Just as a presidential election hinges on several swing states, a debate to earn the endorsement of the San Francisco firefighters’ union hinges on several key issues. Any candidate who could not offer an unequivocal “yes” to the following is likely cooked with regards to winning this coveted endorsement:
Let the record show that Mayor London Breed, the firefighters’ sole endorsee in 2018, did not offer an unequivocal “yes” to either of these queries, and drew jeers for her response to the second.
This morning’s debate was held at the jarring hour of 9:30 a.m., so as to take advantage of firefighters’ 8 a.m. shift change. The union hall on Newhall Street was densely populated with an overwhelmingly male crowd, with a median height that may have easily surpassed six feet. “How’s Novato?” one oversized man said to another prior to the event. “I’m settling in,” responded the other oversized man.
The debate, moderated by former Chronicle columnist Phil Matier, in many ways resembled any candidate forum. Breed, wearing a tangerine sweater and skirt, was flanked to her left by two men with ties — Board President Aaron Peskin and Daniel Lurie — and to her right by two men without ties — Supervisor Ahsha Safaí and Mark Farrell. Matier asked questions about all the things one asks questions about: Homelessness, drug addiction, crime, resurrecting downtown, housing and more.
But everybody knew that weighing in on the pension measure and vaccine mandate would be unavoidable when the microphone was turned over to the unionized firefighters in the audience.
Queried about the pension measure by Local No. 798 secretary Adam Wood, Peskin told the union that its arguments to lower the pension age — retroactively, in a move affecting more than 1,500 firefighters — “were profoundly convincing and compelling. As a result, I am a co-sponsor of the charter amendment.” He added that “it is right and it is economically right because I believe it will save San Francisco money over time.” This, in fact, was the firefighters’ argument for the measure, which has been less convincing and compelling to economists or actuaries.
“I have childhood friends in the fire department,” said Farrell, who would return to this notion, “and you have my unequivocal support.”
“I have been the lead co-sponsor of this measure,” said Safaí. “I support it 100 percent.”
“I’m all in,” said Lurie. “I’m 100 percent supportive.”
Breed, the strong mayor in San Francisco’s strong mayor system and the person who bears great responsibility for this city’s fiscal solvency, didn’t offer such an answer. Rather, she said that “I am very much interested in supporting this ballot initiative but it has changed and is still going through the Board of Supervisors process. I will wait on the final version to make my decision on this ballot measure.”
This answer satisfied no one and confused many: The amendments made to the firefighters’ pension measure last Tuesday rendered it less generous to the workers, not more. And the measure is in its final version.
Not remarked upon during today’s forum was that Peskin and Farrell’s answers were both curious as well. Peskin, who prides himself on being a fiscal hawk, is now backing a big pension boost for a workforce that is having no problems recruiting or retaining workers. Farrell’s political patron, Michael Moritz, worked with Jeff Adachi to take a scythe to public pensions. It would be interesting to know how he feels about his preferred candidate aggressively pushing to undo the reforms he felt were already inadequate.
The question about pensions was followed by a firefighter named Jovan Blake quoting a biblical passage and then asking if the candidates would “immediately reinstate” the two dozen firefighters who refused to be vaccinated. His language was forceful; he chided the candidates for having “done nothing about this issue and yet you come here asking for our endorsement.” He continued: “Please do not waste our time saying you’ll look into it. Let us know you’ll do it or say you will not do it so we know where you stand very clearly.”
The firefighters who spurned the vaccine mandate have deployed no small amount of misinformation or conspiracy theory-mongering. Mission Local has learned that, during hearings, at least one called Jesus as a witness — leading an observer to wonder if George Burns would walk through the door as he did during the trial scene in “Oh God!”
But the vaccine mandate has lapsed. And four of the mayoral candidates were amenable — even eager — to hire back these workers.
“If we’re doing it in one department, we should be doing it across the city,” said Safaí. “I would 100 percent reinstate them right away,” added Farrell. “This comes up at every firehouse … their brothers and sisters can’t get rehired.”
Peskin noted that the pandemic was “a crazy time, and I want to thank and acknowledge all the first responders who could not shelter in place and had to go to work every day.”
