic revitalization, I ultimately sided with the community that wanted to see evolution with this space, that wanted to preserve the iconic theater that is one of the defining characteristics of San Francisco but also to bring back energy, activity and life to this community. Almost every single small business owner you go to will say they're struggling.
"I'm happy to have been the swing vote, a key vote, on that when Supervisor [Aaron] Peskin was doing everything he could to stop it, I came in and said, 'No, I'm going to listen to the community' and the mayor, quite frankly, was not inserting herself into the conversation," he added. Peskin and Breed are also running for mayor.
Safaí, 51, and his mother immigrated to the United States after the Iranian revolution in 1979. Safaí worked under then-mayors Willie L. Brown Jr. and Gavin Newsom at the San Francisco Housing Authority, the Mayor's Office of Community Development, and in San Francisco Public Works. He went on to become political director for the San Francisco Janitors Union Local No. 87. Safaí was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2016, representing District 11, comprising the Excelsior and Outer Mission neighborhoods.
During his second campaign for the seat, this time when it was open, Safaí was painted as the moderate candidate against fellow union leader Kimberly Alvarenga, a lesbian who was endorsed by a number of progressive supervisors at the time. He emerged the winner after five rounds of ranked-choice voting and was easily reelected four years later; Safaí is termed out this year.
Alliance with Farrell
Now considered a progressive like Peskin, Safaí has strong support in the city's labor community, and his website touts endorsements (sole, ranked, or dual) from no less than 20 labor organizations, including the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, which also endorsed former San Francisco mayor Mark Farrell, who is running to return to Room 200 at City Hall.
One of those labor groups that endorsed Safaí, albeit as a No. 2 choice, is UNITE HERE Local No. 2, which represents hotel workers. Thousands of San Francisco hotel workers are currently on strike seeking better wages and benefits.
"Our executive board voted to endorse Ahsha Safai #2 and London Breed #3 based on their track record of standing with workers at the time of our endorsement meeting," Lizzy Tapia, a queer woman who is UNITE HERE Local No. 2's president, stated to the B.A.R.
Tapia said that Peskin was the union's first endorsement but that Farrell "cannot be trusted to stand up for working people in our city."
In this mayoral race's first ranked-choice alliance, Safaí teamed up with Farrell. Each is asking their supporters to rank the other.
The B.A.R. asked if this is an unlikely partnership considering Farrell's background as a venture capitalist who represented some of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods, such as the Marina, when he was District 2 supervisor.
"The thing that I appreciate about him is that he leads with his commitment to helping other people and I share those values," Safaí said of Farrell. "We both come from working families. Both of his parents were involved in their union's leadership, something I've dedicated myself to, but also being able to bring business and labor together. We did that consistently. We started the citywide project labor agreement and I completed it when he moved on, when he left office."
The citywide project labor agreement requires contractors performing trade work on certain San Francisco Public Works and Recreation and Park Department projects to utilize trade-appropriate union hiring halls to hire workers and to directly pay fringe benefit contributions on behalf of workers to the appropriate union trust fund programs.
Farrell told the B.A.R. October 3 that he agrees the two share "a lot of the same values" — also bringing up his parents' background in labor.
"I'm very proud of all of the labor support that I have in my campaign," Farrell said. "Ahsha spent his career working with the labor movement here in San Francisco and represented them well at City Hall, and I think it's a very natural alliance for us."
Safaí has endorsements from San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, who endorsed him alongside incumbent Breed, and California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, who endorsed him No. 2, behind Breed.
"He has been one of San Francisco's most consistent, reliable, and effective leaders in the fight to bring more foot patrols into our neighborhoods and fight retail theft," Miyamoto stated. "We can count on Ahsha to deliver common sense solutions, support law enforcement, and improve public safety in every neighborhood."
Ma stated that, "I've known Ahsha for 24 years, and I've always known him to be a passionate and effective advocate for San Francisco's children and working families."
"From his work raising the minimum wage as a labor organizer to his time working with Mayors Newsom and Brown to lift up immigrants and formerly incarcerated people, to his leadership in building more affordable housing — Ahsha has always been there when working families need him," she added.
Housing and public safety
Safaí said that though there's also overlap between himself and Peskin, "he started to pivot to campaign for the mayor, and I said to myself and I said to him, 'If you can live with the mayor, why did you get in the race?' He didn't really have an answer for that."
Safaí said he started to break with Breed after a shared effort to streamline housing production fell apart in 2021. Breed and Safaí had hoped a charter amendment allowing some projects to bypass the city's discretionary review process would make it to the June 2022 ballot, but Peskin and District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan (then serving on the board's rules committee) didn't forward the legislation on to the full board.
The Breed-backed measure went to the ballot in November 2022 as Proposition D; the Safaí-backed measure went to the ballot the same month as Proposition E. Both failed.
Safaí still supports streamlining the housing site permit approval process, as well as upzoning along commercial corridors, targeting six to eight story buildings.
He also wants to create a fund to buy buildings and attract public university campuses to downtown, where he thinks foot patrols by police will help improve safety. Safaí spearheaded legislation requiring the police department to establish community policing plans in each district last year, but a spokesperson for Police Chief William Scott told the B.A.R. last month it is only implemented as staffing levels allow.
Asked how he would improve San Francisco Police Department staffing — the SFPD says it's short 500 officers — Safaí said that voters should approve Proposition N, which he helped craft, on the November ballot. It would provide some student loan forgiveness for first responders.
"If you come work here for three years, we'll give you up to $25,000 in student loan forgiveness," Safaí said. "I think it's going to be one of the most effective tools to get more young officers to come here because it's the first time in California's history you have to have a four-year degree, or a two-year specialization in criminal justice, so a lot of them are going to come in with more debt."
Responses from rival campaigns
On the housing matter, Breed campaign spokesperson Joe Arellano stated that "the proponents of Prop D, including Mayor Breed, opted for labor standards that would guarantee good wages and actually build housing. Supervisor Safaí and the proponents of Prop E wanted requirements that would have effectively prevented any housing projects from being built. There is a long-standing disagreement on this issue."
He also stated Breed "has a long history of supporting pro-housing policies at the local and state levels," and pointed to her support of gay state Senator Scott Wiener's (D-San Francisco) Senate Bill 423, which streamlined housing approvals.
Arellano disputed Safaí's account of the Castro Theatre controversy, saying that, "Her [Breed's] administration brought Another Planet on board to work with the community, create a timeline to fix the marquee, and set other requirements that meet the community's needs, including increasing the percentage of minimum movie screenings."
Asked about the assertion he wasn't sufficiently opposed to Breed, Peskin stated to the B.A.R. that, "I would not be running if I thought that London was doing a good job or getting results — after six years as mayor. I am running to be a mayor who gets basic unglamorous things done: cleaning up City Hall corruption, building affordable housing, strengthening public safety, and implementing my From Crisis to Care homelessness strategy — and more."
Candidates make final pitches
Safaí isn't the only candidate coming to the Castro in the closing weeks of the campaign. Farrell has made several visits, including to Bar 49 on Market Street, where the B.A.R. caught up with him October 3.
"I'm a born and raised San Franciscan and for me running for mayor is about embracing our ethos and our values in San Francisco and wanting to represent that with a passion inside of City Hall," Farrell said. "That includes everything we stand for as a city and so, for me, as a straight white male, being in the Castro, embracing our LGBTQ community just like I did when I was in City Hall before, is a really important thing, and it's really important voters know about that and know where I stand and, really importantly, that our queer community here in San Francisco know that I will represent them with vigor and I have their backs."
The next day, October 4, Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and founder and CEO of the nonprofit Tipping Point Community, made a stop across the street at the Lookout bar. Lurie is leading in the race 56% to Breed's 44% in the fifth round of ranked-choice voting, according to a poll published by the San Francisco Chronicle October 21.
"I'm getting such good energy from every corner of this city, including the Castro. It's the second time I've been here in 24 hours. We did a merchant walk yesterday and there is energy in the street. People want change, they want a fresh approach, they want accountable leadership and they want to get rid of the City Hall insiders that are, frankly, showing their true colors with all of the corruption and the pay-to-play, so I'm all in," Lurie said.
"If you want change, there's only one choice," he added. "If you want more of the same, you got plenty of options on your ballot. I want people to know that as their next mayor they'll get somebody who is going to practice the true version of public service ... to serve the people of the Castro and every neighborhood of this city."
Lurie's campaign got an assist from Mark Leno, the gay former state senator, assemblymember, and District 8 supervisor who narrowly lost to Breed in 2018 during the special mayoral election after mayor Ed Lee died.
"My strong first choice is Aaron Peskin, but I want to make sure I've done all I can to have our next mayor be someone who will not be fined by the ethics commission, who has moral and ethical lapses nor will have multiple department heads indicted and convicted of felonies, and I trust strongly that is the case not only with Aaron but with Daniel," Leno said.
Mission Local reported earlier this year on Farrell's ethics violations. Regarding Breed, the B.A.R. recently reported on the departure of the head of the city's human rights commission. A wide-ranging city corruption scandal that broke in early 2020 has since ensnared several former city officials, though Breed has not been implicated.
Arellano said Breed's final pitch is that "experience matters in this election, and Daniel Lurie has none."
"He led a 50-person organization for a few years and now has been unemployed for the last five years," he stated. "San Francisco is a city and county with 34,000 employees. You wouldn't get on a 737 if the pilot had no experience flying planes. We shouldn't entrust our city to someone who will have to learn on the job. At the end of the day, we wouldn't even be talking about Daniel Lurie as a serious candidate for mayor if he wasn't born into wealth."
As for Breed's record, he said that the city is on the right track again thanks to her.
"Crime is coming down, tents and homelessness are being addressed with excellent results, downtown is evolving into a fun, new neighborhood centered around concerts, nightlife and entertainment, and relaxed city rules have created the environment for a sustained housing boom," he stated. "Mayor Breed led the city through a global pandemic and has San Francisco on the right track after some challenging years. She deserves another term to build on all the progress she's made, despite difficult and unforeseen circumstances. Mayor Breed's opponents want to take us backwards. But we aren't going back."
Peskin stated to the B.A.R. that he's the one with the know-how to help the city continue to recover.
"I encourage your readers, in the closing days of the campaign, to think about which candidate is really going to get things done — which candidate has a record of bringing people together to solve city problems," he stated. "I am honored to have earned the trust of proven leaders like Mark Leno and Bevan Dufty — as well as the No. 2 recommendation of Rafael Mandelman and this publication, the Bay Area Reporter. I would also encourage your readers to use all their votes in rank-choice voting — it's the only way your vote will truly count at the end."
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