SF mayor Breed stumps for 2nd term in Castro stop

This story first appeared on ebar.com May 6, 2024:

San Francisco Mayor London Breed told the Bay Area Reporter May 3 that she never intended to pit the Harvey Milk Plaza renovation project against San Francisco City Clinic in deciding what to fund in a bond measure.

“Harvey Milk Plaza is important. City Clinic is important. All of it is important,” Breed said. “It wasn’t about championing Harvey Milk Plaza over City Clinic. We need to stop telling one side of the story.”

Breed made the remarks during a campaign visit to the Castro LGBTQ neighborhood that preceded a nearby fundraising event.

As the B.A.R. previously reported, after an uproar from LGBTQ political leaders and activists, $27 million for relocating the Department of Public Health’s City Clinic was added May 2 to a bond measure Breed had unveiled April 29. Its initial omission had upset LGBTQ advocates, who noted the bond did include $25 million toward the project to reimagine Harvey Milk Plaza above the Castro Muni Station.

Breed told the B.A.R. that the building City Clinic is currently housed in is not owned by the City and County of San Francisco, and that the city has identified a building it owns for the relocation. On May 6, an oversight committee stacked with city administrators gave its stamp of approval to the bond measure, now including the full funding of $28 million for City Clinic, the funds for Milk plaza, and several other health department and infrastructure projects.

The mayor also talked about her selection of Honey Mahogany as the head of the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives. Mahogany, who started in the position May 6, told the B.A.R. last week that Breed’s office had reached out to her.

“When there was no funding, no office of transgender initiatives, Honey Mahogany was a huge advocate for all of the things we are doing now to support the transgender community,” Breed said. “She has done amazing work.”

Breed had passed over Mahogany two years ago when the District 6 supervisor seat became vacant and appointed gay man and former San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Matt Dorsey. He went on to win election that fall against several candidates, including Mahogany.

Now, Breed is running for reelection in November against her predecessor, Mark Farrell, who served for six months following the death of then-mayor Ed Lee after the supervisors voted for him over Breed; Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who represents District 3; District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí; and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie. When asked what she would say to Farrell and Lurie — who are also running campaigns emphasizing public safety and economic revitalization post-COVID — she said, “My question is, where have they been?”

“These problems are not new problems,” she said, saying they are proposing initiatives her administration has already undertaken.

“The things they’re proposing, I’m already doing,” she said.

Breed dismissed Farrell’s call for use of the California National Guard to combat the fentanyl epidemic.

“Mayors don’t have the ability to do exactly what he’s talking about,” she said.

With regard to Peskin’s candidacy, she attacked his record on housing.

“We don’t need another ‘bureaucratic fix,'” she said. “A lot of his ‘bureaucratic fixes’ are being fixed by me because they amount to obstruction.”

Read more at ebar.com.