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by\u00a0JOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/strong> JULY 18, 2024, (MissionLocal.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Five](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-missionlocal.s3.amazonaws.com\/mission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_4386.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1\")
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSign up below to get Mission Local\u2019s free newsletter<\/strong>, a daily digest of news you won\u2019t find elsewhere.Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as a presidential election hinges on several swing states, a debate to earn the endorsement of the San Francisco firefighters\u2019 union hinges on several key issues. Any candidate who could not offer an unequivocal \u201cyes\u201d to the following is likely cooked with regards to winning this coveted endorsement: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let the record show that Mayor London Breed, the firefighters\u2019 sole endorsee in 2018, did not offer an unequivocal \u201cyes\u201d to either of these queries, and drew jeers for her response to the second. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Stay informed on local elections \u2014 sign up for Mission Local’s free daily newsletter<\/strong> today!Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n This morning\u2019s debate was held at the jarring hour of 9:30 a.m., so as to take advantage of firefighters\u2019 8 a.m. shift change. The union hall on Newhall Street was densely populated with an overwhelmingly male crowd, with a median height that may have easily surpassed six feet. \u201cHow\u2019s Novato?\u201d one oversized man said to another prior to the event. \u201cI\u2019m settling in,<\/a>\u201d responded the other oversized man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The debate, moderated by former Chronicle<\/em> columnist Phil Matier, in many ways resembled any candidate forum. Breed, wearing a tangerine sweater and skirt, was flanked to her left by two men with ties \u2014 Board President Aaron Peskin and Daniel Lurie \u2014 and to her right by two men without ties \u2014 Supervisor Ahsha Safa\u00ed and Mark Farrell. Matier asked questions about all the things one asks questions about: Homelessness, drug addiction, crime, resurrecting downtown, housing and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But everybody knew that weighing in on the pension measure and vaccine mandate would be unavoidable when the microphone was turned over to the unionized firefighters in the audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Queried about the pension measure by Local No. 798 secretary Adam Wood, Peskin told the union that its arguments to lower the pension age \u2014 retroactively, <\/em>in a move affecting more than 1,500 firefighters<\/a> \u2014 \u201cwere profoundly convincing and compelling. As a result, I am a co-sponsor of the charter amendment.\u201d He added that \u201cit is right and it is economically right because I believe it will save San Francisco money over time.\u201d This, in fact, was the firefighters\u2019 argument for the measure, which has been less convincing and compelling to economists or actuaries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have childhood friends in the fire department,\u201d said Farrell, who would return to this notion, \u201cand you have my unequivocal support.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have been the lead co-sponsor of this measure,\u201d said Safa\u00ed. \u201cI support it 100 percent.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m all in,\u201d said Lurie. \u201cI\u2019m 100 percent supportive.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Breed, the strong mayor in San Francisco\u2019s strong mayor system and the person who bears great responsibility for this city\u2019s fiscal solvency, didn\u2019t offer such an answer. Rather, she said that \u201cI am very much interested in supporting this ballot initiative but it has changed and is still going through the Board of Supervisors process. I will wait on the final version to make my decision on this ballot measure.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This answer satisfied no one and confused many: The amendments made to the firefighters\u2019 pension measure last Tuesday<\/a> rendered it less generous to the workers, not more. And the measure is <\/em>in its final version. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not remarked upon during today\u2019s forum was that Peskin and Farrell\u2019s answers were both curious as well. Peskin, who prides himself on being a fiscal hawk, is now backing a big pension boost for a workforce that is having no problems recruiting or retaining workers. Farrell\u2019s political patron, Michael Moritz, worked with Jeff Adachi to take a scythe to public pensions. It would be interesting to know how he feels about his preferred candidate aggressively pushing to undo the reforms he felt were already inadequate<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The question about pensions was followed by a firefighter named Jovan Blake quoting a biblical passage and then asking if the candidates would \u201cimmediately reinstate\u201d the two dozen firefighters who refused to be vaccinated. His language was forceful; he chided the candidates for having \u201cdone nothing about this issue and yet you come here asking for our endorsement.\u201d He continued: \u201cPlease do not waste our time saying you\u2019ll look into it. Let us know you\u2019ll do it or say you will not do it so we know where you stand very clearly.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The firefighters who spurned the vaccine mandate have deployed no small amount of misinformation or conspiracy theory-mongering<\/a>. Mission Local has learned that, during hearings, at least one called Jesus as a witness \u2014 leading an observer to wonder if George Burns would walk through the door as he did during the trial scene in \u201cOh God!\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n But the vaccine mandate has lapsed. And four of the mayoral candidates were amenable \u2014 even eager \u2014 to hire back these workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we\u2019re doing it in one department, we should be doing it across the city,\u201d said Safa\u00ed. \u201cI would 100 percent reinstate them right away,\u201d added Farrell. \u201cThis comes up at every firehouse<\/a> \u2026 their brothers and sisters can\u2019t get rehired.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Peskin noted that the pandemic was \u201ca crazy time, and I want to thank and acknowledge all the first responders who could not shelter in place and had to go to work every day.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI believe in second chances,\u201d he continued. \u201cI am the living product of second chances and I believe the city and county should offer all those folks from not just fire but all the other departments who were separated during the crazy time their old jobs back.