From what I knew about Jackie Fielder before she was widely selected to oversee the mission this month, I expected her to be a bomb thrower.
Over coffee (me) and matcha latte (hers) last week, I realized that people are more eager to talk about street-level voter service than progressive metaphors like defunding the police and DEI training in schools. It was Paul, 30 years old.
Fielder has a reputation as a hard-nosed ideologue who plays the American Democratic Socialist card. Many in San Francisco’s political community are looking for people like Aaron Peskin, whom she lost as her first choice for mayor, and fellow DSA Supervisor Dean Preston, who also lost at the polls to San Francisco’s moneyed moderates. I look forward to seeing her take over the mantle of fireground.
But that wasn’t the fielder I met. Big hopes for San Francisco’s progressives — and given the absence of Peskin and Preston, she is exactly that — Fielder has more to say than talk about maintaining the streets and how to encourage cops to walk in rhythm. , spent a lot of time discussing cooperation with Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie. Left-wing issues.
As corny as it may sound, this encounter gives me hope that the city’s new elected officials are truly embarking on a journey of unity and cooperation rather than partisan conflict. left in.
“I think the people of San Francisco are looking for leadership that can get things done, quote-unquote aside,” she told me as we took shelter from the atmospheric river at the Mission Cafe. She said that after her campaign knocked on every door in the 9th District at least three times and had “thousands of conversations with voters,” she learned that “people want to fill holes.” he said. They want the resurfacing completed on time. They want extra bins that were removed for some reason. I think this bread and butter politics is what is being lost. That was a really fresh perspective for me. If we’re not meeting basic expectations for city services,[voters]need to explain why. ”
In other words, I joined the company expecting to become a Bernie Sanders disciple. But there’s also a lot of Alphonse “Senator Pothole” D’Amato in her.
Mr. Fielder has expressed a desire to work with Mr. Lurie, in contrast to his progressive predecessors on the Board of Supervisors, who fought bitterly with outgoing Mayor London Breed and his pro-business predecessor. She said he was the only other mayoral candidate she shook hands with during the campaign, other than Mr. Peskin. It was a sign of respect that meant so much to her that she publicly voted for him as her second choice.
“We are both new to city government,” she said of the mayor-elect. “We are very united in leaving behind the bitter and inflammatory politics and showing San Franciscans that they can still trust their city government.”
Mr. Fielder and Mr. Lurie met again last week and shared priorities, including protecting undocumented immigrants from President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan. Ms. Lurie had vaguely said she would have the support of the immigrant community, but Ms. Fielder said she had promised to speak to her team about her concerns. “They’re going to keep bugging me on this issue until they get an answer on how this city is going to make it clear that it’s at least following due process,” she said. “I’m still going to eavesdrop on them.”
Meanwhile, Lurie shared Fielder’s positive vibes. “It’s a new day in San Francisco,” he tells me over the phone a few hours later, looking a little dizzy. “I was really encouraged and excited by her priorities. I want to put an end to this narrative that everything has to be a knife fight in a phone booth. It doesn’t have to be like that every day. That’s not what people want.”
Fielder said he discussed other priorities with Lurie, including the need to stop gun violence near 16th and Mission streets. She also wants to increase the presence of officers on missions, especially by encouraging people to get out of their patrol cars.
“I heard over and over from my constituents that they wanted to see police officers patrolling on foot instead of just driving around,” she said. It’s a turning point for Fielder, who just four years ago was a vocal advocate of defunding the police and ran a surprisingly close race against state Sen. Scott Wiener.
The prospective supervisor never had a kind attitude toward the police. She criticized law enforcement, for example, for wasting resources to stop the Dolores Park Hill skate bomber. She also criticized the department for paying officers overtime for employee parades and motorcades. But today, she’s primarily talking about reforming police enforcement, not abolishing it.
“I’m in favor of funding the entire public safety system,” she said. “Regardless of my or any other politician’s views on funding or defunding the police, the police profession must change if we want to attract new members. In general. , using the police funding heuristic to measure public safety progress is clearly not working” (Fielder at Stanford University). She earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy and a master’s degree in sociology in 2019. She calls herself a “policy geek” and often speaks of it as such.
Despite the moderate-right positions she has adopted, Fielder remains a staunch progressive. She has spoken out about all sorts of left-wing issues, including condemnation of “genocide in Palestine” and the need to listen to voters who are “tired of letting corporate money dictate national priorities like the minimum wage.” named a long list of positions. She also calls for “basic protections for workers and investments in education, housing, health care, homelessness, and renter’s rights.”
At the same time, Fielder expressed views that were strikingly similar to Lurie’s critique of the city. She said she has friends who have waited six months to interview for city jobs. This is a common complaint. She also complains about smaller “humanitarian issues” such as uneven efforts to install water purification systems in public schools. “This is really my first experience with the bureaucracy that everyone is talking about,” she said. “That’s really unacceptable.”
And when it comes to the city’s troubled budget, especially the projected $800 million deficit, Fielder promised to bring in a new set of eyes, regardless of political leanings. “I often hear about zero-based budgeting, where you start with what you actually need and then increase your budget,” she said. “That’s something to consider. Now we take everything departments did last year and say, ‘X percent reduction.’ It’s a simple method in a way. ”
She was unfazed when I commented that zero-based budgeting is a favorite tactic of private equity firms to reduce costs in the companies they acquire. “Yeah, that basically means justifying the expense. I think that applies to any department.”
As that answer indicated, I think Ms. Fielder may not be a typical democratic socialist, and therefore it would be difficult to identify her as a supervisor. In keeping with her background, raised by a single mother in Long Beach, active in student activism in college, an environmental justice advocate, and ambitious in public service from an early age, she attended Stanford University. She told me that she attended Alpha Phi, a sorority in college.
I expressed surprise, since the Greek system is typically seen as a playpen for rich kids. But she told me, “I got pretty disillusioned with the exclusivity, so I quit publicly.” I later read in the Stanford Daily that before she left, she wanted to make the sorority “a more welcoming and accessible event for people from underrepresented socio-economic and ethnic communities.” He was organizing the Greek Life Diversity Coalition for the purpose of It sounded like the Fielder I expected.
Of course, it’s easy to portray yourself as a conciliatory, flexible actor before the traditional tribalism of City Hall takes hold. That applies to Lurie as well. He has landed arrows in the campaign, but has yet to engage in retribution when jobs and important programs are at stake.
For now, Fielder and Lurie say they want to govern amicably, focusing on common interests rather than ideological differences. For now, let’s pray for their safety.