SF mayoral candidates go easy on each other in debate

Amy Farah Weiss (left), Jane Kim, Mark Leno, moderator Melissa Caen, London Breed, Ellen Lee Zhou, Angela Alioto and Richie Greenberg during Monday’s mayoral debate. Amy Farah Weiss (left), Jane Kim, Mark Leno, moderator Melissa Caen, London Breed, Ellen Lee Zhou, Angela Alioto and Richie Greenberg during Monday’s mayoral debate. Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close SF mayoral candidates go easy on each other in debate 1 / 12 Back to Gallery

With the election for San Francisco mayor just three weeks away, the candidates met Monday evening for a surprisingly well-mannered debate, with almost no harsh words and even fewer personal attacks.

The seven candidates on stage at the Commonwealth Club for the 90-minute matchup plowed little new ground.

“I love this city,” former Supervisor Angela Alioto said at one point, joining the other candidates in a pledge to support whomever is elected mayor.

It’s not that the candidates couldn’t use some additional support in advance of the June 5 ranked-choice election. A poll taken in late April found Board of Supervisors President London Breed on top with 28 percent of the first-place votes, followed by former state Sen. Mark Leno with 21 percent, Supervisor Jane Kim at 17 percent and Alioto at 8 percent. That leaves everyone with a long way to go to get to the 50 percent plus one needed to be elected mayor.

The leading candidates were joined by three of the other four candidates on the ballot: Amy Farah Weiss, a homelessness activist; Richie Greenberg, a small business adviser and the lone Republican in the race; and Ellen Lee Zhou, a public health worker and union representative.

Even the occasional jab was easy to miss. During their opening statements, for example, Breed and Alioto took pains to mention that they grew up in San Francisco and attended school here, but didn’t take the next step and mention that Kim, who was born in New York City, and Leno, who is from Milwaukee, both moved to San Francisco as adults.

Monday night’s showdown was the first all-comers debate since Kim and Leno made it official last week that they are double-teaming Breed. The pair released a joint ad urging voters to mark them one and two — in whatever order — a tactic they hope could squeeze out Breed, even if she finishes on top in the first vote count without winning a majority.

One of the few feisty moments came when Melissa Caen of KPIX-TV, the debate’s moderator, asked all the candidates whom they backed for second on the ballot. While Leno admitted that “the worst-kept secret in San Francisco” is that he supports Kim, Breed, no fan of that alliance, said quickly that “London Breed is my number two choice and London Breed is my number three choice.”

While Leno and Kim are combining hoping to freeze out Breed, they’re anything but allies. Each desperately wants to be mayor, and that won’t happen unless they end up the top finisher, not one of the top two finishers. That means not only persuading voters to reject Breed, but also pointing to the differences between the leading progressive candidates.

Asked where he disagrees with Kim, Leno called the supervisor out on the 2012 Twitter tax break, which gave the company and other tech outfits a temporary exemption from city business taxes in return for bringing jobs into rundown parts of the city, such as the mid-Market area.

Leno argued that city leaders, including Kim, should have forced the companies to provide more community benefits, including “local hiring so San Franciscans can get the jobs” that the city essentially is paying the tech companies to provide. Instead, work now goes to people moving to San Francisco, putting more pressure on the city’s housing and services.

Kim shot back that the Board of Supervisors didn’t set the rules for any benefits the city sought and reminded Leno that the agreement came when the city was in the depth of the recession and “jobs was the number one issue for the majority of residents.”

The debate swirled around a number of local issues, but the disagreements were mostly in the details.

Asked about drug users who inject themselves at downtown transit stations, Leno said he favored a mental health justice center to “treat it as an illness,” Breed said she wanted to establish “safe injection sites (to) bring it indoors,” and Alioto said that while the city should provide services to addicts, drug users “need to be picked up — it’s not all right to sit in the street and shoot up while the rest of the city walks by.”

There was also plenty of talk about affordable housing, with candidates all agreeing that more was needed, but dividing on how to go about it.

Kim called for more subsidized housing, while Breed wants the city to build on underused sites, such as the McDonald’s restaurant property at Haight and Stanyan streets that the city just bought for housing.

There were some light moments. When the candidates were asked to name their favorite mayor, Alioto said it was no contest. “Joe Alioto was the greatest mayor the city ever hand, bar none.” He was also her father.

When it came time to sum up, longshot candidate Zhou pointed to her opponents and said, “If they were so good, I would not be running.” Fellow dark horse Weiss said she understood “it would take a miracle for me to be mayor, but I’m open to miracles.” Greenberg had already reminded would-be voters that the most important part of his ballot argument is the Republican “R” after his name.

Regardless of who finishes on top next month, the winner won’t have long to rest. While he or she will replace appointed Mayor Mark Farrell, the winner will serve out only what’s left of the late Mayor Ed Lee’s term before facing re-election in November 2019.

That’s not a bad thing, Weiss suggested.

The winner “will have a year to prove themselves,” she said. “Show me, don’t tell me.”

Chronicle staff writer

Steve Rubenstein contributed to this report.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle

.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth