Mayor Breed pushes back at fierce attacks during Chronicle-KQED S.F. mayoral debate
Mayor Breed pushes back at fierce attacks during Chronicle-KQED S.F. mayoral debate
Blog Article
San Francisco Mayor London Breed fought back against stinging attacks from her four leading challengers Thursday during a heated debate as the race to lead the city enters its final and most intense period.
Breed faced off against challengers Mark Farrell, Daniel Lurie, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí in the televised debate hosted by the Chronicle and KQED. Breed sought to defend her record against harsh attacks from the rest of the field while issuing her own critiques at Farrell, a former interim mayor and supervisor, and Lurie, an antipoverty nonprofit founder.
Thursday’s event — held at KQED’s headquarters in the Mission District — marked the fifth and possibly final time the five major candidates debated each other, and it comes as the race has grown considerably more dramatic in recent weeks.
In particular, Breed and Farrell, who have been voters’ first choices in recent polls from media outlets, have been the subjects of a series of investigative reports in the Chronicle and San Francisco Standard.
Breed has faced reports of mismanagement and other problems at her signature Dream Keeper Initiative, a $44 million program she launched several years ago to help the city’s Black community. Her department head overseeing the program resigned under pressure last week, and Breed said this week that she was “shocked” and “appalled” by the revelations about how the landmark initiative was being run. Peskin, the Board of Supervisors president, plans to hold a public hearing about Dream Keeper in the coming weeks.
The Chronicle reported last week that Farrell, a former interim mayor and supervisor, steered money to a favored nonprofit from companies looking to influence him at City Hall. And on Thursday, Breed accused Farrell of inappropriately asking her office to fast-track building permits for his home remodel — a charge he denied.
Amid the flurry of reports, the candidates have sought to emphasize their policy plans to address the biggest challenges facing San Francisco, including its open-air drug markets, homelessness, downtown’s struggling economy and high housing costs. Those issues were all front and center in the debate — as was the reporting on candidates’ backgrounds.
Here are some highlights from the debate, which was moderated by the Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli and KQED’s Marisa Lagos and Scott Shafer.
Breed and Farrell react to investigations — and attack each other
The moderators asked both Breed and Farrell about the recent reports regarding their records in office, and they were quick to defend themselves before turning their attention toward each other.
Breed stressed that she had promptly asked for the resignation of Sheryl Davis, the department head who oversaw Dream Keeper. She stressed that the city’s top auditor is now carefully reviewing and controlling the finances of the department running the program. But she said the program had done a lot of good work to help Black residents buy homes and open businesses.
Farrell, meanwhile, said everything he’d done in his campaign had been approved by his lawyers. That prompted an interjection from moderator Lagos, who said “that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily legal though,” eliciting a laugh from the studio audience. Farrell said he believed it was “important to follow the rules” and his lawyers’ advice and he would “always do that.”
Then he turned to Breed.
“There is no mayor that has overseen a steeper decline in our city’s history than London Breed,” Farrell said. He also went after her for skipping recent debates.
“Unlike some of my opponents on this stage, I actually have a job,” Breed retorted, emphasizing that reported crime in the city is lower than it’s been in a decade. She said crime was higher when Farrell was mayor and echoed a line Vice President Kamala Harris has used in her presidential campaign.
“He is trying to take us backwards, and we are not going back,” Breed said.
Farrell wasn’t buying it.
“If you believe those stats, I got a bridge to sell you,” he fired back, accusing Breed of having a “track record of failure.” PDF to TSV