San Francisco Mayor London Breed fights for reelection in competitive, ranked-choice race
San Franciscans are voting for mayor in an election crowded with a dozen candidates vying to lead the city.
Six years ago, incumbent London Breed became the first Black woman to serve as mayor of San Francisco in a special election to fill the position after the death of Mayor Ed Lee in late 2017.
She has faced a number of major challenges during her first term in office, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the city's ongoing issues with drug abuse and homelessness, rising housing costs and a spike in retail crime that some chains cited as the reason behind closing stores in San Francisco.
While Breed has touted progress in reducing the number of homeless encampments and pushed programs to fill vacant business spaces downtown, the mayor's struggles have led to 11 other candidates entering the race to challenge her for the job.
Polls show that Breed's two closest competitors for the office are former interim mayor Mark Farrell and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie, a city hall outsider who founded the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point. Also in the running are two members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors: board president Aaron Peskin, the most left-leaning of the five main mayoral candidates with his longtime championing of tenant rights and fighting corruption at city hall, and one-time labor organizer Ahsha Safaí.
Other candidates running for the office include Henry Flynn, Keith Freedman, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Nelson Mei, Paul Ybarra Robertson, Jon Ernest Soderstrom and Ellen Lee Zhou.
One major variable in the San Francisco mayor's race is the city's ranked-choice voting system. In place since 2002, it aims to avoid run-off elections in a city known for its contentious political landscape. In a ranked-choice system, voters rank their preferred candidates — up to 10 candidates — and when ballots are counted, the lowest-ranked candidate is dropped off the ballot. The ballots are then re-tallied until one candidate reaches a majority which experts anticipate won't be for at least two weeks after election day.
When Breed won the mayoral race in 2018, it took eight rounds for her to secure a majority of first-choice votes. She took the lead in the first round, receiving 37% of first-pick votes, according to the Department of Elections.
