In an interview with Bloomberg News earlier this week, San Francisco Mayor London Breed commented on the lack of remote workers returning to offices across the city, saying that the low office vacancy rates are prompting her to attempt to attract new types of businesses to the downtown area .

“Life as we knew it before the pandemic is not going to go back,” Breed told Bloomberg News. “This whole work-from-home thing is here to stay.”

The outlet noted that attitude represents a shift for breed, who tried a myriad of tactics to bring workers back. The report said office vacancies in San Francisco struck a record high of 25.5% in the third quarter, and return-to-office rates have hovered around 40% of pre-pandemic levels, representing one of the lowest rates among large metros areas in the U.S

Breed told Bloomberg News that the number of city employees who have returned to work is smaller than expected.

“We thought people would miss working around other people, but they do not,” she said.

The remote work policies of tech companies are part of the problem, Breed said. She pointed to Salesforce, the large software company headed in part by Marc Benioff, as an example. Salesforce is the city’s largest private employer, and its offices occupy San Francisco’s tallest office tower.

“[Marc is] very supportive of the city, continues to contribute that support to schools and to other great causes, but the building is empty, and that’s a real problem,” Breed said. “Ultimately I can’t force or mandate, right? These companies are making the decisions that they believe that are in their best interests.”

Breed’s point is that a lack of workers in the office hurts the city’s economy. Empty buildings depress property values, which affects the amount the city makes in property tax revenue. Workers are also using public transportation at lower rates, and are spending less on goods at local businesses since they spend more time inside their homes.

Without returning employees to in-person work at higher rates, Breed said she’ll be attempting to coax businesses in growing industries, such as biotechnology and green technology, to fill empty office space.

You can read the entire Bloomberg News article here.

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Officials in California ordered evacuations in a high-risk coastal area where mudslides killed 23 people in 2018 as a huge storm barreled into the state Wednesday, bringing high winds and rain that threatened widespread flooding and knocked out power to more than 100,000 people.

The storm was expected to dump up to 6 inches (152.4 millimeters) of rain in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area where most of the region would remain under flood warnings into late Thursday night. In Southern California, the storm was expected to peak in intensity overnight into early Thursday morning with Santa Barbara and Ventura counties likely to see the most rain, forecasters said.

“We anticipate that this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years,” said Nancy Ward, the new director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at a news conference that the city was “preparing for a war.” Crews cleared clogged storm drains, tried to move homeless people into shelters and passed out emergency supplies and ponchos to those who refused to go.

The city distributed so many sandbags to residents that supplies temporarily ran out.

Powerful winds gusting to 85 mph (136 kmh) or more forced the cancellation of more than 70 flights at San Francisco International Airport and downed trees and power lines. Firefighters rescued a family after a tree fell onto their car. The fire department reported “large pieces of glass” fell off the Fox Plaza tower near the Civic Center, although no injuries were reported. It was “highly possible” the damage to the skyscraper was wind-related, the department tweeted.

The new storm left more than 100,000 customers in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast without power.

The storm is one of three so-called atmospheric river storms in the last week to reach the drought-stricken state. California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to allow for a quick response and to aid in cleanup from another powerful storm that hit just days earlier.

In Southern California, evacuations were ordered for those living in areas burned by three recent wildfires in Santa Barbara County, where heavy rain forecast for overnight could cause widespread flooding and unleash debris flows.

County officials did not have a firm number for how many people were under evacuation orders, but Susan Klein-Rothschild, a spokesperson in the county’s emergency operations center, said sheriff’s deputies went door-to-door and contacted at least 480 people.

Among the towns ordered to evacuate was Montecito, where five years ago huge boulders, mud and debris swept down mountains through the town to the shoreline, killing 23 people and destroying more than 100 homes. The town is home to many celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan.

“What we’re talking about here is a lot of water coming off the top of the hills, coming down into the creeks and streams and as it comes down, it gains momentum and that’s what the initial danger is,” Montecito Fire Department Chief Kevin Taylor said.

Elsewhere, a 45-mile (72-kilometer) stretch of the coastal Highway 1 running through Big Sur was closed Wednesday evening in anticipation of flooding and rock falls. Further north, a 25-mile (40-kilometer) stretch of Highway 101 was closed due to several downed trees.

Drivers were urged to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary, especially with heavy snow expected in the mountains.

The storm came days after a New Year’s Eve downpour led to the evacuations of people in rural Northern California communities and the rescue of several motorists from flooded roads. A few levees south of Sacramento were damaged.

On Wednesday, authorities in south Sacramento County found a body in a submerged car — one of at least four victims of flooding from that storm.

Evacuation orders were in place at Santa Cruz County’s Paradise Park along the swiftly moving San Lorenzo River, as well as in areas along the Pajaro River. Residents who fled wildfires in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2020 were packing their bags as the towns of Boulder Creek, Ben Lomond and Felton were all warned they should be prepared to evacuate.

Sonoma County authorities issued an evacuation warning for a string of towns along the Russian River, which was expected to reach flood stage on Thursday.

The storms won’t be enough to officially end the state’s ongoing drought, now entering its fourth year. The US Drought Monitor showed that most of California is in severe to extreme drought. Since the state’s major reservoirs are low, they have plenty of room to fill with more water from the storm, officials said.

Trees already stressed from years of limited rain are more likely to fall now that the ground is suddenly saturated and winds are heavy. That could cause widespread power outages or create flood hazards, said Karla Nemeth, director of the state’s Department of Water Resources.

“We are in the middle of a flood emergency and also in the middle of a drought emergency,” she said during an emergency briefing.

Storms also took a toll elsewhere in the US In the Midwest, ice and heavy snow this week closed schools in Minnesota and western Wisconsin and caused a jet to go off an icy taxiway after landing in a snowstorm in Minneapolis. No passengers were injured, Delta airlines said.

In the South, a possible tornado damaged homes, downed trees and flipped a vehicle on its side in Montgomery, Alabama, early Wednesday.

In Illinois, staff from the National Weather Service’s Chicago office planned to survey storm damage on Wednesday following at least six tornadoes, the largest number of rare January tornadoes recorded in the state since 1989.

___

Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco, Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Rick Callahan in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter examines how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today’s executives. Subscribe here.

The post Enormous storm swamps California, with San Francisco mayor ‘making ready for a conflict’ appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Officials in California ordered evacuations in a high-risk coastal area where mudslides killed 23 people in 2018 as a huge storm barreled into the state Wednesday, bringing high winds and rain that threatened widespread flooding and knocked out power to more than 100,000 people.

The storm was expected to dump up to 6 inches (152.4 millimeters) of rain in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area where most of the region would remain under flood warnings into late Thursday night. In Southern California, the storm was expected to peak in intensity overnight into early Thursday morning with Santa Barbara and Ventura counties likely to see the most rain, forecasters said.

“We anticipate that this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years,” said Nancy Ward, the new director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at a news conference that the city was “preparing for a war.” Crews cleared clogged storm drains, tried to move homeless people into shelters and passed out emergency supplies and ponchos to those who refused to go.

The city distributed so many sandbags to residents that supplies temporarily ran out.

Powerful winds gusting to 85 mph (136 kmh) or more forced the cancellation of more than 70 flights at San Francisco International Airport and downed trees and power lines. Firefighters rescued a family after a tree fell onto their car. The fire department reported “large pieces of glass” fell off the Fox Plaza tower near the Civic Center, although no injuries were reported. It was “highly possible” the damage to the skyscraper was wind-related, the department tweeted.

The new storm left more than 100,000 customers in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast without power.

The storm is one of three so-called atmospheric river storms in the last week to reach the drought-stricken state. California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to allow for a quick response and to aid in cleanup from another powerful storm that hit just days earlier.

In Southern California, evacuations were ordered for those living in areas burned by three recent wildfires in Santa Barbara County, where heavy rain forecast for overnight could cause widespread flooding and unleash debris flows.

County officials did not have a firm number for how many people were under evacuation orders, but Susan Klein-Rothschild, a spokesperson in the county’s emergency operations center, said sheriff’s deputies went door-to-door and contacted at least 480 people.

Among the towns ordered to evacuate was Montecito, where five years ago huge boulders, mud and debris swept down mountains through the town to the shoreline, killing 23 people and destroying more than 100 homes. The town is home to many celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan.

“What we’re talking about here is a lot of water coming off the top of the hills, coming down into the creeks and streams and as it comes down, it gains momentum and that’s what the initial danger is,” Montecito Fire Department Chief Kevin Taylor said.

Elsewhere, a 45-mile (72-kilometer) stretch of the coastal Highway 1 running through Big Sur was closed Wednesday evening in anticipation of flooding and rock falls. Further north, a 25-mile (40-kilometer) stretch of Highway 101 was closed due to several downed trees.

Drivers were urged to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary, especially with heavy snow expected in the mountains.

The storm came days after a New Year’s Eve downpour led to the evacuations of people in rural Northern California communities and the rescue of several motorists from flooded roads. A few levees south of Sacramento were damaged.

On Wednesday, authorities in south Sacramento County found a body in a submerged car — one of at least four victims of flooding from that storm.

Evacuation orders were in place at Santa Cruz County’s Paradise Park along the swiftly moving San Lorenzo River, as well as in areas along the Pajaro River. Residents who fled wildfires in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2020 were packing their bags as the towns of Boulder Creek, Ben Lomond and Felton were all warned they should be prepared to evacuate.

Sonoma County authorities issued an evacuation warning for a string of towns along the Russian River, which was expected to reach flood stage on Thursday.

The storms won’t be enough to officially end the state’s ongoing drought, now entering its fourth year. The US Drought Monitor showed that most of California is in severe to extreme drought. Since the state’s major reservoirs are low, they have plenty of room to fill with more water from the storm, officials said.

Trees already stressed from years of limited rain are more likely to fall now that the ground is suddenly saturated and winds are heavy. That could cause widespread power outages or create flood hazards, said Karla Nemeth, director of the state’s Department of Water Resources.

“We are in the middle of a flood emergency and also in the middle of a drought emergency,” she said during an emergency briefing.

Storms also took a toll elsewhere in the US In the Midwest, ice and heavy snow this week closed schools in Minnesota and western Wisconsin and caused a jet to go off an icy taxiway after landing in a snowstorm in Minneapolis. No passengers were injured, Delta airlines said.

In the South, a possible tornado damaged homes, downed trees and flipped a vehicle on its side in Montgomery, Alabama, early Wednesday.

In Illinois, staff from the National Weather Service’s Chicago office planned to survey storm damage on Wednesday following at least six tornadoes, the largest number of rare January tornadoes recorded in the state since 1989.

___

Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco, Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Rick Callahan in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter examines how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today’s executives. Subscribe here.

The post Big storm swamps California, with San Francisco mayor ‘getting ready for a conflict’ appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Late yesterday, the Coalition on Homelessness and seven individual plaintiffs filed suit against the City and County of San Francisco and Mayor London Breed for their efforts to criminalize homelessness through an array of brutal policing practices that violate the constitutional rights of unhoused San Franciscans. The plaintiffs are also seeking a preliminary injunction to stop these practices on an emergency basis. Plaintiffs are represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, as well as the global law firm Latham & Watkins LLP.

For years, San Francisco has claimed that it is taking steps to address the City’s homelessness crisis. But in fact, the City is forcing unhoused people out of sight—destroying their survival belongings and citing and arresting them for sleeping in public when they have no shelter to go to. San Francisco has more laws penalizing homelessness than any other place in California, and possibly America. These regressive mass incarceration era policies only perpetuate San Francisco’s homelessness crisis and scapegoat unhoused people for the City’s egregious failure to support affordable housing for San Francisco residents.

San Francisco lacks—and has always lacked—adequate affordable housing and shelter for thousands of unhoused San Franciscans. San Francisco’s threats, citations, arrests, and removal of unhoused residents from public spaces therefore violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The City is also engaged in a practice of illegally seizing and destroying the personal belongings of unhoused residents in violation of the Fourth Amendment. These practices help San Francisco claim that it is solving the homelessness crisis—when it has actually just swept it under the rug.

San Francisco’s homelessness crisis is one of unaffordability. When longstanding residents can no longer afford to stay in their homes, they are forced out onto the street. San Francisco’s politicians have understood this for years, but they have failed to act. Instead, the City has consistently relied on tough-on-crime policies to respond to homelessness instead of addressing the root cause of the problem: the clear lack of permanent affordable housing.

This is immoral, cruel, costly, and ultimately counterproductive—not to mention unconstitutional. The City knows this because it constantly violates its own policies that purport to require a humane, services-first approach to the homelessness crisis. The reality is that unhoused San Franciscans wake up to find their survival belongings seized and destroyed as they face criminal penalties for sleeping outside even though the city has little to nothing to offer San Francisco’s unhoused residents in terms of shelter, housing, and services. This lawsuit combines massive amounts of public data with eyewitness accounts to expose the City’s unlawful conduct, which makes it almost impossible for the thousands of affected San Franciscans to exit homelessness.

Those experiencing homelessness in San Francisco are disproportionately people of color due to decades of discrimination in housing, education, healthcare and the criminal justice system. Today, for example, Black people comprise 6% of San Francisco’s general population but make up 37% of the City’s unhoused population. Black renters in San Francisco still face some of the worst housing discrimination anywhere in the country. That targeted exclusion has only exacerbated the homelessness crisis for people of color.

San Franciscans deserve real solutions to homelessness. That starts and ends with the City actually investing in affordable housing. This lawsuit seeks to hold the City to account for its unconstitutional attack on unhoused San Franciscans. The City cannot punish unhoused people for a housing crisis it created.

Client statements:

Plaintiff Nathaniel Vaughn, a life-long San Franciscan who recently became unhoused, reflects: “We do not deserve to be treated like criminals and to have our belongings thrown in the trash when we are at our most vulnerable.”

Plaintiff Toro Castaño notes the impact this has on unhoused people: “The City’s sweeps [are] a dehumanizing disruption to the small ounce of stability that I was trying to build for myself during one of the hardest times of my life.”

Plaintiff Sarah Cronk says the same: “We are just trying to scrape by and build as much of a life for ourselves as possible—with both dignity and safety. The City makes that impossible for us.”

Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness: “San Francisco’s homelessness crisis is its affordable housing crisis. Instead of investing in permanent affordable housing, the city has spent millions of dollars to rid our neighborhoods of visible signs of homelessness. Punitive approaches make homelessness worse, as it only makes it harder for people to access already limited services, find employment and secure stable housing.”

Attorney statements:

“The City is using unhoused residents as the scapegoats for a crisis of economic and racial justice that it helped to create. San Francisco should fight to end homelessness. But the only real solution to San Francisco’s homelessness crisis is housing. Instead of solving homelessness, the City has invested in carceral policies that make the crisis worse. That’s not only unconstitutional, it’s also just bad policy. We should expect better far better from our political leaders.” – Zal Shroff, Senior Staff Attorney, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the Bay Area

“Racism is embedded in the criminalization of homelessness in San Francisco as people of color are disproportionately targeted by anti-homeless ordinances. The current system is complaint-driven, allowing housed residents to dictate traumatizing enforcement against unhoused people who attempt to live in whiter, gentrifying neighborhoods. This suggests that the City is doing more to appear wealthy homeowners than it is to support the health and wellbeing of the most vulnerable with real opportunities out of homelessness. Through the lawsuit, we aim to lay bare the City’s illusory shelter options and end the racist results that criminalization produces.” – John Do, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California

The post Metropolis of San Francisco & Mayor London Breed Sued for Harassing Unhoused San Franciscans, Violating Civil Rights to Cowl Up the Metropolis’s Reasonably priced Housing Failures appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s 47-year-old mayor, London Breed, grew up in this city of postcard views, but much of that was not part of her youth. “I grew up in poverty,” she said. “I grew up in public housing, so I wasn’t really exposed early on to all of the beauty that you see now. I didn’t know some of these neighborhoods even existed in San Francisco.”

For this mayor who has risen from poverty, fighting the city’s inequality is one of her major challenges. In an area that’s home to many of the world’s most valuable companies, San Francisco now counts 8,000 homeless people, the fourth highest rate of any US city, and that has been made worse by some of the country’s highest housing prices.

Smash-and-grab robberies, along with car break-ins, have become their own postcard, underscored by the fact that police solve less than seven percent of those property crimes, infuriating both residents and the city’s more than $6 billion tourism industry.

Correspondent John Blackstone asked Breed, “You said yourself, many people in the city don’t feel safe here any longer.”

“Yeah, and I think that’s why we’re working on it,” she replied, “with making sure we’re able to add more police officers. We’re working on it by having alternatives to policing, to respond to people who are dealing with mental health challenges.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed with correspondent John Blackstone.

CBS News

After Breed was elected four years ago, she picked up a broom and planned to spent tens of millions of dollars a year cleaning the streets. In total, San Francisco is spending one billion city, state and federal dollars on homelessness.

“Every single morning there are people who work for the City and County of San Francisco cleaning up where you wouldn’t even know it’s the same neighborhood,” Breed said. “And even before noon, we’re dealing with some of the same challenges of the litter and the feces and the urine and some of the other issues that many of us are frustrated over.”

Those frustrations, particularly over crime, may be making this famously liberal city a little less liberal. In a recall this month, voters threw out the district attorney whom critics called “soft” on crime. That followed the recall in February of left-leaning school board members who’d focused on renaming buildings rather than reopening them during the pandemic.

On the national stage, politics here are a juicy target for critics on the right. On Fox News, conservative commentator Jesse Watters described San Francisco as “a tech mecca surrounded by a filthy moat of degeneracy, lawlessness, criminals and drugs.”

It is rhetoric with a long legacy, that was amplified in 2007 when a San Francisco Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, became the first female Speaker of the House. Republicans talked disdainfully about “San Francisco values.” On “The Bill O’Reilly Show,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, “I mean, Nancy Pelosi represents a San Francisco values ​​system.”

Blackstone asked Breed, “What are San Francisco values?”

“I think San Francisco values ​​really consist of pushing the envelope and willing to try things that may make people uncomfortable for the purpose of really turning people’s lives around,” she replied.

“But it seems to me the problem that San Francisco faces is that, for people on the right, it’s become shorthand for ‘liberal crazies.'”

“Yeah, and again, there’s nothing I can do about that, other than to make sure that we’re taking care of our city,” said Breed. “We’re cleaning it up, we’re keeping people safe, and we’re doing the things that make the people who live, work, and visit here happy.”

In December the mayor broke from the city’s often-lenient policies when she announced plans to get tough on crime: “And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies , and less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city.”

San Francisco has been struggling with homelessness, and a rise in car break-ins and other property crimes.

CBS News

Blackstone asked, “I looked at the police dashboard. The retail theft, that’s up this year. Is your crackdown on crime working?”

“I don’t think it’s a fair assessment, to take statistics and then to equate them to a major headline around San Francisco being dangerous,” she said, “especially in light of when you look at our homicide rate, in particular, and when you look at the number of cases we’ve been able to solve, and the number of people that we’ve been able to hold accountable.”

FBI violent crime statistics confirm: at least 65 other cities have higher rates of murder, rape and assault than San Francisco. But highly-visible crimes, like car thefts and shoplifting, are up nearly 17% so far this year compared to last year.

Breed said, “I don’t think numbers mean anything when something happens to you. And so, ultimately, we’ve gotta do a better job with improving how people feel in the city.”

Among the improvements the mayor is proud of is a transformed corner in a tough neighborhood. “The corner of Hyde and Turk, this used to be a notorious area where there was a lot of drug-dealing and drug-using and all kind of things going on there. You go there today and there’s a park, a brand-new park there, and kids are now using the park.”

The Turk-Hyde Mini Park was created for preschoolers in the heart of the Tenderloin.

CBS News

Blackstone asked, “Let me ask you just to explain San Francisco to an outsider.”

“Ooh, that’s a hard one!” Breed laughed. “Complicated. Unique. Beautiful. Crazy. Wild. Fun. Innovative. Challenging. All of those things and more.”

Like any other American city, San Francisco has plenty of problems, but much like any other big city mayor, London Breed is her city’s biggest fan: “I love San Francisco, even though it’s a complex city with all of its challenges, its issues . But it’s a place of beauty. It’s a place of hope. It’s a place of opportunity.”

For more information:

Story produced by John Goodwin and Christine Weicher. Editor: Ben McCormick.

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Tom Kean Jr., the son of a popular two-term New Jersey governor, beat six Republican opponents Tuesday to win the nomination to compete against Representative Tom Malinowski, an embattled Democrat accused of ethical lapses, in what is shaping up to be the state’s most competitive midterm contest.

Another son of a storied New Jersey political family, Robert Menendez Jr., easily won a Democratic House primary, making it likely that he and his father and namesake, the state’s senior senator, will serve together in the Capitol.

Mr. Malinowski, 56, in a swipe at Mr. Kean’s three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress, said: “I want to do this job. He just wants to have this job.”

Mr. Kean, 53, who narrowly lost to Mr. Malinowski in 2020, said his opponent had “squandered” the opportunity to serve New Jersey during two terms in Washington.

Mr. Kean’s primary opponents had challenged him from the right as they competed for the support of conservative Republican voters aligned with former President Donald J. Trump. Outside a school near Mr. Kean’s home in Westfield, NJ, where he voted on Tuesday with his wife and daughters, a sign parroting one of Mr. Trump’s favorite labels read, “Warning RINO alert.”

But just after midnight, he was more than 22 percentage points ahead of his closest opponent in a race that was seen at least in part as a measure of Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party in a state better known for a moderate brand of Republican politics once epitomized by leaders like Mr. Kean’s father, Gov. Thomas H Kean.

The largely suburban Seventh Congressional District is filled with the type of affluent, well-educated voters who helped Democrats take control of the House in 2018.

During the last midterm cycle, Democrats in New Jersey flipped four seats—many of which, including Mr. Malinowski’s, are again seen as potential battlegrounds.

As he runs for re-election, Mr. Malinowski is facing allegations that he failed to report stock trades as required. He is also running in a district that gained more Republican-leaning towns when the borders were redrawn to reflect demographic changes in the 2020 census.

But late Tuesday, Mr. Malinowski’s campaign got a potential boost from an unlikely camp: Republicans hoping to make a home for centrist voters with the creation of a new party, the Moderate Party. The new party, which will almost certainly face legal challenges, has filed nominating petitions on behalf of Mr. Malinowski.

Mr. Menendez won in a largely urban district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans five to one; winning the primary in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes parts of New Jersey’s two largest cities, is often tantamount to victory in the general election.

A lawyer making his first run for office, Mr. Menendez had an array of political and union support early on — as well as crucial backing from his father, also a Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Just after midnight, when The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Menendez, he was 70 percentage points ahead of his main challenger, David Ocampo Grajales.

If he wins in November, Mr. Menendez, 36, will occupy a seat held for a decade by Representative Albio Sires, a Democrat who announced in December he would not run for re-election.

Mr. Ocampo Grajales, the son of immigrants from Colombia, said last week that he had entered the race to give Democrats a viable alternative to a handpicked candidate.

“It’s not so much who Menendez is himself, but what he represents: more of the same,” said Mr. Ocampo Grajales, 25.

The New Jersey congressional candidate Tom Kean Jr., with his family, after voting at Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, NJ, on Tuesday.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

A Republican primary in a central New Jersey swing district represented by Andy Kim, a Democrat running for his third term in Congress, was the state’s most colorful contest.

Bob Healey Jr., a former singer in a punk band who helps run his family’s yacht-manufacturing company, beat two challengers, Nicholas J. Ferrera and Ian A. Smith, with the backing of the Republican Party.

In March, Mr. Smith, the former owner of a gym that repeatedly flouted Covid-19 lockdown rules, was charged with driving under the influence, reviving talk of his past conviction for vehicular homicide. He served time in prison for killing a teenager in 2007 while under the influence of alcohol, and pleaded not guilty to the new charges.

“I may have sung in my past about killing someone,” Mr. Healey said during a debate in May. “Ian actually did kill someone.”

By midnight, the winner of the Republican primary to face Representative Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat competing for re-election to a fourth term, had not yet been called.

Frank Pallotta, a wealthy former investment banker who lost to Mr. Gottheimer two years ago, was 5 percentage points ahead of Nick De Gregorio, a Marine Corps veteran, with about 85 percent of the vote counted.

Mr. Pallotta won the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, but not this time. He also had raised significantly less money than Mr. De Gregorio, who had emphasized his service in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We did everything we possibly could, and we left no stones unturned,” Mr. De Gregorio said as he watched the returns come in from the Republican Party headquarters in Bergen County. “We went out there and we listened to what the voters had to say.”

Mr. Menendez will be a heavy favorite in November against Marcos Arroyo, a housing inspector from West New York, NJ, who was the lone Republican candidate to enter the race.

Mr. Menendez has said that, if elected, he would focus on expanding access to early childhood education and issues that affect the cost of living in New Jersey, where property owners pay some of the nation’s highest taxes.

“One of the things we’ve focused on — just because we don’t know the climate that we’re going to be walking into, should we win — is trying to think about what Democratic proposals haven’t been passed yet that we can have bipartisan support for,” Mr. Menendez said in an interview on Saturday.

Before being appointed to the Senate in 2006, Senator Menendez held the House seat that his son is now seeking. The borders of the district, formerly the 13th Congressional District, have since been redrawn slightly.

The state debuted a new electronic voting system in November, but this was the first time that New Jersey voters were offered a chance to cast ballots in person, on machines, during a primary election.

Still, with no statewide races on the ballot, turnout was low.

“We were told that we were the fourth and fifth people in our district to be voting today,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Tuesday morning, “and they’ve been open for a while.”

Shlomo Schorr contributed reporting.

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed pledged Wednesday to confront the city’s most pressing issues — including homelessness, public safety, police reform and a COVID-battered economy — during her annual state of the city address, the first she has delivered in-person to a crowd since the pandemic began.

She vowed to add more police officers while continuing to pursue reform in use-of-force issues, to continue her efforts to address drug dealing, mental illness and homelessness on the streets of the tenderloin and to clear the way for more housing construction.

Breed, who is halfway through her first full term, touted her administration’s progress on housing and job creation but acknowledged the city still faces significant challenges. In a year in which discontented voters brought an unprecedented two recalls to the ballot, residents remain deeply divided over how to best solve the city’s biggest problems.

“We cannot sugarcoat it,” Breed told city leaders and employees at the Mission Rock residential and commercial development under construction near Oracle Park. “We have work to do. Our recovery will not be quick, or easy. But it is coming. San Francisco is coming back.”

Breed has become one of the most watched big city mayors in America. Over the last two years, she went from being praised nationally for her handling of the pandemic to being questioned by some over her response to the city’s struggling tenderloin neighborhood and its street conditions.

The mayor gave her speech as San Francisco emerges from yet another COVID-19 surge and on the day the city announced it would lift its vaccination mandate for businesses. She emphasized the city’s response to the pandemic, not just in health outcomes, but changes to the city’s landscape such as allowing outdoor dining and closing roads including JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park to car traffic.

But she acknowledged San Francisco is still struggling in its recovery, with emptier-than-usual office buildings, vacant storefronts and recovering small businesses. Breed has been trying to lure back tourists, conventions and remote workers downtown while battling perceptions that the city isn’t safe, with stories about viral shoplifting and the drug overdose crisis grabbing headlines.

Breed didn’t shy from confronting some of the city’s most divisive issues in Wednesday’s speech.

The mayor started her talk with a recent political win — the landslide recall of three school board members. Breed, who endorsed the recall, is now poised to appoint three new members, potentially tipping the board in a more moderate direction. She argued the recall underscored that public officials should deliver on the essentials, instead of getting distracted by big ideas. She and others who supported the recall criticized the school board members for renaming 44 schools during the pandemic and being slow to reopen classrooms while vulnerable children struggled with online learning.

Breed stressed that the school district’s focus should be on helping families and children who’ve suffered.

Breed also dove into her own perspectives on policing and crime, which have become huge issues for city residents.

