Aaron Peskin Sees Boost in Final Stretch for SF Mayor. Can He Keep Momentum Up?

Moderate candidates in San Francisco’s mayoral race — and their well-funded backers — are directing more attacks against one another in the final stretch of the race, leading some political analysts to see a pathway to victory for the sole progressive on the ticket.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin has trailed moderate opponents in voter polls for months. But recent polling shows an uptick in his support, prompting his progressive allies across the city to amplify their unified messaging in hopes of reaching undecided and late voters. But Peskin, still an underdog in the race between Democrats, faces a tough fight in the final days ahead.

“The narrative seven months ago when this race started was that the moderates were united and the progressives were divided. Well, seven months later, it is absolutely the opposite,” Peskin said at a party on Monday hosted by Small Business Forward, which endorsed him for mayor. “You hear all of this billionaire-on-billionaire violence going on. And meanwhile, we’ve really come together.”

Shortly after announcing he would run, Peskin, who campaigns on policies like expanding rent control, became the target of his political rivals, such as the billionaire-backed political organizing group GrowSF’s “anybody but Peskin” message. Early polling showed incumbent Mayor London Breed neck-and-neck with former interim Mayor Mark Farrell, who has tacked himself to the right of Breed, while nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie, who has never run for elected office, led with voters’ second-choice picks.

However, more recent polling shows that early enthusiasm for Farrell has waned while Peskin’s support has steadily increased.

“Right now, it’s a fight to get into the top two, and it’s pretty clear three candidates that could get there are Lurie, Breed and Peskin,” said progressive political consultant Jim Ross. “It feels like Mark Farrell is fading in a lot of the polling we are seeing. Usually, in San Francisco politics, if you slide in the polls in the last two weeks, it’s really hard to regain that momentum.”

That shift may be due to older, conservative-leaning voters tending to decide and vote earlier, while younger, more progressive voters often decide later, explained political consultant Eric Jaye.

“In San Francisco mayoral campaigns, voters tend to break out into their key allegiances later in the campaign,” said Jaye, who works with a PAC formed by labor unions supporting Peskin. “Peskin’s core constituencies tend to be late-breaking. And Farrell coalesced his base early with the most conservative voters.”

At a sprawling “Unity Rally” on Saturday, Peskin appeared alongside supporters for supervisor candidates Jackie Fielder, Stephen Torres, incumbents Dean Preston and Connie Chan, and other progressives on the November ballot. The campaigns gathered at a park in the Panhandle, holding signs and tabling for their candidates.

“This is go time,” said rally attendee Christin Evans, a small business owner and city commissioner who is voting for Peskin and has been door-knocking for Fielder. “It feels exactly like the right time. We have been watching submissions of ballots to the Department of Elections and know people will vote the two weekends leading into the election.”

San Francisco has elected Democratic mayors exclusively since 1964, and most in recent years have led moderate administrations. However, in 2019, voters elected a progressive-majority Board of Supervisors, and progressive leaders hope to retain that power in City Hall, even as the county’s official Democratic Party shifted to a moderate majority on its governing board this spring.

“You’re seeing much more participation of some of the wealthiest residents in this city’s politics,” political writer and analyst Steve Phillips said. “And [it] does have the effect of shifting the city’s political balance of power more to the right.”

As the race enters its final phase, moderate candidates are increasingly targeting each other with attack ads on TV, text message blasts and mailers. Farrell, for example, has faced criticism for allegedly violating campaign finance laws. Farrell has repeatedly defended his strategy, saying that his legal team approved it. Meanwhile, text message ads from the Yes on D PAC criticized Lurie’s lack of government experience as “dangerous.”

Phillips said Peskin isn’t the only one benefiting from the wave of anti-Farrell and anti-Lurie media. Breed, the only woman and person of color among the leading four candidates, has focused her campaign on understanding San Francisco’s biggest issues because she’s the only one on the ticket who has lived and overcome them firsthand.

“My sister suffered from addiction. She lost her battle with drugs and lost her life,” Breed told KQED’s Political Breakdown. “When I think about why I’m in public service in the first place, it’s because I’m trying to make sure this city makes the right kinds of investments to stop that kind of thing from happening again.”

Her track record of bringing that lived experience to programs and decisions at City Hall has resonated particularly among voters in the city’s Black and Latino communities. An October poll from the San Francisco Chronicle found that nearly half of Black San Francisco voters listed Breed as their top pick for mayor, followed by 37% of Latino voters.

“As a resident of San Francisco, there is a tsunami of materials coming in the mail, largely for the white guys, so it does bring in a reconsideration of London Breed in this context. I do think she may be getting a second look because of that,” Phillips said. “The challenge that Peskin faces is the challenge that white progressives face in this city. His base may not be wide enough to necessarily capture communities of color’s enthusiasm, and that will be a barrier.”

Breed has also faced pushback for championing punitive policing measures that in San Francisco are likely to fall disproportionately on communities of color, such as increasing arrests of drug users or requiring drug screening for welfare recipients.

Despite the shifts, most polls still show Peskin trailing Breed and Lurie for first-choice votes. And Lurie — an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who has raised more than any mayoral candidate in the city’s history — continues to poll strongly among both first and second-choice votes.

Peskin’s campaign has fundraised a modest amount in comparison to his billionaire-supported competitors. He has nabbed big donations from labor unions and a broad base of small, individual contributions, totaling around $2.5 million — a far cry from a pro-Lurie PAC totaling nearly $10 million, which includes $8.7 million from his own fortune. Breed’s campaign has raised $3.1 million, including $1.45 million from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and $850,000 from cryptocurrency investor Chris Larsen.

Farrell received nearly $1 million from conservative donor William Oberndorf and $500,000 from real estate investor Thomas Coates. Meanwhile, billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who penned an op-ed in the New York Times attacking Peskin in October, has contributed nearly $3.1 million to Proposition D, a measure that would cut the number of city commissions in half.

“The only candidate with momentum at this point is Aaron Peskin and the candidate who is fading apparently under the weight of very, very serious allegations around campaign finance impropriety is Mark Farrell,” Jaye says.

The question now, he said, remains: “Will Peskin’s momentum continue?”