The pressure is on Mayor London Breed as she contemplates her final act in office.
For more than a week, community organizers, political insiders, and allies of Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie have been on tenterhooks, waiting to learn Breed’s pick to replace newly elected Assemblymember Catherine Stefani as District 2 supervisor — a coveted seat that launched the career of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
No answers have come.
Per insider scuttlebutt, it’s been a difficult — perhaps agonizing — decision.
The appointment of a supervisor to represent District 2, which includes the Marina District, Pacific Heights, and Cow Hollow, will reverberate far beyond those neighborhoods. The appointee may cast a crucial vote for Board of Supervisors president in January, determining which lawmakers successfully navigate San Francisco’s choppy budget waters and which founder.
And there is the matter of Breed’s legacy.
For all of her accomplishments — including weathering the pandemic — this final political move could be the most revealing of her character, observers say. Since she will soon be out of office, the decision comes nearly free of political strings. The choice is wholly her own.
Names rumored to be under consideration have circulated for months. They include Breed’s manager of state and federal affairs, Eileen Mariano, granddaughter of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein; former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier; former aide Conor Johnston; campaign manager Eric Kingsbury; Stephen Sherrill, director of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation; and Recreation and Parks Commission President Kat Anderson.
Those close to Breed say she has drifted between picks. But over the last week and a half her focus has narrowed to Sherrill and Johnston, some say.
Sherrill has longstanding ties to ex-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was one of Breed’s biggest campaign boosters. Johnston was Breed’s chief of staff from her time as District 5 supervisor. He’s an infamous political trickster, known as much for his biting wit as for incendiary posts on his now-shuttered X account.
Even though no one is talking publicly, the jockeying is out there for anyone to see. Sherrill and Mariano have been spotted glad-handing their way through at least two District 2 community events. Sherrill is said to be attending a contentious community meeting on parking meters Thursday — one likely to be stacked with neighborhood groups he’d need to court as supervisor.
Breed’s interview process has been thorough: She dispatched billionaire Ripple CEO Chris Larsen to chat with at least two of the candidates, perhaps a strange task for a private-sector bigwig with no government experience. And we know she asked at least some of the candidates whom they would vote for as Board of Supervisors president, and if they would be champions for urbanist issues, like market-rate housing production and transportation. The last two are particularly important to her, insiders told The Standard.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is said to have placed her thumb on the scales, calling Breed about the District 2 appointment. While observers aren’t certain whom Pelosi was stumping for, it would make sense for it to be Mariano, given the congresswoman’s long alliance with Feinstein.
Breed’s top two choices have placed her in a bind.
On one hand, Breed views Johnston as the candidate with the most City Hall know-how. Johnston handled hundreds, if not thousands, of calls and emails from irate residents while serving in Breed’s Board of Supervisors office. He wrote citywide legislation for years and knows City Hall intimately. And the Board of Supervisors has new, green members, making an experienced appointee that much more valuable.
But should Breed select Johnston, it would be seen as lobbing a grenade into the mayor’s office on her way out the door. Her opponents have cast the appointment of Johnston as a way to needle Lurie, saddling him with a political opponent known more for haranguing Breed’s opponents while wearing a hippo costume than for legislative know-how.
Sherrill has baggage of his own. A New York City native and Yale University graduate, he’s the son of a Republican power donor and private-equity boss who made a mint on gunmaker Remington Arms. After working as a White House intern during the George W. Bush administration, Sherrill embraced more liberal politics amid Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run. His parents even held a fundraiser for Breed’s reelection bid in the spring. However, some locals are unimpressed with Sherrill’s résumé. Patricia Vaughey, president of the Marina-Cow Hollow Neighbors & Merchants Association, told The Standard Sherrill is a nonentity.
“I’ve been to around 25 meetings in the last year. I haven’t seen this man at one,” Vaughey said.
After years of stating “no party preference,” Sherrill registered as a Democrat in 2023, according to the Department of Elections.
And there is the matter of Sherrill’s former boss, Bloomberg, for whom he served as a senior policy advisor. (Bloomberg’s charity funds the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Innovation, which Sherrill leads.) The billionaire ex-mayor donated a hefty $1.4 million to campaign committees backing Breed.
Should she pick Sherrill, Breed could be accused of awarding a political appointment as a favor to Bloomberg.
If there’s any evidence of her indecision, it’s in the ever-shifting timeline of the pick.
People around the mayor believed an announcement was coming Dec. 3. More than a week later, the sound of crickets has reached near-deafening levels.