SF moderates win control of Board of Supervisors

Ahsha Safai, candidate for supervisor in District 11, speaks to supporters during a get-out-the-vote rally at Balboa Park on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Ahsha Safai, candidate for supervisor in District 11, speaks to supporters during a get-out-the-vote rally at Balboa Park on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close SF moderates win control of Board of Supervisors 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

Ahsha Safai has won the supervisorial seat representing San Francisco’s southernmost neighborhoods, a victory that returns the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors to moderates and gives Mayor Ed Lee a significant boost as he enters his final three years in office.

Progressives gained a 6-5 majority last year when Supervisor Aaron Peskin won back his former seat against an incumbent whom Lee had appointed to the board. Safai’s victory in the race to replace termed-out Supervisor John Avalos will once again give moderates the majority — and Lee an edge in forming policy on such issues as homelessness and housing development.

Safai led four other candidates after the initial vote count in the Nov. 8 election to represent supervisorial District 11, which includes the Outer Mission, Excelsior, Crocker-Amazon and Oceanview/Merced/Ingleside neighborhoods. After Tuesday’s vote-count update and ranked-choice sifting, he led the No. 2 candidate, progressive-backed Kim Alvarenga, by 412 votes — an advantage of 51 to 49 percent. With only a few hundred ballots left to be counted, Safai’s election is assured.

“Ahsha’s election means we will have a new board majority that seeks to work with the mayor, not just against him, to protect San Francisco’s values in this new era and practically address the city’s challenges, too,” said Tony Winnicker, a senior adviser to Lee who took a leave from his City Hall job to work on the November election. Among other things, he advised an independent expenditure committee, Progress San Francisco, that spent heavily in support of Safai. The committee had about 30 donors, many of them major technology companies and their executives.

Relations between the board and Lee hit a low this fall as the progressives put four measures on the ballot that would have taken away power from the mayor. Voters defeated all four.

“We have not seen a decent working relationship between the board and the mayor for a while,” said Jason McDaniel, associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. He said he expected the climate to improve with a moderate board majority, provided Lee doesn’t push his advantage too far.

“If we characterize what the progressives did as overreach, it’s incumbent on the mayor not to make the same mistake,” McDaniel said.

In all, six of 11 supervisorial seats were up for election this month, five of them held by progressives. District 11 was the only one of the five that the progressives lost.

Safai resists being labeled a moderate, and said Tuesday, “I don’t think I fit neatly into either category.” He had the support of some progressives, including Supervisors Norman Yee and Jane Kim, both of whom endorsed Safai and Alvarenga.

“It really remains to be seen how Ahsha will act as a policymaker when he gets on the Board of Supervisors,” Kim said.

Lee, however, seems to think he can count on Safai — he was the only candidate for supervisor the mayor endorsed. And Avalos also made clear what he thinks of his replacement, calling Safai “a mix of incompetence and conflicting promises and allegiances. It’ll be hard to predict what the chameleon would do one minute to the next.”

The Iranian-born Safai, 43, is political director of the Service Employees International Union Local 87, which represents private-sector janitors — a job he is expected to give up after he is sworn in on Jan. 8. In addition to Progress San Francisco, major campaign contributors included construction trade groups and the union representing city firefighters.

The other new supervisor-elects who will be sworn in with Safai are school board member Sandra Lee Fewer, who will replace Supervisor Eric Mar in District One, and Hillary Ronen, who will replace Supervisor David Campos in District Nine. Both incumbents are termed out. Yee, Peskin and board President London Breed easily won re-election.

Although their seats will remain in progressive hands, the departures of Campos and Mar will probably have a profound impact on the board. Campos was an outspoken, combative presence who frequently sparred with the mayor. Mar was less pugnacious but also adversarial toward Lee.

The new board will have several challenges when it convenes for the first time in January, including deciding how to cut the city’s budget if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his threat to end federal funding for sanctuary cities.

Video: Ed Lee vows to fight Trump on sanctuary cities

It will also have to grapple with long-standing problems that include homelessness and housing. Over the last year, the moderates and progressives have bitterly clashed over how to address these dual crises.

The moderates generally support allowing the city to remove homeless encampments on short notice, which progressives criticize as inhumane. The moderates also tend to be more supportive of market-rate housing — alongside affordable housing — while progressives want to see a greater percentage of subsidized housing in proportion to market-rate developments.

The new board will soon make a decision that could influence development for years to come: the percentage of below-market-rate housing that developers must set aside in new projects.

In June, voters passed a charter amendment requiring 25 percent of units to be sold or rented at below-market prices — an increase from 12 percent — but left it to the supervisors to amend the percentage. Progressives have argued that 25 percent is the right goal, while moderates have largely sided with developers who fear that requirement will drive new housing out of the city.

That vote is likely to come up early next year.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen