SF Mayoral Debate Results Are In

Candidates Stuart Schuffman & Amy Weiss

Stuart Schuffman won a resounding victory against his rival Mayor Ed Lee Thursday night, based on extensive polling conducted among brokeassstuart.com readers in the audience.   Chants of “1-2-3 Replace Ed Lee” rang out from the  +300 crowd in the Genentech Hall after an hour of talks given by the 6 candidates running for mayor.  Francisco Herrera, Amy Weiss, & Stuart Schuffman were all clear standouts.  Herrera spoke eloquently about the corporatization of our city, sitting right next to Lee on the panel,  Herrera turned to Lee directly and spoke about the importance of keeping control of the city in the hands of it’s own people, and not in the hands of foreign investors who are coming through, ‘just to make money’.

Candidate Francisco Herrera and incumbent Ed Lee

Lee’s rebuttals were predictably full of platitudes and empty gestures, followed by hisses and boos from the audience.  He would spend the first 20 seconds of his time restating the question with his name in it, and the second half reciting past projects or name dropping.  There was nothing about actual policy change, he made sure to never address any other candidates ideas or attacks.  It was a professional politician simply biding his time, and going through the motions, avoiding headlines.

When Lee was asked about protecting renters and legacy businesses against developers who would kick them out for profit.  He talked about what a great supporter of small businesses he was and Amy Weiss shined brilliantly when she called him out on it.

“I’d like to believe what Mayor Ed Lee just said but I know first hand that it is disingenuous”.  

Amy recalled vividly when Ed Lee allowed three local small businesses to be kicked out so that Chase Bank could move in, and that was what got her activated in local politics in the first place.  She said what most of us were thinking,  “It was outrageous to me because the law was being broken…how can the law possibly be broken for Chase Bank in our communities? We roll out the red carpet for Chase Bank?”  It’s what caused Amy to get together with her community and create the non-profit Neighbors Developing Divisadero which invests in enriching culturally sustainable development.

The full panel from left to right: Kent Graham, Francisco Herrera, Ed Lee, Reed Martin, Stuart Schuffman, Amy Weiss

Candidate Stuart Schuffman spoke candidly about the plight of homelessness in our city while alluding to the staggering wealth gap between San Francisco’s most vulnerable.  Lee has given over over 50 million dollars in tax cuts to corporations that moved into San Francisco in the last few years.  “There’s roughly 10,000 homeless people in San Francisco, AND there’s roughly 10,000 Air BnB rentals out there as well”.  Stuart went on to talk about Ed Lee’s policy of simply ‘getting rid of the homeless when SF hosts the Super  bowl’.  He called it “appalling” and went on to remind everyone that these homeless people on our streets are OUR people, “71% of them were San Francisco residents before they were on the streets.”

When the question was raised about what the candidates would do to clean the streets (public sanitation), Stuart recited his famous plan to create more bathrooms and stop the privatization of our public parks.  If you haven’t watched Stuart’s video on the subject you should now

Lee’s rebuttal was almost comical.  He explained that the reason our streets were dirty is because the youth of San Francisco was throwing trash onto them.  It was a classic “get off my lawn” moment when the old man talked about the importance of ‘individual responsibility’ as apposed to any real solution, or any of  the actual, immediate issues.  His solution to cleaning the streets was to work with the school boards to explain to children that they shouldn’t litter.  School children make up less than 10% of our city’s population.  The extent this guy will go to to avoid the real problems in our city is amazing, either that or he just doesn’t get it.

Ed Lee, Stop, just stop

 Candidate Stuart Schuffman :

“We need to get the money out of politics. This corporate money is ruling our city. We need to start thinking about our communities and the best sustainable ways of keeping them together.”

How do you think the forum went?  Tell us in the comments.  And Remember Vote 1-2-3 Replace Ed Lee!

All Photos taken by Alex Mak

BIG thanks The League of Women Voters San Francisco for setting this up and streaming the debate