S.F. Supervisors Kim and Wiener Battle for State Senate Seat

Term limits are forcing San Francisco Democrat Mark Leno to give up his state Senate seat this year. In famously liberal San Francisco, he’s likely to be replaced by another Democrat -- the question is, what kind?

The two leading candidates for the District 11 seat are Jane Kim and Scott Wiener. Both are San Francisco supervisors, but peel back the layers and you can see some big differences between them.

Recently, at a Cinco de Mayo party for Laborers Local 261, Wiener was campaigning for his Senate bid. He waded through a crowd, greeting union members while a mariachi band played in the background. Since he's 6-foot-7, most of the people in the crowd had to look up to greet him.

Union members here support Wiener. As a supervisor, he’s widely considered to be a pragmatic lawmaker with a relentless work ethic. His stances include building more housing in San Francisco and helping residents get access to health care -- priorities he says he would bring to the state Senate.

“It is a passion for me to make sure we have a fair playing field where we can afford health care. The state really sets those rules," he said.

He’s also a forceful advocate for increased public transit in the Bay Area. He hopes to extend the Central Subway and create a second Transbay Tube to keep up with the area’s population growth.

“The more I’ve worked on these issues locally and regionally, the more I’ve seen what a critical role the state Legislature and the governor play. The state doesn’t do enough,” Wiener said.

Wiener is also known for confronting controversial issues. In 2012 he authored a bill to ban public nudity throughout San Francisco. Critics said it showed he's more conservative than his constituents and out of touch with the city’s liberal views on self-expression.

So far, Wiener's campaign has raised more than twice as much money as his opponent's. He has also landed big endorsements, including Leno, the state Democratic Party and Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate. But for Kim, being short on big-name backers is nothing new.

"I’ve never had a lot of endorsements in my now five races running for office," Kim said.

At 7:30 am on a recent Tuesday morning, Kim was in Washington Square in North Beach greeting commuters on their way to work. Several dozen Asian-American seniors stood in the park doing tai chi. Others sat on benches speaking Cantonese as Kim, who is Korean-American, made the rounds, introducing herself and describing her campaign values.

Kim represents District 6, which runs from the Tenderloin to South Beach and includes the poorest and wealthiest ZIP codes in the city. In this stratified region, Kim is familiar with income inequality.

"It used to be a talk about the divide between the rich and the poor," she said, "but we’re really now talking about a divide between the ultrawealthy and everybody else."

Kim got her start in the Green Party but became a Democrat in 2008. She was the president of the San Francisco Board of Education and was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2010.

"I completely fell in love with the work of legislating," she said.

Today, she is known as an aggressive supporter of increased affordable housing in San Francisco. She says she'd like to see more money spent on schools and less on incarceration, which is why she was against a new San Francisco jail.

One of Kim’s most radical ideas in her campaign has been to make City College free for all San Francisco residents, a plan that would be paid for by a property tax on buildings worth over $5 million.

She supports laws to increase police accountability and last week became the first member of the Board of Supervisors to call for the police chief to be replaced, following a series of fatal officer-involved shootings and accusations of bias in the department. SFPD Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned Thursday afternoon, hours after a fatal police shooting of a woman in the Bayview.

In 2012, Kim walked a fine line as a legislator when voting to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi after he was charged with domestic violence.

"I had lost my faith in Sheriff Mirkarimi's ability to lead," she said. But while Wiener and other supervisors voted to remove the sheriff, Kim voted to reinstate him.

"Under the law, I could not find a reason to remove the sheriff from office, based on what our City Charter said. It would have been much easier for me politically to say that I am opposed to domestic violence and I'm going to vote to remove the sheriff, but I didn’t do that," she said.

A lighting rod in the race between Kim and Wiener has been homelessness in the Bay Area. The issue erupted in February when Super Bowl 50 party organizers wanted to do something about homeless residents in downtown San Francisco. Wiener supports removing tent encampments, but Kim said they should be allowed, under the proposed "Right to Rest" law for California. The candidates sparred over the issue during a recent debate.

"When we don’t allow people to sleep in our parks or on vacant streets, we're just moving them in front of our doorsteps," Kim said.

Wiener opposes the law.

"This law would make it 100 percent legal to pitch a tent on the sidewalk, and the city would not be able to do anything about it," he responded.

Political analysts call the choice between the Democrats an ideological one: Kim, the fiery progressive, motivated by social activism, or Wiener, the practical moderate, known as a consensus builder.

With both candidates likely to continue on past the June 7 primary, District 11 voters will have another five months to figure out whose side they're on.