D2 Board of Supervisors Race
CSF Recommendation:
Dealer’s Choice
District 2 is no stranger to blessings with its stunning views of the SF Bay, a national park in its backyard and more vibrancy than it can handle! And this election season is bound to ensure this district enjoys at least two more years of that glory. Two supervisor candidates are running to fill the seat; both are hardworking, genuinely decent people who clearly care about the residents they hope to serve.
On most issues, there isn't much daylight between Lori Brooke and Stephen Sherrill. Both candidates prioritize fully staffing emergency services and police, holding offenders accountable, practical neighborhood problem-solving and supporting small businesses and San Francisco's economic vitality. All of their priorities resonate strongly with our ConnectedSF members.Where the two candidates diverge most sharply is on the hotly contested question of upzoning and where new housing should be built.
Lori Brooke
It is not an exaggeration to say that Lori Brooke has been working tirelessly on behalf of District 2 residents for 20-plus years. Her passion for helping San Franciscans is strong, and her connections with the community are deep. She is running as the neighborhood grassroots challenger, and her pitch is that District 2 needs an independent representative rooted in the district rather than another City Hall insider. Her north star is neighborhood quality of life, and she has consistently framed safe and clean streets as the foundation for everything else.
Lori strongly opposed Mayor Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors last December, though she doesn’t oppose building housing overall. Instead, she prioritizes neighborhood character and local control, favors building approved projects already in the pipeline and focuses on affordable housing. Lori strongly opposes the new Marina Safeway highrise project and broader upzoning tied to state mandates.
She is endorsed by respected moderates, like Michaela Alioto-Pier, as well as by the League of Pissed-Off Voters and the Working Families Party, universally known as a progressive, union-backed political party. Because Lori hasn’t held elected office, it’s an open question on how her progressive leanings on certain issues, not to mention her relationships with progressive leaders and groups, will factor into her decision-making if she is elected supervisor.
Stephen Sherrill
Following a surprise appointment in 2024, when Catherine Stefani vacated the District 2 seat, Stephen Sherrill was appointed to fill the role. Stephen has worked diligently over the last year to foster relationships in the district, and he agrees with most of his constituents on public safety and increasing police staffing, arrests for drug dealing and public drug use, expanded use of law enforcement technology and stronger intervention tools for addicts on the streets, including conservatorships.
Stephen voted for the Family Zoning Plan, which he tried to moderate somewhat. He supports increased housing production across income levels and emphasizes meeting state housing requirements while maintaining some neighborhood input.
He is endorsed by SF YIMBY and all YIMBY-aligned politicians and entities, groups that have taken housing, an essential aspect of city planning and affordability, and packaged it as a street-closing, urbanist utopian vision, which has divided communities and left swathes of residents wondering why they are not part of the conversation.
Stephen has rolled seamlessly into the SF/CA political machine, and, unfortunately, that machine is everything we don’t like about politics: backscratching, mutual endorsements from all the merry-go-round politicians and, sometimes (in the case of Scott Wiener), laundering extreme ideological positions and passing them off as moderate or commonsense ideals. Despite the fact that Stephen disagrees with the scope of the Marina Safeway project, he is supported by the same group of electeds and activists who have given us the state mandates that led to it.