Aaron Peskin gains in S.F. mayor's race, delighting progressives -- and alarming familiar foes

As Supervisor Aaron Peskin tried to spread the word about his mayoral campaign in San Francisco’s Mission District on Wednesday morning, he kept encountering the same response. Over and over, passersby said they had already voted for him or planned to do so.

Peskin wasn’t surprised by the reception he received at the 24th Street BART plaza in one of the city’s most progressive neighborhoods.

“There is hope and excitement that a grassroots candidate might actually be able to prevail in this contest,” Peskin said with a smile, clutching campaign literature that sought to distinguish him from Mayor London Breed and two other leading candidates, Daniel Lurie and Mark Farrell.

“It’s getting closer to the election. Everybody is tuning in,” he said. There’s a “very clear contrast between me and the other major candidates, and then the recent polling information — regardless of whose poll you look at — shows that my numbers are going up.”

Peskin, the Board of Supervisors president who’s been a San Francisco elected official on and off since the turn of the century, has been gaining ground in recent polls. In the Chronicle’s third and final survey of the mayor’s race published this week, he grew his share of first-choice votes by six points, coming in third place behind Breed and Lurie, who led when all of voters’ ranked-choice preferences were accounted for. And Peskin is betting that his momentum will continue to grow.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/election/article/aaron-peskin-mayor-sf-19855216.php