Not one candidate can declare victory yet in the five SF Board of Supervisors races, but two YIMBY candidates have slight leads for Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin’s current seats, while the District 1 race hangs by a thread of just 35 votes.
Moderate candidates swept the San Francisco Democratic Party’s governing board known as the DCCC in this year’s March 5 primary races, prompting state Senator Scott Wiener to declare that March evening was “a really good night for London Breed.” Fast forward to eight months later, and last night was obviously not a really good night for London Breed (or any of us), though Breed is not mathematically out of it yet.
And none of the moderates that the new DCCC hoped would sweep away the progressive supervisors are out of it yet either, though they’re ahead on two high-profile seats. But all of the races remain too close to call.
How close? In the Richmond's District 1, challenger Marjan Philhour leads incumbent Connie Chan by just 35 votes, according to the latest ranked-choice count at the SF Department of Elections. That puts this race at literally 50.1% to 49.9%. More than 100,000 provisional and mail-in ballots remain to be counted, so this — or any of these races — can still swing dramatically.
But right now, the strongest-looking candidate is Jackie Fielder in District 9, as Supervisor Hillary Ronen is termed out from her tenure representing the Mission and Bernal Heights. Fielder has a very commanding 57%-42% lead over the moderate Trevor Chandler in the latest round of votes. Chandler was one of those moderates who was elected to the DCCC in March, though it may not have helped much in this race.
But over in Supervisor Dean Preston’s District 5, another March DCCC winner Bilal Mahmood is positioned to possibly defeat Preston in the highest-profile and biggest fundraising race of this bunch. Mahmood is up 53% to 47% in the latest round, with just a hair under 1,000 votes separating the two for the race to represent the Haight, Fillmore, and Tenderloin. That’s a modest lead, and we’ll see if the tech money spent to unseat Preston did the trick in the coming tallies.
The YIMBY forces were also coming for Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s seat in District 3, and their man Danny Sauter is ahead of Peskin’s preferred successor Sharon Lai by 56%-44% in the latest round. Sauter is up at the moment by a little under 2,000 votes to represent North Beach, Chinatown, and Union Square.
Meanwhile, incumbent Myrna Melgar clings to a slight lead of 52% to 48% in the District 7 race for the Inner Sunset and Forest Hill’s seat. Small business owner Matt Boschetto, endorsed by the tech PACs TogetherSF Action and GrowSF, trails by just 675 votes in the latest round.
And in the Excelsior, Oceanview, and Outer Mission’s District 11 race, where Supervisors Ahsha Safai is termed out, startup guy Michal Lai has a razor-thin 51%-49% lead over labor union organizer Chyanne Chen. Lai is currently only up by a mere 248 votes.
We won’t be getting any more updated vote tallies until Thursday at around 4 pm. And given the closeness of most of these races, there probably won’t be many SF Supervisor victory parties until this weekend, at the earliest.
Image: SF Board of Supervisors
