SAN FRANCISCO — Mayor London Breed hasn’t conceded the election, however her path to successful one other time period main San Francisco seems fairly slim.
Early returns present her trailing far behind Daniel Lurie, a Levi Strauss inheritor and nonprofit founder, who far outspent the incumbent utilizing his private wealth and blamed Breed for the town’s issues with homelessness, brazen theft and drug overdoses.
He leads with 56 p.c of the vote utilizing the town’s ranked-choice voting system, whereas Breed has 44 p.c.
It’s a dismal exhibiting for Breed, a reasonable Democrat, who was nonetheless projecting optimism after early returns. “It ain’t over until it’s over,” she advised supporters Tuesday night time at a soul meals restaurant close to downtown.
Town doesn’t anticipate to launch one other batch of outcomes till 4 p.m. Thursday, and Breed’s marketing campaign stated she gained’t remark additional till then.
“I’m reluctant to say something as a result of I wish to be respectful and thoughtful to the candidates and the method — dropping and conceding is difficult, I have been there,” stated Dan Newman, a advisor who ran an out of doors independent-expenditure group backing Lurie.
He added, “So the candidates will converse once they’re prepared, however the math has spoken. The mathematics says that is over.”
Joe Arellano, a spokesperson for Breed’s marketing campaign, declined to debate how she is parsing the early returns. He stated she was taking Wednesday to course of the defeat of Kamala Harris, her buddy and former mentor.
However even a few of Breed’s shut political allies are privately questioning whether or not she may mount a comeback in later returns given the scale of Lurie’s margin and a pool of uncounted ballots.
Roughly 60 p.c of votes solid within the election have already been tabulated, and metropolis officers estimate there are 157,000 left to depend. Lurie was forward of Breed by greater than 24,000 votes as of early Wednesday morning, after a ranked-choice tabulation. To shut that hole, Breed must seize an outsize share of the remaining tally.
Lurie surged within the polls through the closing weeks of the race and carried out strongly throughout the town — most notably within the Sundown and Richmond districts, the place he had the backing of many Asian-American voters.
Polls additionally persistently recommended that Lurie would profit from ranked-choice voting within the crowded mayoral race. A part of his technique was to be the second-choice for a lot of residents who voted for one more candidate first — particularly Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin or Mark Farrell, a former interim mayor.
Not solely is Lurie main Breed with extra of these second-choice ballots from the opposite candidates, he’s additionally forward in first-choice votes. That shocked many political insiders within the metropolis.
In San Francisco’s system of ranked voting, voters are allowed to rank as much as 10 candidates so as of choice. In every spherical of tabulation, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eradicated and their votes are reassigned primarily based on voters’ second decisions.
Lurie stopped wanting declaring victory Tuesday night time as he spoke to an electrical crowd of supporters within the Mission District. However he declared San Francisco is a “metropolis that can rise once more,” standing in entrance of the town’s flag, which depicts a phoenix rising from the ashes.
“The second that we’re in requires a brand new period of management in Metropolis Corridor,” he stated, “one rooted in accountability, service and alter.”
