New San Francisco mayor excites tech community

SAN FRANCISCO -- A few weeks before San Francisco's mayoral election, a large white bus carrying a load of Google employees lumbered through the Mission district on its daily trip down Highway 101. As it approached the corner of 24th and Valencia, a crowd of protesters blocked it, yelling expletives at the company and tossing a pile of electric scooters in front of the bus, halting commuters for nearly an hour.

``Silicon Valley is killing us!'' read one sign held by an activist. ``EVICT GOOGLE'' read another.

The activists were loud, angry and impassioned. But the bus wasn't the real object of their ire.

It was about everything it symbolized: runaway growth, unaffordable housing and a widening divide between those made wealthy by tech and the rest of the Bay Area.

London Breed, San Francisco's next mayor, inherits a city divided. An African American woman from a housing project in the Western Addition who climbed to the middle class by working for local government, she must now take charge of one of the important technology centers in the world, and bridge the kind of social chasm that played out on the corner of 24th and Valencia.

When Ed Lee took over as mayor, San Francisco was reeling from unemployment. Tech solved that problem, with Salesforce, Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitter, Uber and dozens of startups catapulting San Francisco into an economic powerhouse. Now the city's most important industry faces blame for everything from the city's high housing prices and heavy traffic to its trash-laden streets. There are signs that San Franciscans, once eager to download the latest app and try the latest gadget, are wearying of their role as Silicon Valley's lab rats.

Breed drew wide support and money from key players in the tech industry during her campaign. For that very reason, she was criticized for appearing too cozy with wealthy investors, most famously Dropbox and Airbnb backer Ron Conway -- a complaint many made about Lee, too.

The new mayor will have to walk a fine line when it comes to dealing with tech, said Jason McDaniel, an associate political science professor at San Francisco State University. Breed has to ``make sure the policies she advocates for are good for the city as a whole -- not just for one industry.''

After her opponent Mark Leno, who ran on a much more progressive agenda, conceded Wednesday, some major names in tech applauded Breed's win. She was seen as the most moderate and tech-friendly candidate of the top four contenders.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who declined to endorse a candidate, told The Chronicle in a statement that he is looking forward to ``working with Mayor-elect Breed to help address our city's most pressing issues.''

Hunter Walk, a partner at San Francisco venture capital firm Homebrew who previously held key roles at Google and YouTube, said he is ``100 percent behind London Breed and voted for her.''

``Of the candidates, I believe she is the most interested in having the hard discussions about housing, growth and what a modern San Francisco looks like,'' Walk said in an email. ``Do I agree with her 100 percent on all issues? No, of course not. But I do believe she'll both listen to feedback from the tech industry while also working to hold us accountable as community members of this city.''

During the campaign, Breed urged the tech industry to support a program to provide paid internships for high school students. She also pointed to her track record as president of the Board of Supervisors to prove that she would be tough on tech.

In 2016, Breed sponsored legislation that would have put a 60-day cap on Airbnb stays. While then-mayor Lee later vetoed it, Breed was criticized for seemingly turning on the industry.

``We needed to give the law time to work,'' Breed told The Chronicle at the time. ``I said I'd be one of the first to propose amendments if we discovered the law wasn't working.''

And though Breed supports the idea of innovative transportation alternatives -- from autonomous vehicles to electric scooters -- she warned that, as mayor, she would ``make sure our streets are not laboratories for untested technology.''

Breed did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Despite her occasional clampdown on tech, independent expenditure committees for Breed still received tens of thousands of dollars from the tech industry. Contributions included $100,500 from Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, $49,000 from angel investor Chris Larsen, and $35,000 from Facebook.

Facebook and Williams declined to comment. Larsen could not be reached.

But it was the support she received from Conway that was often the subject of major criticism during the campaign. Conway is known to throw tens of thousands of dollars behind candidates he supports, and is regarded by some in City Hall as a symbol of tech greed and overreach.

After she was elected, Conway applauded her victory, saying her election was ``historic and inspiring.''

While Conway told The Chronicle he was too busy with national issues like gun control to get involved in the mayor's race this year, it didn't stop Breed's opponents from slamming her for her perceived ties to him. Rivals Leno and Jane Kim -- whose candidacies drew financial support from people in tech -- teamed up against her during the race, warning voters that ``wealthy special interests are trying to buy this election.''

But Breed has fiercely asserted her independence.

``It's really offensive when people try and imply somehow that there's this man behind the curtain who is in charge of my person,'' she told The Chronicle during the campaign. ``I've made decisions on the Board of Supervisors based on the facts, based on my understanding of the issues, and most important, based on my own life experiences.''

Tech isn't Breed's only focus,said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council.

``She has created some confidence that she will have an open door with leaders in the business community, including technology,'' he said. ``But I think she makes it pretty clear that it won't be her only interest. She cares about people, and she'll be concerned about social equity issues.''

During the campaign, she pledged to continue the late Mayor Lee's commitment to build 5,000 housing units a year; eliminate homeless camps from streets within a year by moving occupants into low-cost or supportive housing; and raise the minimum wage for certain city employees to $15.50 an hour.

McDaniel, the San Francisco State University professor, said he wouldn't be surprised if Breed took some opportunities to criticize the tech industry as a means of seeming more independent of it.

But, Jiyan Wei, co-founder of startup BuildZoom, said Breed has to be careful, since startups have options on where to put down roots. Already, he said, other venture capitalists and companies are looking outside of the city because of high office rents and housing prices for employees.

``Throwing incremental requirements (or) expenses at companies like this would essentially drive the truly profit-conscious companies that haven't achieved monopoly status out of the city,'' he said in an email.

The impact of Breed's actions toward the tech industry will be felt far outside of San Francisco, said John Whitehurst, a Democratic political consultant based in San Francisco.

``San Francisco is kind of the incubator for many progressive politics that then get replicated across America,'' he said. ``So what happens in San Francisco not only matters in the Bay Area -- but in places across the country.''

But what really matters to people like 23-year-old Sam Lew, who attended the Google bus protest a few weeks ago, is reclaiming the identity of their city that they feel has been ravaged by the tech industry.

Lew grew up in the Richmond District, and lamented how Clement Street is slowly becoming a place she doesn't recognize with new store fronts, expensive restaurants and pricey salons that people like her grandparents could never afford.

``It's not just the Mission,'' she said. ``It is the small commercial areas that used to be community owned, that are now starting to get gentrified.''

Lew, who is also the policy director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said she has been disheartened at how much more attention the city government has paid to tech companies over low-income communities.

She's hopeful Breed will change that course.

``What I would really like to see with the new mayor is accountability to the people, rather than to big corporations and tech companies,'' she said. ``And some sort of way to make sure that they pay their fair share of being in the city.''