“I believe in second chances,” he continued. “I am the living product of second chances and I believe the city and county should offer all those folks from not just fire but all the other departments who were separated during the crazy time their old jobs back.”
Breed, again the strong mayor in San Francisco’s strong mayor system, did not offer such an answer. She said she’d talked about this with Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson and “I’m not going to tell the chief how to do her job and she is not going to tell me how to do my job. … It is ultimately her decision.”
This answer led to a loud and unhappy response from the brethren; “You hire her!” moaned one audience member. This is a germane point: Breed has, repeatedly, said that San Francisco’s strong mayor system hasn’t given her enough strength, and has prevented her from having adequate power to unilaterally hire and fire department heads. Her claim this morning that it was not her business to assert her prerogative in this matter did not find a sympathetic audience.
Those two questions alone could well have decided this debate. But this was a 90-minute affair and much more was said. Two other issues of keen importance to the firefighters were homeless encampments and public drug-use. This became a de-facto competition between Farrell and Breed on who would crack down harder.
Farrell bemoaned that, three weeks after the Supreme Court struck down a ruling that mandated cities to offer shelter or housing to the homeless before rousting them or applying criminal penalties, the city still hadn’t cracked the whip.
“The Grants Pass decision was three weeks ago and tent encampments are growing,” he said. “You have to be aggressive.” He pledged that he’d take a strong hand against street dwellers so “every day you can deal with fighting fires and not dealing with tent encampments.”
Breed, repeatedly, deflated Farrell’s claims that he cleared all the city’s major encampments as caretaker mayor in 2018 by noting that at least seven were left for her to deal with. She also noted, more than once, that the tent count was 58 percent higher during his tenure as mayor than it is at present under her.
She said that a “very aggressive” policy of clearing tents would be implemented next month after the City Attorney’s office has finalized training materials for city employees. She painted Farrell as reckless, noting that when the city fails to adhere to rules regarding bagging-and-tagging homeless people’s possessions — rules the Supreme Court has not undone — it has been forced to pay out $10,000 or $20,000 a pop.
At one point, Farrell chided Breed by noting that “after six years, you don’t have a plan. You have a track record.” Breed, who was a fire commissioner early in her political career, reminded the audience of the money and equipment she’d procured for them. But other elements of that record appeared to loom larger: The vaccine mandate, the forthcoming pension measure and the most recent contract deal in which police and firefighters no longer have parity — a matter of extreme annoyance to the latter.
Farrell was far less burdened with either the real or imagined constraints of actual governance. At one point he suggested appropriating some if not all of the $1 billion directed toward nonprofits and funneling the money to first-responders — ”that’s how I will run the ship when I’m in City Hall.”
This earned hearty applause but seemed untethered from the realities of how the city actually works; San Francisco’s budget is not Uncle Scrooge’s money bin and you can’t just hoist up piles of cash from one corner and plop them down in the other.
Farrell noted that no fewer than five members of his graduating class (St. Ignatius, ’92) are San Francisco firefighters — not to mention younger alums. And they’d know who he was — he was the big man on campus baseball star. Farrell, a tall, boisterous, outgoing ex-jock, seemed at home in a room full of them. It was his crowd.
Peskin took a different tack. He emphasized repeatedly that he was “a details guy” and said he was proud of all the work he’d done with firefighters — on carcinogens in equipment, pensions, robotaxis, etc. He made a point of saying he was not proud of berating firefighters over their tactics in battling a St. Patrick’s Day blaze in 2018, for which “I have taken accountability and responsibility and I am working to make myself, with many of your help, a better person every day.”
Safaí portrayed himself as a union stalwart and champion of the middle class. And Lurie played up his outsider status — and while that may appeal to voters, it is less clear if it’s attractive to unionized workers who have more tangible goals and may desire an insider with whom to deal with.
After the debate, non-firefighters were ushered outside so the members could vote. Voting will continue for several days and the results will be revealed at the Aug. 8 union meeting. At that point, the union will decide whether to offer a ranked-choice endorsement or sole-endorse — as it did with Breed in 2018.
It feels unlikely the mayor will win this endorsement again. When asked who her second-pace vote would go to, she did not give an answer — but said “It won’t be Mark Farrell.”
He replied “I take that as a badge of honor.” And was cheered.