Outrage over crime fueled the upcoming June recall vote on progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose policies critics view as too lenient. Data shows that crime in San Francisco is complicated. During the pandemic, some reported crimes including robberies and larceny thefts went down from previous years, while homicides, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts increased since 2019.

Breed hasn’t yet stated her position on Boudin’s recall, but has previously said “I am not necessarily on the same page with a number of things that he’s doing.”

In her speech, Breed mentioned Asian seniors fearful of leaving their homes, Tenderloin families terrorized by drug dealers and Bayview families dealing with gun violence.

“These are complicated problems, with twisted roots that reach well below surface-level solutions,” she said. “But, again, we have the tools to deliver both the basics and the big ideas.” First, she said, “we need law enforcement.”

Breed directly addressed to her critics who oppose an increase in policing.

“And to those who say we don’t need the police — again, I say, listen to the residents. They are speaking louder than ever,” she said. “No, not for a return to the past, like when I was growing up, and there was often a deep mistrust between the community and the police. Even then, we needed the police. We needed them to cease the gunfire. We needed them to protect victims of violence. We just needed them to help us live our lives—not undermine us in our community.”

Breed gained national attention in December when she pledged to step up policing against drug dealers — and users who refused services — as part of her state of emergency to clean up and reduce overdose deaths in the Tenderloin neighborhood. She’s reiterated that she’s open to police getting involved in clearing the Tenderloin’s streets, but data earlier this month showed arrests for drug crimes hadn’t increased since the emergency began.

One issue that’s hamstrung that effort is police staffing shortages, which Breed highlighted Wednesday. San Francisco was 540 officers short of a recommended staffing level as of early March, with 1,636 officers.

Breed also emphasized alternatives in some situations are needed. She mentioned the city’s street crisis response teams, started last year to send mental health professionals to calls of people in mental crisis, and community ambassadors.

Breed also said police were working on reform, which was also critical. Data shows police use of force has decreased in recent years, but Black residents are still between 9.5 to 17 times far more likely to have used force upon them than white residents. Police are completing reform recommendations from the state and federal governments.

Breed also touted her investment in the Black community to address historical inequities, highlighting the Dream Keeper Initiative she created with Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton to 2020 to pour $60 million annually into Black-led community organizations.

“These are programs that recognize the root causes of crime are driven by poverty. By decades of disinvestment and systemic racism. These are programs that will heal our communities with housing, mental health, education, job training and economic empowerment,” she said. “Let’s be the national model: For reform, for alternatives and for safety.”

While the mayor dove into policing, she didn’t dwell too much in her speech on her push in the tenderloin and the drug crisis that prompted it. Overdoses killed nearly twice as many people in San Francisco as COVID-19 over the past two years. Close to two people a day die of overdoses in the city.

She acknowledged her emergency has stoked debate, but said “the main takeaway is that we can’t continue to accept things as they were.”

“I’m done arguing if it’s okay for people to remain on the streets when we have a place for them to go. Because it’s not. It just isn’t,” she continued. “And to be honest, there are some folks who cannot — or will not — do what’s safe for themselves and for others, so we have to be honest about the need to deal with those struggling with mental illness and we need to make serious changes to our state laws.”

She said she’s been meeting with state leaders to talk about mental health laws — potentially a reference to the ongoing debate about conservatorship, mandated treatment for someone who is a danger to themselves or others.

In 2019, a report found 4,000 people who were homeless and struggling with mental illness and substance use disorder. The city has made slow progress to increase the number of treatment beds — with only 89 of the 400 planned added so far — and to make the care system more cohesive and easier to navigate.

Breed focused more on another challenge prevalent in the Tenderloin: homelessness.

The mayor has highlighted the city is pouring $1 billion into tackling homelessness over the next two years. Most of that money comes from a voter-approved tax that breed didn’t support in 2018.

Her administration will spend some of the funds to reach her goal of creating 1,500 new permanent supportive housing units by June. Breed said the city is on track to exceed by 70% that goal of creating subsidized housing with services for formerly homeless people.

But the city struggles with quickly filling available units, with 10% — or around 850 units — vacant this week, the spokeswoman said. That number covers units getting repaired and those ready for referral, including some where a tenant is already scheduled to move in.

The city is also working to add new shelter beds and reopen beds still shuttered during the pandemic to get to 2,100 short-term shelter beds by July.

Despite the progress, between permanent and temporary housing, there simply isn’t enough for the city’s homeless population. In 2019, a count found around 8,000 unhoused people, but the health department recently estimated 18,000 people citywide are experiencing homelessness.

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed at a press conference as San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott listens before speaking on a mid-year report on public safety statistics in San Francisco, Calif., July 12, 2021. (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty images)

When Democrats went soft on crime in the 1960s and ’70s, it took two Republican presidential landslides and almost two decades for the party to recover its sense. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed is showing that the turnaround can happen in less than two years.

