Why a Tenant-Rights Champion Is Struggling in San Francisco's Mayoral Race

Supervisor Aaron Peskin is the only progressive Democrat in San Francisco's mayoral race, a position that might look like an advantage in one of the country's most liberal cities. Polling through the campaign has told a different story. Peskin has not consistently placed among the top two candidates, and only recently, as moderate rivals have traded attack ads, has he edged toward the top three.

Several factors have been offered to explain the struggle. Billionaire-funded spending is working against him, his long-standing reputation for bullying persists, and his high negative ratings in polls suggest that image has had an effect. Some also point to the awkwardness of an older white man trying to energize progressives when Vice President Kamala Harris, a multiracial woman of color, tops the national ticket. Tenant organizers, former lawmakers and housing advocates who spoke with The Standard, however, pointed to something else: his central message, protecting renters, appears frozen in time.

Peskin's politics were shaped by the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, when Ellis Act evictions were a source of dread. The state law lets landlords remove buildings from the rental market, often to sell units as condominiums. Rent board data show evictions nearly doubled in the year before each of Peskin's hardest-fought elections, in 2000 and again in 2015. Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, said an intense consciousness about protecting tenants shaped city politics in those years, and that this is no longer true.

Peskin's early reputation was built in that climate. As president of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, he joined Asian American civil rights and housing groups to defend tenants at 1345 Grant Ave. against a widely covered Ellis Act eviction. His first supervisor campaign billed him as "the renter's choice." In his first two terms he cosponsored more than a dozen tenant laws, most as chief author, including a requirement that tenants be paid when evicted under the Ellis Act. His mayoral rivals have far thinner records on the subject.

The other side of that record has aged less well. In 1999, opposing developers was widely viewed as resisting gentrification. Peskin cosponsored 2002's Proposition D, which moved some Planning Commission appointments from the mayor to the Board of Supervisors, a change that critics say slowed housing approvals. Then-Mayor Willie Brown called voters "ass-backward" for backing it. Studies have since found San Francisco can take as long as 34 months to approve housing that other cities allow automatically.

As rents climbed, the debate turned. San Francisco YIMBY, aided by developer money, pushed the argument that building more housing would lower prices. Voters elected state Sen. Scott Wiener and Mayor London Breed on pro-production platforms. Jane Natoli, the group's organizing director, said Peskin never adapted his message, noting that the forces that shaped him "make it harder to cast yourself in a different light."

Meanwhile, evictions are down roughly two-thirds from the dot-com peaks, and the rental market has largely cooled since the pandemic. Jane Kim, a former supervisor and Peskin ally who now directs the California Working Families Party, wondered whether progressives had won so much on tenant protections that voters have less appetite for more. "I've been asking myself that question the last two years," she said.

A recent hearing illustrated the shift. Peskin advanced legislation that could extend rent control from buildings constructed through 1979 to those built through 1994, potentially covering 16,000 more tenants if California voters approve rent control reform. Tenant groups sent supportive emails, but only about ten people attended and no tenant spoke in support. The Board of Supervisors approved it 11-0 after an amendment narrowed its scope.

Peskin acknowledges the change. "When people see their neighbors... getting literally put out on the curb, it's very immediate and it's very visceral," he told The Standard, adding there is less of that now. He argued that billionaires are spending millions to tell voters they are unsafe, not to warn them of eviction. His messaging has not shifted: a recent campaign mailer again carried the slogan "RENTER'S CHOICE," the same one he used 24 years ago.