Vallie Brown was an inspired choice to represent San Francisco’s District Five, an eclectic collection of neighborhoods that includes Inner Sunset, Haight-Ashbury, Fillmore/Western Addition, Japantown and Lower Pacific Heights. Brown knows the area well, having lived in the district for more than 20 years and advocating for it in City Hall as an aide to two supervisors, Ross Mirkarimi and London Breed.

Upon becoming mayor, Breed’s decision to appoint Brown as successor was especially noteworthy because their politics are not always aligned. Brown is to the left of the mayor, which is about right for a decidedly progressive district. Breed barely defeated tenant lawyer Dean Preston for re-election in 2016 in a race widely viewed as a contest between a moderate and a progressive purist.

Preston is back on the ballot this year, casting himself as a democratic socialist, but his attempts to cast the incumbent as too centrist for the district are more difficult this time.

Brown identifies as progressive, but she also is pragmatic and committed to “bringing people together.”

The distinction between the two — realist versus ideologue — is particularly evident when it comes to housing. They both advocate a push for more affordable housing, but Brown recognizes that “we need all types of housing” and that city requirements on percentages set aside for lower-income residents cannot be so severe that projects don’t pencil out. “We’re talking about private developers,” she told our editorial board.

Preston, by contrast, is all about mandates and taxes. He wants to put a vacancy tax on unoccupied residential units. He scoffs at the notion that San Francisco isn’t building enough market-rate housing. He wants to layer another tax on large city businesses — similar to last year’s Proposition C on homelessness — to immediately cut Muni fares in half, with a goal of eventually making the system free.

Brown had a sharp on-the-ground response: The priority is to fix Muni, not make it free. San Franciscans would be willing to pay for Muni if they could get where they were going on time, she said.

One of the revealing exchanges at our editorial board meeting with the candidates involved the response to an uptick in property crime.

“Police need to step up. ... They need to get out of their cars” as a deterrent, Brown said.

Preston would take a softer approach: enlisting a “non-police property crimes unit” to patrol the streets, unarmed. And how, we asked, would that stop car break-ins? The patrols would ask the thieves to stop.

Brown noted that many of the break-ins are being conducted by criminal rings. “I wouldn’t have someone say anything to them,” she said.

Brown and Preston are the main contenders in this race. Two other candidates, Nomvula O’Meara and Ryan Lam, rank well behind in both campaign structure and public policy experience.

Vallie Brown stands out in the field with her street savvy, policy chops and ability to find common ground on key issues. She gets our endorsement in the Nov. 5 election.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.