Endorsement: Stephen Sherrill has the big picture vision the city needs in S.F.’s District 2 |
The editorial board supports Supervisor Stephen Sherrill for reelection because he understands that it’s his job to serve the best interests not just of his district but the city at large.
Voters in San Francisco’s District 2 have two formidable supervisor candidates to choose from in the June primary.
Incumbent Stephen Sherrill and his challenger, Lori Brooke, are eloquent, hard-working and deeply invested in the issues facing the city. Both are committed to the basics of prioritizing public safety, clean streets and other quality of life issues for the district. Brooke is a longtime neighborhood advocate and president of the Cow Hollow Association. Sherrill was appointed supervisor by former Mayor London Breed in 2024, and he previously served as policy adviser to then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Get Digital Access and Stay Informed With Trusted Local News.
Get Digital Access and Stay Informed With Trusted Local News.
Brooke and Sherrill share a focus on communicating clearly with constituents and working to establish trust by demanding accountability and transparency from government.
Article continues below this ad
A vote for Sherrill represents an embrace of planning wisely and thoughtfully for the city’s future, while a vote for Brooke is a vote for keeping things as they are — or rather, were.
The Chronicle Editorial Board has begun rolling out its endorsements for California’s June primary election. In the weeks to come, we will publish our assessments of all the state races, including the governor’s race, plus local races and ballot measures. To read more about how the Editorial Board makes its election endorsements, go here.Plus: Look out for the Chronicle’s Voter Guide to publish in early May, as ballots get mailed out across the Bay Area.
Take charter reform. Good governance is an issue that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration has invested considerable attention and political capital in. With good reason — much of the waste and inefficiency that San Francisco residents complain about in city government comes from its convoluted structure.
See more S.F. Chronicle on Google
In our endorsement interview, Sherrill, who supports and has worked diligently with the Lurie administration on reforms, rightly pointed to the challenges stemming from the city’s procurement procedures and the way they impede the government from working effectively and efficiently.
Article continues below this ad
Procurement is how a government purchases goods and services — everything from acquiring new software to contracting with nonprofits. San Francisco has particularly complex and hard-to-navigate procurement requirements that result in longer timelines and greater costs while stifling innovation.
“When it costs $25,000 to procure a contract, even if that contract is for $25,000, we have a problem,” Sherrill told the board.
Brooke, meanwhile, wasn’t particularly conversant on charter reform, nor did she have ideas for alternatives to what the mayor has proposed. She disagreed with much of Lurie’s efforts, including the idea of raising the threshold for getting measures on the ballot.
“Let us deal with a cluttered ballot,” she told the editorial board, “and let the voters decide.”
There’s a similar gulf between the two candidates on housing. Neither approves of the proposal to build a residential tower at the site of the Marina Safeway. But they differ in rationale.
Sherrill believes that the developers weren’t acting in good faith on the project, explaining that “we spent a year building trust with residents across the entire city, where we tried to say, ‘Hey, over the next 50 years, you might not like it, but this is what you can expect.’ And then right before (Lurie’s ‘family zoning’ plan) became law, something totally different happened.”
Brooke said that her district is simply not the place for large housing projects.
“There are parts of San Francisco that are begging for economic vitality,” she told the board, pointing specifically to Bayview, where “people want the housing, want the businesses, and nothing happens.” While the Bayview certainly could benefit from economic development, the notion of pushing all new housing into a historically disadvantaged neighborhood isn’t just unethical, it is illegal under state fair housing laws.
Brooke worked to create a coalition to oppose upzoning in the city, believing that it won’t deliver the affordability it seeks to. As supervisor, Brooke said she would fight against family zoning and instead pursue what she terms “low-hanging fruit” — filling existing housing vacancies and retrofitting existing units. Her idea to better protect small landlords — the idea being they would rent out those vacant units if so — is worth exploring. But her stance against family zoning would violate state housing laws, resulting in the loss of state transportation and affordable housing funds — as well as enacting what’s known as the “builder’s remedy,” which, ironically, would strip San Francisco of any meaningful authority to stop more developments like the Marina Safeway tower from going up in her district. Sherrill has a more balanced and thoughtful approach to growth. He not only supports but is highly enthusiastic about family zoning, viewing it as an opportunity for shared growth and vibrancy for the city.
“If we stop at zoning, we will have failed because the cost of construction is way too high,” he told the board. “San Francisco has not made the courageous big swings to deal with the existential challenges that we face.”
Sherrill is open to bolder pursuits ranging from modernizing the city’s building code to transfer-tax reform. Sherrill and Brooke are committed to hearing and addressing the concerns of their district and their constituents. But the job of a supervisor is not limited to the neighborhood they are elected to serve. The Board of Supervisors must work collaboratively to make the city run. It is Sherrill who understands the job is to listen to his constituents while also making determinations that serve the best interests not just of the district but the city at large. “This job is hard; it takes hard work,” he told us. “It’s harder to be nuanced, harder to be thoughtful, but San Franciscans deserve it. We have a bright future ahead of us, but it won’t just happen.” We agree.
Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.
Read more about our transparency and ethics policies
San Francisco needs leadership that can embrace change not for its own sake but with a clear-eyed vision of how the city can grow and evolve. Of the two candidates, only Sherrill possesses that vision.
We believe he will excel at consensus-building work that focuses on the big picture and the more nuanced details that his district prioritizes.
Reach the Chronicle editorial board with a letter to the editor: www.sfchronicle.com/submit-your-opinion.