Four mayoral races that could reshape Democratic landscape

Voters from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon, will weigh in this November on how their cities are run, and in some cases, their decisions could upend the political landscape for good. 

In San Francisco and Portland, two of the country’s most progressive cities, candidates vying to be mayor have presented very different visions for the future. Both cities have endured a homelessness crisis, high crime rates, and in some cases, misguided government policies. Voters said they want change and now a cavalry of candidates say they are just the people to usher it in.

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San Francisco’s incumbent mayor, London Breed, has struggled to find footing with voters who blame her for creating conditions that have led to a mass exodus of businesses from the downtown area. She is fighting an uphill battle against a former mayor, two supervisors, and a billionaire heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Portland’s 19-candidate open mayoral race includes a stripper, three City Council members, and a trucking company CEO who claims he can fix the city’s homelessness problem in a year. Whoever wins the crowded contest will oversee a totally new system of government.

History could be made in Baltimore if Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott is reelected to lead Maryland’s largest city. Scott edged out rivals in a crowded Democratic primary by campaigning on a record of reducing violent crime, and he’s hoping the same strategy will work against Republican challenger Shannon Wright. If Scott is elected, it would make him the first mayor reelected to the position since 2004.

The winner of Las Vegas‘s mayoral race has already made history. The contest between former Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, a career politician, and Republican Victoria Seaman, a sitting member of the Las Vegas City Council, will see a winner who, for the first time in 25 years, isn’t a member of the Goodman political dynasty. 

Here’s a closer look at the four races.

San Francisco’s crowded field tackles homelessness

Outrage over the progressive agenda is playing out in San Francisco’s mayoral race.

Though there are 11 candidates in the high-stakes contest, four are realistically in the running to unseat Breed.

They include Mark Farrell, the former interim mayor; Daniel Lurie, nonprofit group founder and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune; Aaron Peskin, Board of Supervisors president; and Supervisor Ahsha Safaí.

Though San Francisco holds nonpartisan elections, all four of the leading candidates are Democrats.  All say Breed, who has pivoted in recent months from touting liberal policies to conservative ones, is not up to the challenge of leading California’s fourth-largest city. 

Residents have expressed frustration over the future of their once-thriving metropolis. 

They have complained the downtown area hasn’t bounced back as quickly as others after the pandemic. They have also seen the number of drug overdoses nearly double and watched as the city did little to combat its persistent property crime problem. 

Fifty-four major headquarters have left San Francisco since COVID-19 tore through it and tourism is at below pre-pandemic levels, dropping 44% since 2019. San Francisco has also struggled with homelessness.

While residents clearly want a change, whom they want to lead the city is not clear. 

Polls have gone back and forth, putting Breed, Farrell, and Lurie in the top spot. 

According to a KRON4 News Emerson College Poll, 27% of voters surveyed remain undecided.

“It is the undecided vote that is ahead in this poll,” Sonoma State University political science professor David McCuan told KRON4 News.

Breed, a political centrist by California standards, has leaned into the city’s shifting political winds, hoping to gain some traction among voters.

She backed a pair of measures on the primary ballot that would expand police powers and require welfare recipients to undergo drug screenings or forfeit assistance given to them. In August, she took a harder line against cleaning up homeless encampments, telling city officials to issue citations and offer homeless people one-way tickets out of town before providing other services such as housing or shelter. 

Her closest competitor, Farrell, is the most right-leaning candidate of the group. He said he believes he has the best plan for the strongest economic recovery. He said he wants to focus on cleaning up the streets so the city can start to market itself as a business and tourist destination again. 

But Farrell is facing his own set of problems. 

Three former San Francisco mayors have called for a criminal investigation into him over alleged campaign finance violations. 

The San Francisco Chronicle also issued a blistering editorial on his idea to give tax breaks to companies who bring their workers back to the office. They also questioned his idea to open Market Street, a transit artery of San Francisco, into a rideshare.

Farrell also took heat for saying he wanted to flood San Francisco’s streets with armed personnel from the California National Guard in an effort to fight the selling and use of fentanyl. 

Unlike Farrell, Lurie, a political newcomer with deep pockets and rich tech friends, has managed to stay above the fray. 

