The race to represent District 5 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors features four challengers taking on incumbent Dean Preston.
Bilal Mahmood, Autumn Looijen, Allen Jones and Scotty Jacobs are seeking to deny Preston a second term representing the district, which includes the Fillmore District, Civic Center, Haight-Ashbury, and the Tenderloin.
Preston has a slight edge over Mahmood for the most dollars raised for the campaign. As of Wednesday, Preston had raised about $581,000, including about $250,000 in public financing.
Preston, a former small business owner and tenants’ attorney, cites his accomplishments as securing community ambassadors around the city, writing 2022’s Proposition M, which authorized a tax on vacant housing units, and helping create a program to provide tenants’ attorneys for anyone facing eviction, according to his ballot statement.
His campaign website lists his priorities in a new term as including creating a public bank to finance affordable housing and building more affordable housing in the Tenderloin and other neighborhoods.
Preston has been endorsed by House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, state Assemblymember Phil Ting, and the California Nurses Association, among others.
A political action committee opposing Preston’s reelection, Coalition to Grow San Francisco, had raised nearly $300,000 as of Wednesday.
Bilal Mahmood
Mahmood, a former policy analyst in the Obama Administration and the founder of multiple nonprofit organizations, has raised about $492,000, including $255,000 in public matching funds.
Mahmood’s campaign priorities are speeding up the permitting process for affordable housing by using technology to process them faster, cutting fees and reducing the number of permits needed to build housing, and coordinating city departments to both target fentanyl dealers and create strategies to provide shelter for homeless residents, according to his campaign website.
His endorsements include Mayor London Breed, state Sen. Scott Wiener and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
Scotty Jacobs
Jacobs is a former brand development director at Kinder’s, which makes barbeque sauce and other food products. At 30 years old, he touts his youth as one of his assets. He has raised about $222,000, with about $154,000 coming from public financing.
Jacobs supports what he calls a “2+2 Plan,” which would exempt small businesses from taxes in their first two years of operation or with revenues of less than $2 million. He supports a rate hike for Muni bus service to shore up its finances and would refer undocumented persons accused of selling drugs to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He has been endorsed by mayoral candidate Mark Farrell and the Raoul Wallenberg Jewish Democratic Club. The nonprofit organizations TogetherSF Action and Housing Action Coalition have endorsed him as a second choice in the ranked voting election.
Autumn Looijen
Looijen is a community organizer who helped lead the 2022 recall of three San Francisco Unified School District board members. She has raised about $150,000, including $112,000 in public funds.
Looijen supports putting more police officers on foot patrols in the Tenderloin in partnership with mental health experts, permitting sleeping pods and micro apartments, and clarifying the permitting process to build housing in writing so fewer applications are rejected for undeclared reasons.
She has been endorsed by the San Francisco Police Officers Association.
Allen Jones
Jones describes himself on his campaign website as “the Republican that Republicans hate, and Democrats tolerate.” He is a former electrical draftsman, someone who creates blueprints and diagrams for electrical wiring.
He has not reported raising any money for his campaign, according to the San Francisco Ethics Commission.
He lists his campaign priorities as clearing city sidewalks, jail and juvenile justice reform, and improving awareness of services for seniors and the disabled, according to his website.