San Francisco runs on a mayor and an eleven-member Board of Supervisors, and its politics lean sharply progressive while staying argumentative. The city has been a laboratory for left-leaning policy on housing, homelessness, and climate for generations, and it also has a habit of turning those debates into headline fights. Here is how the system actually works and what has been on the table lately.
How the city is governed
San Francisco is a charter city with a strong-mayor system. The mayor runs the day-to-day administration, appoints department heads (subject to board approval), and sets the budget direction. The Board of Supervisors is the legislative body: eleven members, one elected from each of the city’s eleven districts, each serving a four-year term. The board passes ordinances, approves the budget, and overrides mayoral vetoes with a two-thirds vote. Because supervisors answer to neighborhoods, not the city as a whole, district politics often drive the agenda more than party lines do.
Mayoral elections
The mayor serves a four-year term, elected citywide. Recent history: Ed Lee won a full term in 2011 and was reelected in 2015, then died in office in December 2017. London Breed won the June 2018 special election to finish his term and was reelected to a full term in November 2019. In the November 2024 election, Breed was defeated by restaurateur and philanthropist Daniel Lurie, who took office in January 2025. The races tend to turn on housing production, public safety, and homelessness, and they draw national attention disproportionate to the city’s size.
The issues that actually dominate
A few topics show up in every cycle:
- Housing and zoning. San Francisco has some of the highest rents in the country and a chronic shortage of new units. State law (notably SB 35 and the 2023-2024 housing-element decisions) has been pushing the city to approve more housing, and local fights over density, height, and neighborhood character are constant.
- Homelessness and behavioral health. The city has leaned on conservatorship expansion (the 2022 CARE Act, plus local Proposition C and E measures) and shelter construction, with results that remain contested.
- Public safety. Retail theft, drug markets, and police staffing have driven recall and reform efforts, including the 2022 recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
- Transit and climate. Muni and BART funding, congestion, and the city’s aggressive emissions-reduction targets are long-running items.
Activism and organizations
San Francisco’s political culture is unusually grassroots. Neighborhood groups, tenant unions, and issue-based nonprofits (on housing, environment, and civil rights) regularly shape outcomes at the ballot and in hearings. The city’s ranked-choice voting for supervisor and citywide offices means organizing at the district level matters as much as big donors. If you want to follow or influence a specific issue, the Board of Supervisors’ meeting schedule and the local chapter of the relevant advocacy group are the practical entry points.
Is it liberal or conservative?
By any normal measure it is a liberal city, among the most Democratic-leaning in the country. But “liberal” hides real splits: pro-housing YIMBY versus anti-development preservationists, law-and-order versus decarceration camps, and moderate versus progressive factions on the board. Those fights are where the actual politics happens, more than any red-versus-blue frame.
Practical takeaway
If you are moving to or engaging with San Francisco, the useful mental model is: citywide elections set broad direction, but district supervisors control most land-use and neighborhood decisions, and ballot propositions (the city loves them) can override either. For current candidates, measures, and meeting dates, the San Francisco Department of Elections site and the Board of Supervisors calendar are the sources to check before you act on anything here.