Just last July, Mayor Breed announced $120 million in budget cuts to the police and promised to dedicate these funds to achieving racial equality. She was defunding the police and “prioritizing investments in the African American community around housing, mental health and wellness, workforce development, economic justice, education, advocacy and accountability.”

Breed was joined in this program by Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s new George Soros–backed district attorney. He reduced San Francisco’s jail population by 25 percent in one year and pressured prosecutors to go soft on crime. He ended cash-bail programs and replaced them with a lenient program of discretion. He also used his office to lobby for the commutation and release of his own father from prison. Boudin is the son of the Weather Underground’s David Gilbert, who took part in the 1981 Brink’s robbery and triple homicide.

For San Franciscans, it has been a disaster. From the onset of the pandemic to the end of 2020, burglaries rose 62 percent. Murderers surged. And as the calendar turned to 2021, San Francisco saw itself subject to the new style of smash-and-grab looting. Residents knew instantly what was happening across the city. The tech-connected world that San Francisco created allows the city’s residents to easily share the photos and videos from their security systems and smart-home doorbells with each other. Early last month, a campaign to recall Boudin collected enough signatures, and he faces the judgment of voters next June.

Breed has gotten the message and is trying to transform herself into a law-and-order mayor.

In an extraordinary press conference on Tuesday, Breed previewed a far-reaching campaign against crime. She promised to end “the reign of criminals who are destroying our city.” Her tone was refreshing and appropriately belligerent. “What I’m proposing today, and what I will be proposing in the future, will make a lot of people uncomfortable,” she said. “And I don’t care.”

What’s the agenda? Breed plans to refund the police and use them “aggressively.” That includes amending and reforming surveillance laws that she said effectively barred police from responding to crime in real time. She said the city would focus in particular on the Tenderloin neighborhood, where drug-dealing and other crimes are committed regularly, openly, and brazenly. She promised warrant sweeps and an increased police presence with a mandate to interrupt open-air drug abuse and illegal vending. The city will take on the overdue work of cleaning up the neighborhood and lighting it properly at night.

At first glance, this anti-crime agenda looks like the same combination of principles from Sir Robert Peel and modern techniques that saved New York City a generation ago. Breed deliberately sought to send a message through the headlines to San Francisco’s voters, when she said that the city must be “less tolerant of the bullsh** that is destroying our city.”

“Less tolerant” is a revolutionary slogan for Democrats.

“We are a city that prides ourselves on second chances,” Breed said. But “our compassion should not be confused for weakness or indifference.”

In truth, this is Breed resetting and taking a second chance at becoming a competent mayor. If she does reduce crime in the city, the rhetorical and policy stances she took this week will be a model to Democratic mayors everywhere. We wish her well in this turn toward sanity and hope San Franciscans hold her accountable to her promises.

The Editors comprise the senior editorial staff of the National Review magazine and website.

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“It was very bad, we were scared to come in, basically a ghost town here,” said Jacques Oskanian.

Jacques Osaknian has owned a stationary store in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center for eight years. He’s still waiting for many customers to return, some of them office workers.

“I never thought of shutting down our business. That’s our bread and butter,” she said.

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Now, there are encouraging signs like more people on the streets and more commuters in their cars, headed to work.

Google announced Wednesday it plans to start a hybrid work model on April 4. Bay Area employees must work three days in the office, the other two from home.

RELATED: Will San Francisco’s Financial District Ever Bounce Back?

“There’s still a need for face-to-face interaction and creativity, looking forward to those companies coming back to San Francisco employees on the street with small businesses benefiting,” said Rodney Fong, President and CEO of San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce.

Some workers are in no hurry to get back. Vic Leung is spending just one day in the office.

“I enjoy the people connection I miss it, it’s a good hybrid for me,” Leung said.

VIDEO: High-tech projection mapping aims to bring people back to San Francisco

Mayor London Breed is pushing for more employers to bring workers back to the business district.

Mayor Breed’s office released a statement, saying in part:
“The mayor has been working with organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and talking to business leaders about announcing a shared commitment to return to the office… We will have more specifics soon… There is a lot of support for San Francisco and bringing workers back, though we know things will look different moving forward to allow for flexibility in the workplace.”

Experts say weekly office attendance is about 25 percent, with a slow uptick forward.

“Our calculations say buildings are ready and safe, now we need the right mentality. It’s time to come back to the city,” said John Bryant from Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco.

SF Travel reports a 20-percent increase in bookings at the Moscone Center since December, the busiest month is expected to be June.

RELATED: Hotels seeing higher occupancy rates near SF’s Union Square

With more encouraging signs on the road back to normal, Jacques is optimistic.

“I see movement, things are going better and better,” he said.

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