\u201cThose bright, sunny, walkable commercial corridors can now have six to eight stories on it. This was a wrong plan. It should never have been approved,\u201d Brooke said, to loud claps, whistles, and cheers from the audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
District 2, made up of the wealthy Marina, Pacific Heights, Cow Hollow, and Presidio Heights neighborhoods, is generally more reticent to allow new housing in the area.<\/p>\n
The area had 1,465 units of new housing construction since 2005 \u2014 about 3 percent of the city\u2019s total 52,711 during that period.<\/p>\n
Neighborhoods United SF, which Brooke co-founded, is part of a coalition currently suing the city to block the upzoning plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sherrill, who was appointed District 2 supervisor<\/a> by outgoing Mayor London Breed in December 2024, voted for the plan. But at the debate, as he has previously<\/a>, he distanced himself from it, pointing out that the upzoning was mandated by the state. If he hadn\u2019t voted for it, he said, the state would have taken over San Francisco\u2019s ability to approve new housing, essentially allowing buildings of any height to be built anywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJust saying no and risking a state takeover of local zoning can lead to devastating, devastating consequences to this city,\u201d Sherrill said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s appropriate to just light yourself on fire and risk absolute disaster and catastrophic consequences.\u201d He also got claps \u2014 but they were noticeably quieter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brooke pushed back on Sherrill, saying that state takeover wasn\u2019t the \u201creal issue.\u201d That, she said, were YIMBY state laws \u2014 the ones that required upzoning and allowed a 25-story building<\/a> to be proposed on the current site of the Marina Safeway<\/a> right by the waterfront.\u00a0<\/p>\n This did not let Sherrill off the hook. \u201cMy opponent says he doesn\u2019t like [the Marina Safeway development], which is good, but he is endorsed by the very senator and the YIMBY organizations that wrote and championed the laws that made it possible,\u201d Brooke said. Unlike Sherrill, she said, she would push back strongly against Sacramento.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sherrill, for his part, said, \u201cI absolutely urge our state representatives to reform some of these laws.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout the debate, hosted by D2Unite and ConnectedSF Institute, Sherrill emphasized his moderate bona fides and his connection to Mayor Daniel Lurie.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve all seen what happens when we have alignment on the Board of Supervisors, a pragmatic, moderate, thoughtful Board of Supervisors with a pragmatic, moderate mayor,\u201d Sherrill said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we see the reset that we\u2019ve seen in City Hall, when we see the reset in San Francisco on the rise, it\u2019s about results,\u201d he added, echoing language often used<\/a> by the mayor, who has endorsed Sherrill.<\/p>\n Brooke, meanwhile, pitched herself as an \u201cindependent voice\u201d in City Hall.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200b\u200bI bring independence, I bring very deep knowledge of this community, and I do know my way around City Hall,\u201d she said. As president of the Cow Hollow Association and a co-founder of other groups, she was on the front lines of quality of life issues in the district, like parking, graffiti, clean streets, and more, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re kind of like a shadow supervisor,\u201d she said. \u201cWe take the first hit of what people need.\u201d<\/p>\n As of Dec. 31,\u00a0 Sherrill is backed by almost twice as much money<\/a> ($300,000) as Brooke ($160,000). All of Brooke\u2019s donations have been from individual donors, contributing $500 or less. Sherrill\u2019s campaign, meanwhile, has also been backed by $17,000 from GrowSF<\/a>, a moderate political action committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cars and Drugs<\/p>\n Other questions focused on street safety and drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both Sherrill and Brooke said they think drug dealers with prior convictions should serve mandatory jail time. (\u201cThank you,\u201d said Moriarty.) Both also agreed that fully staffing the police department was a high priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Sherrill and Brooke took slightly different approaches when asked what the city should do about the handful of mentally ill and drug addicted people that congregate on Chestnut Street.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sherrill said the city needs to employ conservatorships more, which would allow the city to mandate drug treatment. \u201cIt is not compassionate to leave people sitting out there,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brooke wants the city to use its existing tools, including 5150 holds, in which a person is held involuntarily for up to 72 hours because they pose a danger to themself or others, but ultimately said she also supports expanding conservatorships. \u201cConservatorships should be a tool of last resort,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another big topic: transportation. Both candidates agreed that Market Street should be reopened to cars (a few people booed, then some cheered). They also both agreed that new housing developments should include more parking.\u00a0<\/p>\n The city should not prioritize any \u201csingle mode\u201d of transportation and should give \u201cappropriate\u201d weight to other forms of transportation, Brooke said, pointing to frustrations over traffic and parking. The city\u2019s \u201ctransportation decisions,\u201d she said, have become \u201cless about neighborhood actual function and more about transit ideology.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sherrill was more supportive of Muni.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA fully functioning Muni is so important,\u201d he said. \u201cFor every rider who\u2019s getting on that 1X [bus line], that\u2019s one car you don\u2019t have to fight with over a parking spot.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, though, perhaps what voters were looking for was a candidate connected to the district. The first questions of the debate were about how long the candidates had lived in San Francisco and District 2 (11 years for Sherrill, 31 years for Brooke).\u00a0<\/p>\n The last question was: \u201cWhat is your favorite D2 tradition?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cD2 does Halloween really well,\u201d Sherrill said, naming streets with iconic trick or treating. \u201cYou know what my favorite is, though, is the Chestnut Street parade with all the strollers.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooke said that every Christmas morning, she goes to the Buena Vista, a bar near Fort Mason, for an Irish coffee and joins a group on a \u201cmarch through North Beach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe cool thing about it is that you see the same people year after year there,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a remarkable city. I just love it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first debate between the two candidates for San Francisco District 2 supervisor on Tuesday evening, housing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[6702,4752,12497,2781,1011,79431,101,103,102,104,106,105,1967],"class_list":["post-164156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-board-of-supervisors","tag-city-hall","tag-district-2","tag-drugs","tag-housing","tag-safe-streets","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_1571-853x640.jpeg\")
Stephen Sherrill introduces himself to the audience at a District 2 candidate debate on Feb. 3, 2026 at Convent & Stuart Hall. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_1604-853x640.jpeg\")
Lori Brooke listens at the first District 2 debate at Convent & Stuart Hall on Feb. 3, 2026. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman<\/p>\n