Ballot measure adds twist to SF race for District 2 supervisor

Photo: Jessica Christian, The Chronicle Nick Josefowitz, candidate for BART Board in the upcoming November...

A candidate in a tightly contested race to represent San Francisco’s Marina district is financing a June ballot measure to set lifetime term limits at the Board of Supervisors, which would disqualify his main challenger.

Nick Josefowitz, who serves on BART’s Board of Directors, has thrown $82,000 toward a measure that would bar anyone from serving as mayor or supervisor in San Francisco for more than two four-year terms. It would prevent former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier from running against him in November to represent District Two, the posh northern area of the city that includes the Marina, Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights and the Presidio.

Alioto-Pier, who has announced her intention to run, would oppose Josefowitz and two other candidates for the seat of termed-out Supervisor Mark Farrell.

The measure would shift the axis of power in San Francisco, blunting career politicians and opening the door to newcomers. The term-limit question plunges the city into a classic American debate over whether voters are best served by frequent turnover among their representatives, or whether it’s better for politicians to take the time to learn the job and form relationships with their colleagues.

Term limits vary in other California cities. If the San Francisco ballot measure passes, then the city would more closely resemble Los Angeles, which restricts its City Council members to three lifetime terms and its mayor to two terms. Oakland, by contrast, has no term limits for City Council members. As a result, one council member, Larry Reid, has held his seat since 1997.

Josefowitz and the measure’s main proponent, Corey Smith, have gathered more than 2,500 signatures since submitting their proposal to the Department of Elections last month. The department will have to certify 51,340 signatures for the measure to qualify in June.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Nick Josefowitz, (left) a candidate for San Francisco Supervisor...

Smith and Josefowitz insist that they are simply trying to fix what they view as a loophole in the City’s Charter. The current law, enacted in 1990, limits every mayor and supervisor to two back-to-back terms, but allows them to run again after four years.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a big political kerfuffle,” Josefowitz said of his proposal.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin won a third term to represent District Three — Chinatown, North Beach and Telegraph Hill — in 2015, years after his stint from 2001 to 2009. He would not be affected by the ballot measure, which says that supervisors who have served twice but are in office when the measure is approved can complete their term and run for re-election.

Even so, Peskin called the measure a “self-serving political move.”

Josefowitz parried, stressing the need for “new energy, new ideas and new leadership to confront the challenges we’re facing today.”

He and Smith said a small class of entrenched politicians could ossify in City Hall unless term limits were clearly spelled out.

“With younger folks, there’s a feeling of frustration with how stuff is being handled,” said Smith, executive director of San Francisco’s moderate-leaning United Democratic Club and an organizer for the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, a group that exhorts city leaders to build more housing.

At one point, Smith also stood to benefit if the ballot measure passed. Before Mayor Ed Lee’s sudden death on Dec. 12, Smith was considering a bid in 2020 to succeed Supervisor London Breed in District Five, which includes the Haight, Fillmore and the Western Addition. He anticipated a challenge from former Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represented District Eight — the Castro and Noe Valley neighborhoods — from 2003 to 2011. Dufty’s home in the lower Haight was lumped into Breed’s district after the lines were redrawn in 2012.

Smith said that after Lee’s death he set his own political ambitions aside and will support a candidate in the June race for mayor. Dufty, who serves on the BART Board with Josefowitz and is a friend of Alioto-Pier, said he won’t run for the District Five seat, which could open in November if Breed enters and wins the mayor’s race in June.

Breed is serving as acting mayor, a temporary position that does not require her to give up her supervisor seat. The board is expected to appoint an interim mayor in January.

Dufty opposes the term-limits measure.

“I’m astounded that someone who is seeking to be elected as supervisor is basically trying to curtail voter choice,” he said of Josefowitz.

Alioto-Pier called it bad public policy for Josefowitz to draft a Charter amendment that would impede the person he perceives as his main opponent.

She said that San Francisco’s existing law, with its mandatory four-year break, prevents anyone from attaining “an insurmountable amount of power.”

She added that long-serving politicians get better with experience.

“Take Gov. Jerry Brown, for example,” she said. Brown, who is serving his fourth term in office, was exempted from a state term-limit law approved in 1990 because it passed after he had served two terms.

“There’s definitely a learning curve for these types of jobs,” said Joe Tuman, a professor of communications at San Francisco State University who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Oakland in 2010 and 2014.

Josefowitz argued that some politicians become complacent and insulated after holding office for a number of years.

The problem with incumbency became clear to Josefowitz, he said, when he ran for the BART Board of Directors in 2014 against James Fang, who had held the seat for 24 years.

“He wasn’t showing up to meetings, he didn’t have new ideas, he was thinking about other stuff,” said Josefowitz, who beat Fang in a surprise upset.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelswan