Napoleon of North Beach to give up his gavel PROFILE: Aaron Peskin Term limits force out S.F. supervisors' powerful, polarizing president - for now

Outgoing San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin Walks on Green Street in San Francisco's North Beach on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008. Outgoing San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin Walks on Green Street in San Francisco's North Beach on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008. Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Napoleon of North Beach to give up his gavel 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

It takes Aaron Peskin a long time to walk a block in North Beach. Everybody knows him, and the San Francisco supervisor eats up the attention.

He talks with a priest, asks a homeless man how he's doing, greets Chinese women carrying pink shopping bags with a booming "Hello!" in Cantonese.

"We're going to miss you, man!" Steve Mahoney, a street cleaner, tells him.

"I'm not going anywhere!" Peskin responds.

That's just what his enemies fear. After eight years representing District Three on the Board of Supervisors and four years as the panel's president, the polarizing Peskin is termed out of office and will preside over his last meeting Tuesday.

Love him or hate him, nobody thinks the Napoleon of North Beach is gone for good. Although he says he has no plans to run for another office, city insiders say he loves politics too much to get out and expect him to set his sights high.

"Oh yeah, he'll run again," said former Mayor Willie Brown, a former adversary of Peskin's who now enjoys dinners out on the town with him. "Mayor is a distinct possibility."

In the meantime, Peskin, 44, will continue to wield power as chairman of the city's Democratic Party and is likely to keep close tabs on his former City Hall colleagues.

"I am willing to bet I will be getting text messages from him during board meetings next year with suggestions and ideas," said Supervisor Sean Elsbernd.

San Francisco is a different city from when Peskin came to prominence in the late 1990s as the president of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, successfully working against the destruction of the Colombo Building and the addition of a Rite Aid drugstore to the neighborhood.

Back then, the city's economy was thriving amid the dot-com and real estate boom, but neighborhood activists thought supervisors were giving Mayor Brown and his developer allies a free hand to run San Francisco.

In 2000, with district elections replacing a citywide vote for supervisors, Peskin and five other City Hall newcomers were elected to the board in an anti-Brown tidal wave. Peskin still has a collage of dozens of his campaign buttons, one of which reads, "Annoy Willie: Elect Peskin."

Under Peskin's leadership, the board has become a full-time body with far more power than it used to have, and has developed a penchant for annoying first Brown and then Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Voters agreed to a big pay raise for supervisors - they now make $93,000, up from $38,000 - and to give the board president the right to appoint people to a variety of commissions, rather than leaving the mayor alone in charge.

"Despite all the chatter about the board being out of touch or too left, the voters have been with us," Peskin said.

Authority on planning

Peskin's bailiwick has been land use and planning, and he understands the city's 1,200-page planning code better than just about anybody. He killed a Brown-blessed plan to build a huge mall at Piers 27 through 31 and a runway expansion project at San Francisco International Airport, and got voters to approve banning chain stores in some neighborhoods and to create a commission for historic preservation.

Although it is largely disliked by developers, Peskin's board has also approved major projects along Market Street, on Rincon Hill and at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. In November, the supervisors approved a sweeping plan to rezone and build housing on 2,200 acres on the eastern side of the city.

In the process, the board has often squeezed more affordable housing or social services money out of developers.

"Contrary to what even some of my friends believe, he hasn't been a one-trick pony," said financier Warren Hellman, who said Peskin's support was invaluable in building the parking garage in Golden Gate Park that serves the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Academy of Sciences. "He hasn't just been the doctrinaire anti-business, anti-institutional kind of guy."

Supervisor Chris Daly said Peskin's planning decisions have been guided by his assessment of what is appropriate for each of the city's varied neighborhoods. "It's about having those who will be impacted by planning decisions having a voice in what gets decided," Daly said.

Universally described as whip-smart and fearless - he once posed in a Speedo swimsuit for a local magazine - Peskin has written and won approval for 205 ordinances in his eight years on the board, making him the most prolific supervisor in at least a decade.

Rarely loses

Constantly working the phones and making the rounds of City Hall, he's rarely on the losing side of a vote. By some accounts he carries more clout than Newsom, who unlike Peskin has a tough time scraping together board majorities.

"People beat a path to his door when they're trying to make something happen in city government," said Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a Newsom ally. "Aaron could get six votes to make Wheaties the official cereal of San Francisco."

Peskin's relations with Newsom have been frosty at best. Mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard was dismissive of the board president, saying Peskin doesn't have as much influence as he'd like to think.

"Peskin knows that he isn't likable enough to be elected mayor, and so he has relentlessly promoted himself as a surrogate mayor," Ballard said.

Still, even Newsom's department heads realize they must win over Peskin to get anything done. Mitch Katz, the city's public health chief, said that when he wanted to ban tobacco from drugstores or pass a bond to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital, he called Peskin.

"Perhaps that's why he's liked by many and not liked by many," Katz said. "Someone who just presides over the meetings will not cause such strong feelings as someone who really determines the course."

Getting in trouble

At times, however, Peskin has wielded his clout with a heavy hand. In 2007, port Director Monique Moyer went to the Department of Human Resources about a series of late-night phone calls from Peskin to port officials threatening their jobs because of a disagreement over building-height limits on the waterfront.

Peskin also tried and failed to eviscerate the city's Department of the Environment after its director differed with him on the city's energy policy.

Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier said that when she spoke out against Peskin's successful Muni overhaul measure, the board president switched his vote on a piece of her legislation, essentially killing it. She said he also stripped her of her committee assignments and told her, "Payback is a bitch."

The vitriol hasn't been limited to city officials. In 2007, Bok Pon, a retired Richmond District resident, got involved in an unsuccessful recall effort of Peskin. Pon filed a police report after Peskin allegedly called him at 10:30 p.m. and told him, "You are wrong, and you will take that to your grave."

Pon said it sounded like a threat. Authorities declined to file charges against Peskin, who called Pon "certifiably crazy."

Alioto-Pier said she knows of dozens of people, inside and outside city government, who have had their jobs or projects threatened by Peskin. Few come forward, she said, because of fear of retribution. "People are really scared they're going to have to pay dearly for it," she said.

Peskin said he knows he has a reputation for being a "5-(foot)-4, dictatorial son of a bitch," but he doesn't think he's ever acted inappropriately.

"I do this job 20 hours a day," he said. "I call people at 7 o'clock in the morning and 9 o'clock at night. I've played rough, and I've gotten rough in return.

"It's not that I want people to fear me," Peskin said, "but they've got to take you seriously and know you mean business."

Late-night calls

Pon, Moyer and others who have received late-night calls from Peskin say he often sounds drunk. Peskin said alcohol has never gotten in the way of his work, though it "might exacerbate" his tendency to voice his opinions forcefully.

"It might add to a feeling I already have, but I can let people have it without having a drink," Peskin said.

As for what comes next, Peskin said he wants to "mellow out" for a while, and will spend a month hiking in Patagonia. Then he'll return to co-running with his wife, Nancy Shanahan, a nonprofit called Great Basin Land and Water that preserves land in Nevada and is headquartered in North Beach.

He'll also continue to serve as chairman of the Democratic County Central Committee. In the November elections, more than 80 percent of candidates and ballot measures endorsed by the group won - and all four candidates for open Board of Supervisors seats backed by Peskin and his allies were elected.

Democratic committee focus

Peskin said he hopes to make the Democratic committee more visible on large issues, as opposed to day-to-day City Hall matters.

Former Mayor Art Agnos said Peskin could turn the group into a power center for San Francisco.

"If he exercises that as astutely as he did the presidency of the Board of Supervisors, I think the Democratic Party will be greatly strengthened and far more productive than it has been in the past," Agnos said.

But will Peskin ever return to City Hall? Robert Haaland, a political organizer for the Service Employees International Union and a friend of Peskin's, said he thinks the outgoing supervisor won't stay out forever.

"It's hard for me to imagine a world of politics without Aaron Peskin in it," Haaland said. "And it's hard for me to imagine he won't want to be in."