Some SF City Hall gossip is rearing its head again alleging that former SF Mayor London Breed appointed Supervisor Stephen Sherrill in order to score a job with big-bucks benefactor Michael Bloomberg.
One of the puzzling mysteries of San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed era was Breed’s never-explained but very loyal allegiance to billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Breed very puzzlingly endorsed Bloomberg for president in January 2020, when Bloomberg was polling in the low single-digits (barely ahead of Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang). Fast forward to 2024, and Bloomberg gave more than $1 million to get Breed reelected, though of course she was not reelected.
And there was more Bloomberg-related head-scratching when during Breed’s final days in office, she nominated the complete unknown Stephen Sherrill to the supervisor seat that District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani was vacating. Sherrill was a former Bloomberg boy, having worked for years in Bloomberg’s NYC Mayor’s office. Sherrill was also formerly a George W. Bush intern (unusual for an SF politico) and a registered Republican up until 2009 (also unusual for an SF politico).
And many (ourselves included) wondered aloud if Breed was not appointing Sherrill specifically to butter up Michael Bloomberg for a future job. Mission Local also put it plainly on the day Sherrill was appointed, saying, “today’s appointment carries the whiff of transactionality. It will be more than a mere whiff if Breed assumes a future role under the aegis of Bloomberg.”
And now those vague rumors of a backroom deal are in the media again. The New York Post’s new right-wing gossip publication called the California Post resuscitated the rumor of Breed appointing Sherrill in a possible quid-pro-quo in an article last month. The Post claims that Breed appointed Sherrill “in the hopes of landing a job” in the Bloomberg universe, though their proof of this seems thin. They merely attribute this to “two sources with direct knowledge of Breed’s conversations surrounding the appointment.” Seems vague.
Yet on Monday, Mission Local’s Joe Eskenazi had a lengthy essay seeming to confirm the Sherrill and Breed scuttlebutt. “My own sources close to the former mayor have described this [California Post] article as 100 percent accurate,” Eskenazi wrote.
Breed is indignant at the accusations.
“The implication that I would make a decision based on personal employment prospects is not only incorrect, it is offensive and deeply disrespectful to the work I have done and the leadership record I built over many years in public service,” Breed said in a statement to the California Post.
Sherill’s campaign too said in a statement Mission Local that “The facts are straightforward. Supervisor Sherrill was appointed based on his executive experience at City Hall and a record of results.”
And we should note that if there was any sort of deal, Breed got shockingly little in return. Her January “return to the public eye” interview in the New York Times notes a six-month stipend job with the Bloomberg-funded Aspen Institute, but a six-month gig hardly seems enough to hand someone a plum City Hall job for in a back-room deal.
Or maybe to some people it is? Either way, Sherrill is up for reelection in the June 2 primary. His challenger is Lori Brooke, who seems to be a single-issue candidate whose whole rationale for running is opposition to Mayor Lurie’s upzoning plans (and of course opposing the proposed Marina Safeway redevelopment).
But if this salacious rumor ever turns into more than a salacious rumor, an opponent of Stephen Sherrill would have something else to run against him on.
Image: Stephen Sherrill via Facebook