Whatever your thoughts about Mayor London Breed — and the results of a recent Chronicle poll indicate that few San Franciscans have happy thoughts — one must admit that she has a difficult job. It’s tough enough to lead the real San Francisco, let alone the largely imaginary version that exists as an avatar for liberal misrule and a stand-in for whatever larger societal issue outside observers wish to project.
Earlier this month, a pack of hooligans vandalized and burned a Waymo driverless car that — inexplicably — meandered into the midst of a fireworks-saturated Chinatown block during a Lunar New Year fête. And the world’s attention was piqued: My relatives, who not only reside in Australia, but in such a comically remote corner of it that they must drive 400 miles each way to buy groceries, saw stories online about this incident: “Odd what turns up on the news here.”
It is! And that’s why it’s hard to be mayor of this city: Not only do we have a hollowed-out downtown office district increasingly resembling a mid-season Oakland A’s game but, in this city, a handful of jagoffs with spray cans and firecrackers can garner widespread coverage and be recast as emblematic of some deeper, darker movement.
And, to boot, this makes the news in Bedourie.
Same as it ever was: A decade ago, a handful of jagoffs flipped over four Smart Cars in San Francisco and, briefly, spurred a flurry of national and international news stories. This spate of opportunistic vandalism was recast as, somehow, indicative of a larger, more meaningful — and more sinister — development.
This city has an image problem. So does its mayor. She set forth to tackle both of them via an op-ed printed earlier this month in the San Francisco Standard.
And, in a real feat, she may have only made things worse.
Did we say Breed’s showing in the Chronicle mayoral poll was bad? Because it’s bad. Real bad. Like, time to kneel and pray with Henry Kissinger bad.
Granted, November is a long way off, and the mayoral field may not yet be set — and, if a progressive candidate jumps in, who knows, Breed could grab some of those elusive No. 2 and No. 3 votes. But, again, these numbers are just flat-out bad. A full 71 percent of city voters disapprove of the mayor’s performance. That includes 67 percent of white voters, 69 percent of Black voters and 80 percent of Asian voters.
New Coke was better received than this. The mayor’s re-election bid is, itself, increasingly, resembling a burning car.
Breed’s Feb. 16 op-ed couldn’t, on its own, solve her many problems. But she chose a tack that — unfortunately — appears doomed to fail: The mayor wrote that, despite what you’ve seen on TV and read in the papers, the condition in San Francisco is, by and large, not so bad.
As we’ve written before, this is true: Breed’s statistics are accurate. But waving around statistics in the face of an onslaught of visceral and emotional negative coverage didn’t work so well for ousted District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and it doesn’t figure to work so well here. The mayor, in fact, cavalierly fanned the flames that immolated Boudin, and that fire is now nipping at her own heels.
So, that’s a problem. But it’s that’s hardly the biggest problem with the mayor’s op-ed. Because, while you probably didn’t read it, do you know who did? Firefighters. And, by and large, they were not pleased.
The mayor, they noted, didn’t merely state that lighting cars on fire doesn’t fly in my town! That would’ve probably sufficed, but Breed also blew an egregious kiss to Waymo, writing that “we are a city that is home to exciting, emerging technologies, like autonomous vehicles, that are changing the world. After all, we have led in transportation innovation before — 150 years ago, the cable car was invented here.”
Breed concluded by noting that she “will be meeting with the leaders of Waymo to talk about this incident and assure them we will continue to work with them on how to make autonomous vehicles a part of our city with safety as our top priority.”
The city’s firefighters, you may recall, have thoughts about this. They have been shouting from the rooftops, for many months, that driverless cars have been dangerously breaching emergency scenes and impeding first responders. They have amassed scores of incident reports regarding these incursions. For the firefighters, this is a make-it-or-break-it issue.
Make-it-or-break-it is a key term here because, for a San Francisco mayoral candidate, there is probably no greater endorsement to receive than that of the firefighters union. Everybody loves firefighters; they poll better than a cold beer on a hot summer day. And it’s not just a paper endorsement: They put a lot of money and on-the-ground effort into electing their candidates of choice.
In 2018, the firefighters union was the popular and relatable face of a pro-Breed Independent Expenditure committee lavishly funded by the (less popular, less relatable) city tech barons and captains of industry. The firefighters were Breed’s most valuable and steadfast allies.
Nobody foresaw robot cars owned by zillion-dollar tech companies being the match that burned this partnership, but, lo, that has happened. Breed’s message to Waymo jumped off the page for the firefighters.
“Give me a break!” said one veteran firefighter. “She’s more concerned about some tech company than the safety of our citizens.” Adds another veteran firefighter: “She’s been a cheerleader for [robotaxis] from the beginning. This is a very big deal for us. I’m sure our members will have plenty of questions about it.”
Union president Floyd Rollins sums it up succinctly: “That’s her opinion. We’ve been stalwart in our position.” The mayoral endorsement forum for the firefighters Local No. 798 will come sometime after the filing deadline on June 11. It would figure to be a rather combustible affair this year.
And, if the firefighters are concerned about robotaxis, the Teamsters are obsessed with them. The ascent of driverless vehicles would be the death knell of their profession. And they, too, read the mayor’s op-ed with concern and irritation.
Breed supported a failed 2023 Teamsters-backed state bill to mandate large autonomous vehicles have a human aboard. But that was then. The mayor is now courting the Teamsters for an endorsement in 2024, and members I spoke with were skeptical.
“Here’s the reality,” said one. “She’s gonna have to pick a side.”
One could argue that she already has. And it’s a position that sets her apart from much of the political leadership in this town. City Attorney (and will-he-or-won’t-he mayoral possibility) David Chiu has sued the California Public Utilities Commission over its decision to give driverless cars carte blanche to traverse San Francisco.
Board President (and will-he-or-won’t-he mayoral possibility) Aaron Peskin has openly engaged in “legislative guerilla warfare” against robotaxis, and all 10 of his Board colleagues signed onto his resolution explicitly spelling this out. Peskin attends meetings with the City Attorney, the firefighters and others in which the city works with state legislators like Assemblyman Matt Haney and Assemblyman Phil Ting to demand more transparency from autonomous vehicle companies.
Supervisor Connie Chan has introduced a resolution that will be heard today in committee, supporting a state senate bill that would give cities more control in regulating driverless vehicles. It is hard to foresee anything other than all 11 supes eventually signing onto this resolution.
Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission sided with San Mateo’s County Attorney, who complained that Waymo had failed to engage with county officials before a proposed southward expansion. The CPUC suspended the company’s proposal to move into San Mateo and Los Angeles counties for up to 120 days.
This prompted an ebullient response from San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa. “Tech companies want to win, win, win, win, win. Winning is getting into the market as fast as they can. If that means there are accidents? Hey, they’ll deal with the consequences later,” he told Mission Local. “We say no.”
When asked about Mayor Breed’s stance, Canepa says he supports her, and supports her re-election — but doesn’t support her on this issue.
“We can’t kiss tech’s ass all the time,” he says. “The only way we make tech better is if we’re all in the decision-making process. We can’t only kiss tech’s ass.”
This seems like sound advice. There are consequences for kissing something that’s on fire.
JOE ESKENAZI
Managing Editor/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.
“Your humble narrator” 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.
He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.
The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi
