Professor DeLeon Discusses San Francisco's Moderate/Progressive Divide

SF WEEKLY -- In 2000, with the return of district supervisorial elections (supervisors had all served the entire city on an at-large basis for the previous 20 years) progressives won a supermajority on the Board, shifting some of the geographic and demographic trends that previously characterized the city’s political divides.

“It was a real lurch to the left,” says Richard DeLeon, emeritus professor of Political Science at San Francisco State and the author of Left Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco 1975 – 1991.” “They really clipped Willie Brown’s wings, trimmed his sails and took more control of the planning bureaucracy.”