Aaron Peskin for Mayor of San Francisco

I've had Aaron's sign in my front window for weeks. This is the most interesting contest on my California ballot. I'd sure prefer Aaron to any of the alternatives!

London Breed has been a terrible mayor -- corrupt, partial to our tech and real estate overlords, and inept. Mark Farrell is for practical purposes a Republican who has to run as a Democrat in this Left Coast city, beholden to a bunch of billionaires who think they ought to run the world -- and who, like Elon Musk, show themselves incompetent in public life. Daniel Lurie seems a nice man, but being a Levi's heir and non-profit exec doesn't prepare a person to be mayor of San Francisco. Ahsha Safai was a good enough county supervisor from a part of the city everyone neglects -- but can't make a dent.

 

Aaron knows where the bodies, political and administrative, have been buried in this famously labyrinthine city. He's served two contentious but largely successful non-consecutive eight year stints on the Board of Supervisors.

Peskin knows that, by hook or crook, we can't solve homelessness without reform of the current morass of programs. He cares about keeping schools open, about public transit, about making rentals affordable. You know, the stuff that just goes over the heads of the billionaires who want to treat the city as their playground. 

He'd probably be a cantankerous chief executive, but a huge improvement on what we've had for quite a few years.

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One of my dirty secrets is that I hate it that we elect the members of the city school board and of the community college board. I do not feel competent to make choices about who should run institutions that seem to be in chronic, slightly mysterious, trouble. And too often, the people running for these positions hope to use them as stepping stones, rather than digging in to improve them.

The one exception I'm making on this ballot is for Matt Alexander for School Board. He's a former teacher, principal and community activist who actually cares about the schools and deserves another term.