When London Breed was first elected mayor in 2018, San Francisco was a tech-fueled powerhouse with a bustling downtown and a thriving shopping district.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which emptied office towers, left retail shops vacant and opened a chasm in city coffers. The fentanyl epidemic killed thousands of people, sometimes in full public view. A property crime surge shattered car windows and many residents’ sense of safety.
Six years later, voters have soured on Ms. Breed as she runs for re-election in November. She is facing four competitive opponents who have blamed her for the city’s woes and have spent millions of dollars on ads criticizing her leadership.
Ms. Breed, 50, has insisted that the city is in better shape than her detractors claim and that she has improved San Francisco’s trajectory, pointing to fewer car break-ins, homeless tents and drug overdoses in the past year. She has promoted her efforts to create joyful street parties that have enlivened downtown.
But she is also leaning into her identity and her life story to set herself apart. She says that her own experience of suffering from poverty, family drug addiction, neighborhood crime and a relative’s mental illness make her uniquely positioned to lead San Francisco.
Ms. Breed is a Black woman whose opponents are white men, a distinction she considers important in a city where Black residents have much higher rates of poverty and health problems than other residents and lean more heavily on government programs. She is a renter running against homeowners. Her rivals include an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, a venture capitalist and a Telegraph Hill landlord.
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