by Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt
Plus: Progressives rally around Gordon Mar — and a powerful housing measure needs help
We just finished one election cycle, but the next one is already on us – and it’s shaping up as a key test of the newly elected mayor and her allies.
London Breed will take the oath of office July 11, and fairly shortly thereafter, will appoint her replacement for D5 supe. That person will not have to run until 2019, giving them a chance to build a record – but tenant advocate Dean Preston, who came close to unseating Breed in 2016, has already announced he is running for the office.
He’s running as a democratic socialist and will have significant momentum from the passage of Prop. F, which guarantees every tenantwho faces eviction the right to a lawyer. Preston was the initiative sponsor… (more)
Now that D4 is in play, the progressives seem to have agreed to rally around Gordon Mar. Li Miao Lovett, a City College union activist, also filed to run, but this week decided that the progressive movement would be better off with one candidate. So she dropped out and endorsed and will fully support Mar.
Lovett had the support of the Bernicrats and Democratic Socialists of America, two groups of (mostly) young and (very) well organized activists who played a huge rule in the June passage of the tenant right-to-counsel law and the defeat of the Police Officers Association Taser measure…(more)