The June electoral battle to represent District 2 on the Board of Supervisors might come down to one issue: the Family Zoning plan that The City adopted in December aiming to promote denser residential development to meet state mandates, largely in northern and western neighborhoods.
Current Supervisor Stephen Sherrill — who was appointed to fill a vacant seat by former Mayor London Breed in December 2024 — unabashedly touts his vote in favor of the upzoning plan, which was championed by Mayor Daniel Lurie. He said in an interview that the plan can help make The City more affordable to many, and more inviting to families.
“I’m incredibly proud of my work on the Family Zoning Plan,” said Sherrill, who prior to his appointment as supervisor had been director of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation.
“There’s no question that we have a housing crisis here in San Francisco,” said Sherrill, who has Lurie’s endorsement in the race. “We have to expand the opportunity to build housing — and zoning is about opportunity.”
Challenger Lori Brooke, on the other hand, a longtime neighborhood activist, said the Family Zoning vote was “a huge test” for Sherrill.
“I think the neighborhood felt that he failed that test,” she said.
Brooke co-founded a group called Neighborhoods United SF that is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the adequacy of The City’s analysis of the Family Zoning plan under the California Environmental Quality Act, including its potential negative effects on affordable housing.
“He was delivering for a different set of constituents than the actual voters who live here,” said Brooke, a first-time candidate for elected city office who has also been the president of the Cow Hollow Association for 19 years. “We can create the housing we need without destroying the neighborhoods we love.”
District 2 includes the Marina, Pacific Heights, Cow Hollow, and Presidio Heights — all relatively wealthy areas. It also stretches southward in swaths, including along Van Ness Avenue almost to City Hall.
Whichever of the two candidates wins in June will finish out the term of Catherine Stefani, who left when she was elected in November 2024 to the state Assembly. Another election for a full term in the seat will be held in November.
While Sherrill references vacant storefronts and says business owners are crying out for more residents both to serve and to employ as workers, Brooke paints a picture of beloved neighborhood commercial corridors potentially damaged by the replacement of smaller buildings with taller structures because of the Family Zoning plan.
The “cleavage” on the upzoning issue could determine the race if it proves to be close, said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at San Francisco State University.
McDaniel said Sherrill initially faced the challenge of becoming known in the community after his appointment, but he appears to have succeeded in building his profile.
“It seems to me he’s mostly passed that part of the test,” McDaniel said. “Now, it’s whether the vote for Family Zoning is going to be something that makes him very vulnerable.”
Sherrill and others say approval of the zoning plan was imperative to avoid missing a Jan. 31 state deadline, after which the The City potentially faced the “builder’s remedy,” under which it could be forced to approve any proposed projects that meet basic standards, as well as the loss of more than $100 million per year in state funding.
The plan is designed to satisfy a state requirement that The City plan for the building of 82,069 new housing units by 2031, plus a 15% buffer, for a total of 94,300 homes.
“The Family Zoning Plan is about being as thoughtful as possible within the constraints of state law,” Sherrill said.
Meanwhile, Brooke insists that Sherrill should have voted no and gained leverage.
“I will push back, and I am not a rubber stamp,” she said.
Sherrill says he is part of a “pragmatic, moderate” Board of Supervisors that is aligned with the mayor and is making “real progress.”
That stance has apparently helped him raise significantly more money for his campaign than Brooke has. Sherrill’s campaign said that he had raised $246,208 for the June election as of this week, plus $252,000 in public funds.
A separate committee of Sherill’s for the November election had raised just more than $150,000 in contributions.
Donors to the two committees have included business and cultural elites in San Francisco and elsewhere, including Garry Tan, CEO of tech investor Y Combinator; tech investor Ron Conway; Justin Osofsky, head of partnerships and business development at Meta; and fashion designer Tory Burch of Manhattan. One $500 donation came from billionaire Gap heir Robert Fisher.
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Another independent committee supporting Sherrill had raised $26,000 in contributions as of March 31, including $15,000 from Diana Nelson, a director at private investment firm Carlson and chair of the board of trustees at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, according to the museum’s website. Yet another independent committee called SF Believes reported spending $25,000 to support Sherrill.
Brooke’s campaign said she had raised about $150,000 in contributions and received $203,000 in public funds as of March 26.
