In a collection of relatively sleepy towns including the Outer Mission, Ingleside and Excelsior neighborhoods, the race for next year's supervisor job is already taking shape, with two distinctly different candidates already announced and the possibility of other hopefuls waiting in the wings .
With 11th District incumbent Ahsha Safaí running for mayor, more attention than ever could be focused on the district that some say is losing out on city resources. The two declared candidates, Ernest “EJ” Jones and Roger Marenco, have different moods, with the former leaning more towards a new establishment approach and the latter – who rails against “drug addicts” and “looting” – maintaining a more insurgent populist approach.
The district's boundaries today roughly correspond to those chosen in 1977 by arch-conservative Supervisor Dan White, a former police officer and firefighter who ran as a cynic “defender of the home, family and religious life against homosexuals, marijuana smokers, etc.” “, says the New York Times. A year later, White assassinated Castro supervisor Harvey Milk along with then-Mayor George Moscone.
This event still sometimes looms over District 11, which retains the atmosphere of old, working-class San Francisco alongside the contributions of newer immigrant communities.
While District 11 has elected reliably progressive supervisors in recent years, the election of Ahsha Safaí in 2016 saw it move more toward the center, albeit with labor support.
Here's a look at the two candidates running – with the caveat that it's early days.
Ernest “EJ” Jones is something of a “native San Franciscan” – he was born at St. Luke’s Hospital and grew up in the Lakeview/Ingleside neighborhoods. He attended St. Ignatius Preparatory School and earned his master's degree in public administration from the University of San Francisco.
“I’ve lived in this district my whole life,” Jones told The Standard. “I’m invested.” I’m rooted here. I don't plan on going.
With the support of incumbent Safaí, Jones wants to continue a pragmatic, “unionist” approach to government with an emphasis on consensus.
He began his career as an assistant to the director of equity in the San Francisco Unified School District and then moved to the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, where he supervised tenants of the Alemany Apartments public housing complex as they remodeled units through a federal program.
“I understand how important it is to have 100% affordable housing. But I also recognize that there is a need for other types of housing and I support worthwhile projects,” Jones said, adding that he is “very aware” of the city's goal of creating over 80,000 new homes in eight years. be.
Jones told The Standard that business challenges, public safety and affordability are all key issues in District 11, as are other districts.
But what sets the district apart from the rest of the city is the fact that it is often at the bottom of the list when it comes to investments, Jones said. For example, one of the two libraries in the district is the smallest in the city.
“There is currently a plan for one of the largest neighborhood libraries for Orizaba Avenue at Brotherhood Way,” Jones said. “It's just been slow going.” It's really important to have this library. It would show that there is investment in our neighborhood.”
The candidate most recently worked as a legal advisor for Safaí. “He spent two years in my office learning what it takes to be a boss,” Safaí told The Standard. “He’s ready for the job [on] Day one and have my complete trust.”
Roger Marenco has been involved in city politics since he was 19, and his family was threatened with eviction from their Mission District apartment. He was involved with People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Justice (PODER), a Latin American advocacy group, and the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, which organized against gentrification in the Mission during the first dot-com gold rush.
“How did I start organizing myself? I don’t know,” Marenco told The Standard. “I just started talking to people and telling them what's going on, that we need to fight, that we need to organize and that we shouldn't give in to let this happen to us in our neighborhood.”
He then interned for two years with progressive Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who was known for his advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights and economic justice.
Now Marenco works as a muni operator for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, a job in which he has witnessed San Francisco's worst problems of street crime, homelessness and drug abuse. His views on what to do about these problems may raise eyebrows among progressives.
“My son had a pair of new Cocomelon shoes on. We walk out the front door and he steps on a pile of shit. Brand new shoes. Didn't even wear them for 30 minutes. And I said, “You know what? This is bullshit, bullshit in the truest sense of the word,” Marenco told the Standard about an incident that inspired him to run. “I was just cleaning up yesterday and now my boy comes out and the first step he takes on the sidewalk is a pile of shit. And I said, “You know what? I'm done with this.'”
Marenco was the controversial president of the Muni operators union for five years. He says he had to fight tooth and nail against a narrow-minded old guard that repeatedly worked to block his leadership, even though he was elected in a 3-1 vote and secured new contract deals for union members.
Marenco was barred from re-election by the union's board last year after he was accused of using “racially derogatory language” toward board members – an accusation he denies.
“Of the five times I have been suspended (by the union board), I have had all of my suspensions overturned when I appealed, so much so that the International Union in Washington, D.C. had to intervene,” and each for one throw him out of office for the whole year,” he said.
Marenco's experience fighting evictions in the dot-com era mission clearly shaped his perspective on San Francisco's housing problems.
“We need housing for a person who doesn't make $200,000 a year, who makes the salary of a teacher, a bus driver, or a janitor, or the people who clean or cook the hotels; These are the people we need to build housing for,” Marenco told The Standard. “These are the people who have families, not a single 23-year-old working for Facebook.”
Marenco also wants the city to do more for caregivers and other “other workers” who don’t receive the same benefits as more visible categories.
But some of Marenco's other views will set him apart from most progressives, particularly on the highly visible issues of crime, drug abuse and street conditions.
“I’m tired of seeing the homelessness, the drug addicts, the looting, the thefts and the assaults that happen every day,” Marenco said. “It has migrated toward District 11, and if we don’t stop it, it will continue.”
“I think it should be illegal for someone to dump in front of your house. But certain politicians in City Hall don’t see it that way,” he added. “I’m not a person who deprives the police of money because when I need help, the first thing I do is dial 911.”
Neither candidate has reported fundraising events, unlike the early fundraising race currently underway in nearby District 9. Both say they are still in outreach mode, talking to neighbors and neighborhood groups.
John Avalos – Safaí's progressive predecessor who challenged him in 2020 – told The Standard that he would not run this time.
Another oft-mentioned candidate, Chris Corgas, a deputy director of the city's economic development agency who recently worked with Safaí to create a Community Benefit District in Excelsior, told The Standard he was “flattered by the interest, but I “Keep my options open.”
Unless major players step in later, voters already have two clear options for District 11's future.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly named the neighborhoods where Ernest Jones grew up.