He said he decided to run for mayor after a harrowing incident when he was walking his 9-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter to school. He said they saw a naked man stumbling down the street, screaming. Nobody did anything about the situation because residents have become numb to it. 

Lurie said he will lean on his experience running his anti-poverty nonprofit, Tipping Point, to fight homelessness. He has promised to secure 1,500 units of shelter during his first six months in office. 

Peskin, unlike Farrell and Lurie, believes the city needs to get back to its progressive roots. He is well known in San Francisco circles as a proud liberal and is betting he can get enough of them concerned with the city’s recent shift to the center to coalesce around him and take Breed down. 

Safaí, the only immigrant in the race, represents several working-class neighborhoods on the city’s southern edge. He has more than two decades of government experience but has been described as “an insider’s insider.” 

Last month, he made a power move, teaming with Farrell and telling their voters to make the other candidate their second choice on the ballot. San Francisco uses a ranked choice voting system in which voters rank candidates from their first choice to their least preferred.

Baltimore voters weigh inexperience over corruption

Scott and Wright will go head-to-head to see who will lead Maryland’s largest city. 

Scott defeated Sheila Dixon, a former mayor who resigned as part of a plea deal in a corruption scandal involving gift cards, in the May primary. He campaigned on a record of reducing violent crime as well as economic growth and investment in the city’s youth.

If Scott is elected, it would make him the first mayor reelected to the position since Martin O’Malley in 2004. 

The 40-year-old has already had some success with targeted interventions that have led to a reduction in Baltimore’s crime rates. Last year was the first in eight that the city recorded less than 300 killings. Baltimore is on track to finish the year with even fewer deaths. The city’s unemployment rate is also the lowest it has been in decades. 

“When I came into office, I said that we were going to look at crime and violence as a public health issue,” he said during a candidate forum, touting his administration’s investment in community organizations that are, “not just preventing acts of violence but actually getting these young brothers and sisters into jobs and training.”

He is credited with strengthening an existing program that deployed “violence interrupters” to some of Baltimore’s most dangerous areas.

The “Community Violence Intervention Ecosystem” was launched in 2007 but lacked oversight and funding. Three of its workers were killed on the job. Scott was able to secure funding and put a system in place that provided instructions and a better foundation. 

For some, such as Councilman Eric Costello and former mayoral candidate Thiruvendran Vignarajah, Scott isn’t getting the job done. 

“I love Brandon Scott as a person. It pains me to say his leadership is failing the city,” Costello said after endorsing Dixon last year. Before Vignarajah ended his campaign and endorsed Dixon over Scott, he described the choice as “between corruption and incompetence,” the Baltimore Banner wrote. 

There have also been complaints of slow city services, administrative turnover, and a “persistent cynicism” among residents that Scott isn’t working hard enough or efficiently enough for them. 

One attack ad labeled him a “nice guy, bad mayor.”

Wright, a pastor, radio personality, and nonprofit executive, is hoping to stop Scott in his tracks. She lost a 2020 mayoral bid and like others has slammed him for being too inexperienced. She is running on a platform that includes reducing violent crime and creating jobs. 

Even though the chances of Wright winning are slim in a city where Democrats outnumber Republican voters by more than a 10-to-1 margin, Wright said she’s ready to put “real, viable, and sustainable options and opportunities on the table for all Baltimoreans.” 

“Currently, we are living under the second coming of slavery at hands of a master that looks like us,” she said. “I am running for Baltimore City Mayor to put the charm back in ‘Charm City.’”

Portland gets ready for new system of government

Portland, Oregon, is on the verge of getting a major political makeover. 

Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has held the top spot since 2017, announced he would not seek reelection, opening the door to an eclectic group of 19 vying for the job. 

Portland is widening its City Council from five to 12 members, who will be chosen by voters in individual districts rather than citywide, as has been done in the past. There is also an open seat for a city manager. There are nearly 100 people in the running for the new council seats which will be elected by ranked choice voting for the first time. 

“I don’t think that anyone has a really clear sense of exactly how things are going to work immediately after this election,” said Chris Shortell, associate professor of political science at Portland State University. 

There are a few factors that tie the candidates together, including concerns over homelessness. 

“The key issues remain the key issues,” John Horvick, senior vice president of the polling firm DHM Research, told the Associated Press. “Those continue to be the organizing principles of Portland politics and will certainly be through this election and beyond.”

City Council members Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio, as well as trucking CEO Keith Wilson, are leading in fundraising and have presented different visions for what Portland can do to combat its growing homelessness problem. 

Rubio is pushing for more outreach workers and coordination between the city and social service groups, while Gonzales wants the city to be stricter in enforcing no-camping rules. 

Wilson wants to end unsheltered homelessness by increasing the number of nighttime walk-in emergency shelters in existing facilities, according to his campaign website. During Tuesday’s mayoral debate, Wilson gave Portland’s response to homelessness an “F” grade and excoriated city officials for failing to treat it as a humanitarian crisis. He called the city’s efforts “a complete failure.” 

Rubio, Wilson, and Gonzales said they supported the threat of jail time for homeless people who refused to accept available shelter. 

Liv Osthus, a stripper whose stage name is Viva Las Vegas, was the lone candidate at the debate who said the threat of incarceration was inappropriate for those sleeping outside. She also noted the city was buckling under the weight of a public defender shortage. Osthus has linked homelessness to the high cost of living in Portland and said the city should reimagine its downtown area, filling it with housing and turning it into a hub for the arts. 

City Council member Mingus Mapps, who is hoping to become the city’s first black mayor,  said he was willing to step up and make hard decisions when it came to addressing the homelessness crisis.

A January 2023 count found nearly 4,000 people living unsheltered on Portland’s streets on any given night.

Las Vegas election brings an end to political dynasty

The winner of the Las Vegas mayoral race has already made history.

The nonpartisan contest between Berkley and Seaman will see a winner who, for the first time in 25 years, isn’t a member of the Goodman family. 

Oscar Goodman was elected to the post in 1999, and his wife, Mayor Carolyn Goodman, has held it since he left office in 2011. Neither has made an endorsement in the 2024 race. 

During the crowded and contentious 14-candidate June primary, Berkley received 36% of the vote compared with Seaman’s 29%.

Whoever wins the general election will take the reins of a city that has a growing homeless population, critical shortage of housing, and is on the hook for judgments and interest of more than $235 million after city council refused to allow developer Yohan Lowie to build housing on the Badlands Golf Course. 

The case climbed all the way up to the Nevada Supreme Court which was found in Lowie’s favor. 

The controversy made up most of Seaman’s 2019 bid for city council. After her victory, she led a campaign to repeal the city’s open space ordinance but received a lot of pushback.

The 65-year-old is in the middle of her first full four-year term as councilwoman for a ward that covers the western and southwestern parts of the city. 

Seaman’s goal is to lead a city that she has sued twice. The first case was settled, and she was able to recover medical costs for a car crash in an unmarked section of a road construction zone. The second suit, for injuries and mental anguish from an altercation with former Councilwoman Michele Fiore, is still pending. 

She said she wants to be mayor because she believes Las Vegas needs “someone who has institutional knowledge of city government to continue moving forward.” 

Seaman cited the city’s rapid growth, homelessness, affordable housing, and public safety problems as priorities she would tackle as mayor. 

Seaman, who has pitched herself as the “law and order” candidate, has garnered endorsements from several law enforcement organizations across Nevada but has failed to secure a single one from her colleagues on the council. 

Berkley told the Nevada Independent she’s running for mayor because of her commitment to public service.

Berkley served seven terms in the U.S. House but has been out of politics since she lost a race for U.S. Senate in 2012 to then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV). Her candidacy was marred by a House ethics panel determination that she used her office to help her husband’s medical practice. 

Berkley has described affordable housing as a “big issue” for Las Vegas and said she wants the U.S. government to keep freeing up federal land for development. 

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One of Berkley’s friends, former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones Blackhurst, thought she had “honestly lost her mind” when she announced she was running for mayor. That changed after she considered why Berkley, 73, got into the fight. 

“Her heart is in public service,” Blackhurst, who became the first woman to serve as Las Vegas mayor, said. “I think Shelley wanted one more public service role. When you look at what’s out there, this is the one position where she could have the most impact.”