San Francisco supervisor Jackie Fielder is in a hospital and said she is planning to resign her post. The supervisor and District 9 representative said she is stepping down 14 months into the job.
Fielder has been absent from City Hall for about two weeks. She said she was not well in a brief phone conversation Friday before saying she would only take in-person interviews on her resignation from a city hospital. Front-desk workers at the hospital told reporters that Fielder could not take visitors and that she was in the care of medical staff. Her condition was unclear.
“Jackie Fielder is going through an acute personal health crisis right now and we are not at liberty to share details, but we appreciate the support people have given us and are proud of her for taking care of herself,” read a statement from Fielder’s office.
The Board of Supervisors clerk’s office said it had received no notice of any resignation.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, in a statement, did not speak to the possible resignation but wished Fielder a fast recovery.
“I am sending Supervisor Fielder my best wishes for a speedy recovery,” the statement read. “She is a dedicated advocate for her community. I am encouraging everyone to give her the time and space to get better so she can do that work fully, and I’m wishing her strength and all the best for her health.”
Similar messages poured forth from Mission District groups like Calle 24 and the Latino Task Force, congressional candidates, and even current and former political rivals.
Lurie would have the power to appoint Fielder’s replacement if she goes through with a formal resignation, giving him a highly sympathetic bloc on an already-moderate Board of Supervisors. He exercised this power last year to replace outgoing District 4 supervisor Joel Engardio in what became a fiasco — his replacement, Beya Alcaraz, resigned just seven days into the job after reporters unearthed damning details of her past work.
Fielder is San Francisco’s left-most supervisor, a democratic socialist elected to represent the Mission District, Bernal Heights and Portola neighborhoods in a 2024 election that saw the city’s Board of Supervisors swing to the right after years of progressive control.
Fielder won her election easily, however, beating her chief rival, who had the backing of the city’s Democratic Party establishment and tens of thousands in third-party spending, in a 60-40 landslide.
Her tenure has been marked by acts that went against Mayor Lurie’s policies: Last year she pushed a law to end the city’s 90-day limit for homeless family shelter stays, voted against Lurie’s housing upzoning plan, and sought to probe an “eyebrow raising” $5.9 million contract signed by Lurie’s office with a favored tech firm.
She also called for an audit into the troubled Parks Alliance nonprofit, successfully passed regulations on drone delivery, and proposed a new city tax to fund what would be the city’s first public bank.
Fielder graduated from Stanford University in 2016 and became a public-bank organizer and a Dakota Access Pipeline protester before turning to electoral politics. She ran against Sen. Scott Wiener in an unsuccessful 2020 bid for California State Senate. At 31, she is one of the city’s youngest ever supervisors.
Disclosure: This reporter briefly worked with Jackie Fielder in 2018 at The Worker Agency, a communications firm.