Trevor Chandler for District 9 Supervisor
Key
😍 Perfect 😃 Great! 😐 Fine or not enough info 🤔 Questionable 😩 Quite bad
The Board of Supervisors are some of the most important elected officials we’ll vote for this November. We’ll be rolling out our endorsements over the next month, so check back here for updates and deep dives into why we’ve selected each of our endorsed candidates.
Why he’s our first choice:
Trevor Chandler is an educator, and it shows in the tenacious way he’s campaigned. Over the past year, Chandler has knocked on thousands of doors, talking face-to-face with voters and clearly explaining why he’s the best choice for District 9. Chandler has made it clear through these conversations that he understands residents’ concerns on issues important to the district like tent encampments, small businesses struggling, and public safety—and that he is willing to work to solve them. More broadly, Chandler has spent his political career managing organizers and campaigns, successfully passing human rights measures and lobbying against anti-LGBTQ legislation in other states, and he was just elected to the Democratic County Central Committee. Chandler’s work ethic and determination will serve District 9 well—residents haven’t had a supervisor that’s focused on constituents or the district for a long time. Chandler’s policy positions make this clear, such as supporting a fully-staffed police department and consolidating street outreach teams. We support Trevor Chandler for supervisor because he’s a natural leader who will focus on his constituents and produce the results District 9 needs to thrive.
Political Experience 😃
An experienced organizer at the local and national level
Trevor Chandler has a vast amount of political organizing experience, working on marriage equality and human rights campaigns in Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island. Part of being a supervisor is organizing residents around shared goals for the district and rallying support for legislation, so this experience should serve Chandler well on the Board. His DCCC win demonstrates his strength as a campaigner, and he’s kept that momentum going through his race for supervisor. Chandler has the political background and local knowledge to deliver real solutions for San Francisco.
Past Policy 😃
Delivering wins his whole career
Throughout his political career, Chandler has fought for human rights and delivered wins that improve people’s lives, both at the state level and hyper-locally. Working with the Human Rights Campaign, Chandler fought for marriage equality across the United States. While on the California State Board of Pharmacy, he pushed insurance companies to expand access to HIV treatment and prevention medicine for more people. And while he was on San Francisco’s Eastern Neighborhoods Citizens Advisory Committee, he fought for pedestrian safety, pushing the city to paint more crosswalks in District 9.
Proposed Policy 😍
Focused on policy that works, not buzzwords
Chandler combines innovative, genuinely progressive policy with an understanding of what programs actually work to improve people’s lives. He knows that improving the structure of a system can deliver better outcomes than programs alone can. For example, Chandler believes San Francisco will only be able to solve our housing crisis by cutting the red tape that’s currently choking housing supply. To reduce drug overdose deaths, he wants to consolidate crisis outreach teams to improve coordination, while monitoring how effective city departments and nonprofit partners are at getting people into treatment and increasing the city’s supply of treatment beds. To improve public safety, he supports a fully-staffed and modernized police department, with access to the same technology other cities use to reduce crime. Chandler seems to understand that good liberal governance can be a force for change, and wants to be that change for District 9.
Don’t Forget
Trevor is a fighter, taking the fight for human rights to places that weren’t necessarily receptive to his message and won. We believe Chandler can bring this skillset to bear to win in District 9, and carry that tenacity over as a Supervisor.
About Opponent Jackie Fielder
Why we’re not ranking her: Jackie Fielder is an ideologue who has more experience as an activist than as a legislator. That appeals to some voters, and the catchy slogans that Fielder likes work for protest marches. But supervisors need to represent ALL the residents in their districts, not just niche groups. Fielder repeatedly takes positions on important issues that are out of touch with voters, and advocates for policies that have had disastrous effects in the real world. We’re leaving Jackie Fielder off our ballot because her uncompromising, niche positions are not what District 9 needs.
Political Experience 😐
Activist experience with almost no governing experience
Fielder has limited leadership and governing experience, but has been active politically in San Francisco with the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Fielder ran for State Senate in 2020, losing to Scott Wiener in that race but raising her political profile. She controlled Daybreak PAC, a local political action committee that’s been under investigation for campaign finance violations, until shutting down the operation to run for supervisor.
Past Policy 😩
“Vibes” aren’t effective policy
Fielder has consistently advocated for status quo policies that have proven to be failures, like housing first to solve homelessness, or wellness hubs to solve the drug crisis. Fielder has repeatedly called for the defunding and abolishment of law enforcement, calling her 2020 State Senate platform on police “Disarm and Defund.” And she’s questioned the long-term value of an illegal vending ban along Mission Street despite it being an effective remediation for fencing operations.
Proposed Policy 😩
Stuck on policies that are proven failures
Fielder’s past policies may be trendy and sound nice in theory, but in a district especially affected by rising crime, homelessness, and drug use, a real solution to these overlapping crises should be Fielder’s top priority. Instead, her proposed policy would be a disaster for San Francisco if it were implemented. Fielder proposes reducing police presence in neighborhoods, and is calling to reduce budgets for SFPD and the Sheriff. That would make the extreme staffing shortages in those departments even worse—Fielder doesn’t have a plan to address the shortages because she wants to eliminate those departments. She demands 100 percent affordable housing, but since most affordable housing is funded with impact fees from market-rate housing, her policy would result in zero new housing. Government works when elected officials craft legislation that’s based on data and best practices that have been proven to work elsewhere. Unfortunately, Fielder’s ideology doesn’t allow for that kind of flexibility.
Other Considerations
Roberto Hernandez
We would also recommend taking a look at Roberto Hernandez if a second vote feels necessary to keep Fielder off the Board of Supervisors. Nobody in this race knows the Mission like Hernandez, who was born there in 1956 and never left. He’s been an activist his whole career—his father worked with the United Farm Workers, and Hernandez began his own career as an activist in response to the police treatment of lowriding in the 1970’s. He formed the San Francisco Lowrider Council in 1981, and co-founded the Latino Task Force in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mostly known for its extensive COVID-19 testing and information campaign in the Mission, the Latino Task Force was a coalition of Mission-based nonprofits, activists, and elected officials. While we don’t share all of Hernandez’s goals or views, his knowledge of how the Mission works is undeniably strong.
District 9 includes the Mission District, Bernal Heights and Portola.
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