Contributors included Douglas Engmann, a finance-industry veteran who was former president of the city Planning Commission and chairman of the Pacific Stock Exchange; Paul Melbostad, an attorney and former San Francisco Ethics Commission president; and Christin Evans, co-owner of the Booksmith bookstore and the Alembic bar and restaurant in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Evans is a founding board member of Small Business Forward, one of the plaintiffs in the Family Zoning lawsuit against The City.
Sherrill joined The City’s Office of Innovation in October 2022 as a product manager after working locally in the private sector, and he became director of the office in April 2024. He had been a White House intern in George W. Bush’s administration and a senior policy advisor in the mayoral administration of Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City who spent almost $1.5 million supporting Breed’s unsuccessful 2024 mayoral campaign.
The Mayor’s Office of Innovation has also received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, a nonprofit tied to Bloomberg.
Brooke said Sherrill “parachuted into this District 2 job” with the appointment from Breed, who had lost reelection, and that some people said that “it looked like a quid pro quo.”
Sherrill said that he went through “a very competitive appointment process, and I think over the last 15 months, I’m very proud of my focus on constituent services, on showing up for residents, on being available, on being responsive and on delivering.”
Sherrill cited as an example of delivering for his constituents his ongoing effort with District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter to set up a process that could provide relief from fire-code requirements that call for about 126 existing high-rise residential buildings to have sprinkler systems. Sherrill said that mandate could pose a high cost for residents, including renters on fixed incomes.
“We can’t be treating people like money just grows on trees,” he said. “We have to be thoughtful.”
Brooke sought to link Sherrill to the “values that come from” President Donald Trump’s administration and the Make America Great Again movement, citing among other things his work in the Bush administration and the fact that his businessman father, who gave money to support Sherrill’s candidacy, has contributed heavily to Republicans.
Sherrill, however, said he registered with the Democratic party in 2023 after more than a decade as an independent. He said he’s “incredibly proud to be the endorsed candidate of the San Francisco Democratic Party.”
President Barack Obama’s candidacy in 2008 was “a watershed moment in my political awakening,” he said.
Sherrill did not talk about Brooke directly. But when asked about policy differences, Sherrill highlighted his support for a proposed parcel tax that Mayor Lurie has championed to fund the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Muni services. Beginning in July, the agency is facing a $307 million deficit that is projected to increase from there.
Sherrill said he adamantly supports a November ballot measure — for which signatures are currently being gathered — on the tax. He called it vital to The City’s fortunes, which have been slowly recovering following a sharp post-COVID-19 downturn.
“I can’t speak highly enough about making sure that Muni is fully funded, and I can’t understand any candidate who wouldn’t agree with that,” he said.
Brooke, by contrast, declined to give a yes or no answer on whether she supported a parcel tax. She provided a statement saying that Muni is “essential,” but it also said, “The City has invested billions into transit in past years, and we are still facing deficits, which has raised real concerns about how funds are being managed.”
“I am open to long-term funding solutions, but they must be paired with real accountability and a clear focus on improving the rider experience,” it said.
In addition to her work with Neighborhoods United SF — a coalition of groups centered on planning issues — and the Cow Hollow Association, Brooke co-founded an organization called RescueSF focused on responses to homelessness. She touts that she is a third-generation San Franciscan and said she is not seeking office as “a political stepping stone.”
She said the Family Zoning plan was a final straw after she and others had felt in recent years a disregard for “the voice of the residents” as a result of “top-down” policies, including laws by state Sen. Scott Wiener, who has authored legislation streamlining housing-production rules. She pointed out that Wiener has endorsed Sherrill.
“The breaking point was when Stephen [Sherrill] voted yes on the Family Zoning plan, because he ignored his constituents in taking that vote,” Brooke said. “And when I say constituents, I mean 60 neighborhood associations, small-business groups, tenant-advocacy groups, affordable-housing developers — all of us banded together in Neighborhoods United SF.”
But Sherrill insisted that his office, which successfully pushed for some modifications of the Family Zoning plan, considered the package’s implications for the district on a “parcel by parcel” basis and met extensively with constituents.
“This was a community process, about community engagement, from Day One,” he said.