The race for the seat of termed-out District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen brings some fresh faces who haven’t held a City Hall office before, including the longtime producer of Carnaval, a one-time lobbyist for the Citizen app, and an activist who ran surprisingly strongly against Scott Wiener.

The District 9 seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has been held by a far-left progressive for as long as District 9 as we know it has existed. When supervisor seats went back to being linked to geographic districts instead of all at-large seats back in the year 2000, the seat was held by Tom "Kiss My Gay Ass" Ammiano. He was succeeded by David Campos in 2008, and then by Campos’s former legislative aide Hillary Ronen in 2017.

And now Ronen, too, will be termed out of the seat. Depending on who wins next week’s District 9 supervisor election, the new supervisor will likely either move more to the middle, or even further to the left.

Our headline refers to the three leading candidates (in terms of fundraising and campaign mailers, at least) as “relative political newcomers,” but all of them certainly have resumes, and other less-well-funded candidates are newcomers as well.

The Chronicle’s endorsee Roberto Hernandez has been co-organizing Carnaval for decades, and founded the SF Lowrider Council and Mission Food Hub. (And yes, he wears that colorful straw hat nearly everywhere he goes.) Trevor Chandler was elected to the SF DCCC in March, and was a Gavin Newsom appointee to the California State Board of Pharmacy. Jackie Fielder has served on the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission (SFLAFCo), and pulled an impressive 43% share of the vote in a 2020 state Senate race against Scott Wiener.

You can take the political pulse of each candidate by their remarks at a recent League of Women Voters candidate forum.

At that event, Hernadez declared, “How come we have money to build bombs and Blue Angels, but we’re talking about closing schools? No way.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Chandler said “D9 voters want competent, reasonable, dare I say, boring leadership at City Hall. They want results. They want sound policy, not sound bites.” He added he would “expand Team Reasonable in District 9.”

While Fielder staked her ground with the opening statement, “As supervisor, my biggest priorities are investing in low- and middle-income housing, housing 1,800 homeless SFUSD students, investing in our entire public safety system, activating vacant lots and empty storefronts, and supporting our small businesses.”

Each of these candidates has raised more than $300,000 for their campaigns, with Fielder at the top with nearly $470,000 in contributions. Chandler has a political action committee (PAC) supporting him that’s raised $59,000, the vast majority of it from Ripple Labs founder and security camera enthusiast Chris Larsen. Fielder does not have a PAC going for her, but she does have the endorsement of the Jane Fonda Climate PAC.

The hot-button issue in District 9 is the illegal vending scene on Mission Street, and all three support making some sort of legalized vending available.  

When asked by Mission Local, Fielder said “Permitted vendors can vend in an organized fashion in high foot-traffic areas; but vendors, non-profits, small businesses, city workers, and police need a coordinated safety strategy. Public workers shouldn’t do police-officer enforcement. Equilibrium keeps the ban in place at the expense of permitted vendors. We can have vendors in high-foot traffic areas through a coordinated strategy.”

When asked the same question, Hernadez said, “As a lifelong resident, I know first-hand the importance of street vending to our district’s culture, from the iconic Mission Dog to the delicious tacos. However, illegal vending has spiraled out of control, impacting both merchants and our collective sense of safety.” He added, “Together we will implement a plan that results in appropriate consequences for illegal actors, and provides the support and resources for permitted vendors to operate safely.”

As for Chandler, his response was, “We will create permanent night markets at our BART Plazas, providing a guaranteed income to approved local vendors who sell food, handmade crafts, and perform until 9 pm, allowing them to keep the profits from their sales on top of that. By bringing safety and vibrancy back to our plazas, along with common-sense measures like increased lighting and consistent security, we can ensure local artisans and vendors can make a living as well as increase foot traffic for the small businesses on our commercial corridors.”

There has been some Twitter discourse/argument over whether Chandler is actually a “teacher,” which is how he’s listed on the ballot. He’s spent the bulk of his career as a “Outreach Director” and “Director of Government Affairs & Public Policy” for the lobby AIPAC and the Citizen app (those are usually corporate-speak terms for government lobbying and PR), and only started substitute teaching once he was running for supervisor. Some allege he did this just to get the “teacher” designation on the ballot, but he's been substitute teaching for more than a year. So it's not as tall a tale as multimillion-dollar venture capitalist Mark Farrell billing himself as a “small business owner.”

“I may be one of the few up here that actually joined every single precinct in the recall of the school board,” Chandler said at that the League of Women Voters Forum. And on school closures, he insisted, “As these school consolidations happen, I’m not going to take them balancing the district’s back on the Mission.”

Hernandez was more pointed. “No school should be closed in District 9,” he said. “What we need to begin to do is hold the Board of Education accountable, for simply not even being able to meet payroll. You all remember that story.”

As for Fielder, her take on the school situation was that “We predominantly serve Black and Brown students who have struggled so hard to recover from the pandemic.” She also pointed out, “I’m proud to be backed as the No. 1 endorsed candidate by the United Educators of San Francisco, because I will fight for our students.”

Also running in this race are former SF Entertainment Commissioner and Twin Peaks Tavern barkeep Stephen Torres, local businessperson and army veteran Julian Bermudez, and security guard Jaime Gutierrez.

Torres has endorsements from the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, the Rose Pak Democratic Club, the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Bay Area Reporter, and the San Francisco Berniecrats (who also endorsed Jackie Fielder).

Related: Rowdy District 9 Supervisor Debate at El Rio Draws Hecklers, Very Vocal Peanut Gallery [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist