With a narrow ranked-choice victory declared Sunday for incoming District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has two new faces representing the Westside beginning in the new year.
District 1, which represents much of the Richmond District as well as part of NoPa, was the last race to be called, and as the Chronicle reports, Chan won over Marjan Philhour by a margin of just 123 votes. Chan, 41, was a former aide to Kamala Harris when she was SF District Attorney, and more recently was an aide to Supervisor Aaron Peskin — and with her progressive cred, she had the endorsement of outgoing D1 Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer. Chan's election cements the progressive majority on the Board.
We are thrilled to share our victory in the District 1 Supervisor race! Thank you to our dedicated volunteers and working families throughout the Richmond District. Let’s celebrate this hard won fight. This victory belongs to you — to all of us.
— Connie Chan 陳詩敏 (@conniechansf) November 9, 2020
Richmond District native Philhour, who was a senior advisor to Mayor London Breed, had been leading by a slim margin most of last week as ranked-choice tabulations were made. But on Sunday, per the Chronicle, Philhour conceded the race to Chan.
The final vote count was 17,030 to 16,907.
"When I announced [my campaign] in January, it was about affordability and closing that income gap among San Franciscans,” Chan said in a statement. “The Richmond District has a lot of working families, and it’s increasingly challenging for people to be able to stay. The pandemic has only exacerbated that income gap."
It’s official! We won 2 smart, progressive *women of color* to San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
— Jane Kim 金貞妍 (@JaneKim) November 9, 2020
Congratulations @conniechansf + @myrnamelgar!
And excited @AliyaChisti @shanell_laprice @jennyhlam + @lateefahsimon won City College, School Board + BART! Our squad is growing! pic.twitter.com/gBE2N2QUvh
In District 7, where the race had been heated and campaigning got pretty ugly, former Planning Commission President Myrna Melgar triumphed late last week in a ranked-choice runoff as well.
District 7 encompasses the neighborhoods of West Portal, Twin Peaks, Forest Hill, Stonestown, and Lake Merced, and has been represented by Norman Yee for the past eight years. Yee is now termed out.
Melgar had a slew of progressive endorsements as well as the endorsement of the California Democratic Party, but she was up against another progressive, Vilaska Nguyen, who shared many of the same endorsements. She prevailed over challenger Joe Engardio with 53 percent of the vote.
"This is not my victory, it is our victory," Melgar said in an email to supporters late last week. "Running for supervisor amid this pandemic hasn’t been easy, but I’m grateful for the experience. I want to extend my deep gratitude and respect to the other candidates in the race who ran strong campaigns and have shown a deep commitment to the welfare of our community."
As SFist reported last week, the four other supervisor races in this election were pretty well locked up by incumbents right away, with Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen, Dean Preston, and Ahsha Safai all holding on to their seats. Ronen ran unopposed, and the closest race among those was between Preston and former mayoral appointee to the Board, Vallie Brown in District 5.
Photos of Chan and Melgar courtesy of their campaigns.