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Breed, again the strong mayor in San Francisco\u2019s strong mayor system, did not offer such an answer. She said she\u2019d talked about this with Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson and \u201cI\u2019m not going to tell the chief how to do her job and she is not going to tell me how to do my job. \u2026 It is ultimately her decision.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This answer led to a loud and unhappy response from the brethren; \u201cYou hire<\/em> her!\u201d moaned one audience member. This is a germane point: Breed has, repeatedly, said that San Francisco\u2019s strong mayor system hasn\u2019t given her enough strength<\/a>, and has prevented her from having adequate power to unilaterally hire and fire department heads. Her claim this morning that it was not her business to assert her prerogative in this matter did not find a sympathetic audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those two questions alone could well have decided this debate. But this was a 90-minute affair and much more was said. Two other issues of keen importance to the firefighters were homeless encampments and public drug-use. This became a de-facto competition between Farrell and Breed on who would crack down harder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Farrell bemoaned that, three weeks after the Supreme Court struck down a ruling<\/a> that mandated cities to offer shelter or housing to the homeless before rousting them or applying criminal penalties, the city still hadn\u2019t cracked the whip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Grants Pass decision was three weeks ago and tent encampments are growing,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to be aggressive.\u201d He pledged that he\u2019d take a strong hand against street dwellers so \u201cevery day you can deal with fighting fires and not dealing with tent encampments.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Breed, repeatedly, deflated Farrell\u2019s claims that he cleared all the city\u2019s major encampments as caretaker mayor in 2018 by noting that at least seven were left for her to deal with. She also noted, more than once, that the tent count was 58 percent higher during his tenure as mayor than it is at present under her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She said that a \u201cvery aggressive\u201d policy of clearing tents would be implemented next month after the City Attorney\u2019s office has finalized training materials for city employees. She painted Farrell as reckless, noting that when the city fails to adhere to rules regarding bagging-and-tagging homeless people\u2019s possessions \u2014 rules the Supreme Court has not undone \u2014 it has been forced to pay out $10,000 or $20,000 a pop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At one point, Farrell chided Breed by noting that \u201cafter six years, you don\u2019t have a plan. You have a track record.\u201d Breed, who was a fire commissioner early in her political career, reminded the audience of the money and equipment she\u2019d procured for them. But other elements of that record appeared to loom larger: The vaccine mandate, the forthcoming pension measure and the most recent contract deal in which police and firefighters no longer have parity \u2014 a matter of extreme annoyance to the latter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Farrell was far less burdened with either the real or imagined constraints of actual governance. At one point he suggested appropriating some if not all of the $1 billion directed toward nonprofits and funneling the money to first-responders \u2014 \u201dthat\u2019s how I will run the ship when I\u2019m in City Hall.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This earned hearty applause but seemed untethered from the realities of how the city actually works; San Francisco\u2019s budget is not Uncle Scrooge\u2019s money bin<\/a> and you can\u2019t just hoist up piles of cash from one corner and plop them down in the other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Farrell noted that no fewer than five members of his graduating class (St. Ignatius, \u201992) are San Francisco firefighters \u2014 not to mention younger alums. And they\u2019d know who he was \u2014 he was the big man on campus baseball star. Farrell, a tall, boisterous, outgoing ex-jock, seemed at home in a room full of them. It was his crowd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Peskin took a different tack. He emphasized repeatedly that he was \u201ca details guy\u201d and said he was proud of all the work he\u2019d done with firefighters \u2014 on carcinogens in equipment, pensions, robotaxis, etc. He made a point of saying he was not <\/em>proud of berating firefighters over their tactics in battling a St. Patrick\u2019s Day blaze<\/a> in 2018, for which \u201cI have taken accountability and responsibility and I am working to make myself, with many of your help, a better person every day.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Safa\u00ed portrayed himself as a union stalwart and champion of the middle class. And Lurie played up his outsider status \u2014 and while that may appeal to voters, it is less clear if it\u2019s attractive to unionized workers who have more tangible goals and may desire an insider with whom to deal with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After the debate, non-firefighters were ushered outside so the members could vote. Voting will continue for several days and the results will be revealed at the Aug. 8 union meeting. At that point, the union will decide whether to offer a ranked-choice endorsement or sole-endorse \u2014 as it did with Breed in 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It feels unlikely the mayor will win this endorsement again. When Breed was asked who her second-place vote would go to, she did not give an answer \u2014 but said \u201cIt won\u2019t be Mark Farrell.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n He replied \u201cI take that as a badge of honor.\u201d And was cheered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n getbackjoejoe@gmail.com<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Managing Editor\/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYour humble narrator\u201d was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mayor Breed pledges \u2018very aggressive\u2019 tent clearing in contest of who can crack down harder on encampments by\u00a0JOE ESKENAZI JULY 18, 2024, (MissionLocal.org) Sign up below to get Mission Local\u2019s free newsletter, a daily digest of news you won\u2019t find elsewhere.Sign up Just as a presidential election hinges on several swing… Continue reading \n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAre SF voters ready to reward cops and firefighters?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nFire drill: SF mayoral candidates can\u2019t stop dropping by fire houses<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nSan Francisco\u2019s dishonest legal brief helped U.S. Supreme Court criminalize homelessness<\/a><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
JOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n