SAN FRANCISCO — Mayor London Breed may have lost reelection, but after more than six years at the helm of one of America’s most iconic cities, she says she will leave office next month as a champion.
“No matter what the results said, I’m still a winner,” Breed said in an interview this week. “The fact that I have come out of the most problematic circumstances of San Francisco to be mayor, and I’m here, and I have been able to serve, it is an absolute privilege.”
Indeed, it has been a meteoric rise to the top for Breed, 50.
Raised in poverty by her grandmother in the Western Addition, at the time one of San Francisco’s toughest neighborhoods, Breed was elected to the powerful Board of Supervisors in 2012 after serving as executive director of the African American Art and Culture Complex. She made history in June 2018 when she won a special election as the first Black female mayor of San Francisco after the unexpected death of Mayor Ed Lee.
The years that followed would be defined by crises: a deadly pandemic; the explosive availability of fentanyl and corresponding surge in overdose deaths; the twin plagues of rampant homelessness and untreated mental illness; the racial justice protests of 2020; and in the wake of COVID-era closures, a crushing rise in retail theft and collapse of the downtown economy.
“I had to deal with crisis after crisis after crisis,” Breed said.
Her track record in the face of these challenges became a decisive factor in the mayor’s race, a hard-fought competition among Breed and four other top Democrats. Breed lost to Daniel Lurie, 47, a nonprofit executive and heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune who has never held elected office.
Lurie seized on voter disillusionment with brazen retail thefts, homeless encampments and open-air drug use that made San Francisco a favorite punching bag of right-wing pundits and President-elect Donald Trump. Lurie pitched himself as a political outsider whom voters could rely on to usher in a new era of accountability and good governance.
Though Breed has never been a bleeding-heart progressive, she tacked right in recent years, championing policies to more aggressively move homeless people off the streets and give police more authority and resources to tackle crime. She said she feels she is leaving office just as “everything is starting to come together.”
Violent crime rates have fallen over the last year, with homicides down 34%, robberies down 22%, burglaries down 12% and motor vehicle theft down 21%, according to the San Francisco Police Department.
In summer, Breed launched a campaign to clear homeless encampments, an effort she said is paying off with 60% fewer tents across the city. Fatal overdoses have fallen for six consecutive months after hitting a high of 810 deaths last year.
Susie Tompkins Buell, a prominent Democratic donor and staunch supporter of Breed’s, said the mayor deserves credit for effectively leading San Francisco through an unusually difficult period. “I think she handled some serious problems very well, and I think there were new problems, problems we had never experienced before,” Buell said.
Buell applauded Breed’s decisiveness during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when she was one of the first big-city mayors to declare a state of emergency — a decision credited with saving thousands of lives.
“Nobody knew what to do, and everyone was scared and trying to do the right thing, and be bold and careful at the same time,” Buell said. “I know she gave it her all.”
But those early pandemic decisions were a distant memory for many voters when it came time to cast ballots this year. There was a grim sense that San Francisco had lost control of its street life — and some of its charm.
Lurie’s reputation as a “non-politician” almost certainly helped him win election. Though considered a political outsider, Lurie comes from one of San Francisco’s most influential families. He was born the son of a rabbi. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother went on to marry Peter Haas, an heir to the founder of the Levi’s brand. Haas has since died, and Lurie and his mother are among the primary heirs.
Lurie spent nearly $9 million on his campaign, and his mother, Miriam Haas, contributed an additional $1 million to an independent expenditure committee backing his mayoral bid. The committee received millions more from tech titans and wealthy investors who saw in Lurie an opportunity to set the city on a new course after what they perceived as years of misdirection.
Breed said that heavy spending disadvantaged her campaign.
“It just was definitely very challenging to run the city, which is the priority, and then try to run a campaign against the kind of financial resources that were coming at me from a lot of different places,” she said.
The rise in tech sector influence has become a defining theme the last two years in an array of San Francisco elections. Breed is still weighing whether that shift will ultimately improve local politics. “There’s a lot of money that I wish could be poured into the things that are important in San Francisco,” she said. “It can’t just be about investing in a particular person. … It has to be about investing in a city regardless of who’s in charge.”
Breed’s critics say her loss was about more than campaign money.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who ran against her for mayor as an old-school progressive, said she could be uncompromising and brusque in policy deliberations.
“It was kind of her way or the highway. And politics is the business of negotiating a compromise, which she did splendidly during COVID,” Peskin said. “But that was not everybody’s experience before COVID or after COVID, and that came back and bit her.”
In addition, he said, Breed’s shift away from the more liberal policies she championed when she served on the Board of Supervisors and in her early days as mayor cost her support from the progressive voters who helped elect her.
“She had alienated herself from liberal San Francisco along the way,” Peskin said. “And they abandoned her.”
James Taylor, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco and author of “Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama,” agreed that Breed leaves office with a “mixed legacy.”
Breed governed the city during a challenging tenure, Taylor said, but some problems were of her own making. Her time in office was marred by a string of scandals that rocked city departments and nonprofits, undermining trust in government oversight.
Most recently, an investigation by the San Francisco Standard found that the head of the city’s Human Rights Commission funneled contracts worth more than $1 million to a nonprofit led by a man with whom she shared a home address and car — a close personal relationship she had not disclosed. The episode raised larger questions about how city funds have been managed for one of Breed’s signature programs, the Dream Keeper Initiative, which she established with the stated aim of directing more money into economic and cultural development in Black communities.
In the wake of the scandal, Taylor said, many Black San Franciscans felt the city lost the momentum for change they thought would come with her leadership.
“In other words, London Breed’s demise was self-inflicted,” he said. “The way this plane crashed, everything around it was destroyed.”
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and one of Breed’s allies, disputed that conclusion, contending Breed has been remarkably successful despite historic challenges.
“The city has been through a lot in the last five years,” he said. “The voters ultimately decided they wanted to go in another direction. But she’s done a lot of good things.”
Among her accomplishments, Wiener said: Breed was a forceful advocate for legislation to make it easier to build homes, and a reliable ally for the LGBTQ+ community.
“She really deeply understands our community,” Wiener said.
Breed acknowledged Lurie will inherit a list of tribulations. Among the more pressing issues is a projected $876-million city budget deficit. The office vacancy rate remains stubbornly high nearly five years after the pandemic. The city schools system is on the brink of state takeover.
Her advice to Lurie? “It’s important not to be afraid of what constituency you’re going to piss off when you have to make life-and-death situation decisions here in the city that may be unpopular.”
That grit is critical as California prepares for Trump to resume office, Breed said.
“San Francisco has been a consistent target and will be used as an example,” she said. “San Francisco is going to be impacted whether we want it to be or not.”
Her election loss coincided with Trump’s victory over her friend and mentor, Vice President Kamala Harris. Breed said their defeats should prompt reflection inside the Democratic Party.
“I hope the Democratic Party tries to figure out a way to help more people, especially even people like me, be more successful,” she said.
Breed said she has been focused on a smooth mayoral transition and hasn’t had much time to think about life after the mayor’s office. She has spent nearly her whole life working, she said, starting with babysitting gigs and grocery runs for neighbors as a preteen. She’s eager — and a bit anxious — to figure out her next job.
“I don’t have no rich mama with money,” she said, laughing. “I gotta go make my own money.”
