Why 'moderate' and 'progressive' are words of choice in SF politics

When Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin entered the mayoral race in April, it was assumed that San Francisco progressives could breathe a sigh of relief.

After all, Peskin was the first — and to date, only — progressive candidate to run against incumbent Mayor London Breed , who is widely considered a moderate in a field full of ideologically like-minded candidates.

But in San Francisco, what is a progressive, and what is a moderate?

Given its consensus on many issues on the national level — such as the right for gay people to get married or whether to vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden — San Francisco has its own political spectrum.

The terms moderate and progressive are readily used by the media and politicians as shorthand to describe the distinct factions in San Francisco politics, but whether those terms resonate with voters is an open question.

“We often use terms — the media, researchers, members, leaders in the community — that mean different things to different people, and the sometimes dangerous thing is that we don’t realize that,” said Mindy Romero, the founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento.

Ask 20 different people for their definition of “progressive,” and you might get 20 different answers, Romero added, because it’s “something that is literally political in nature.”

“Of course, it’s going to be infused with peoples’ own biases and perceptions,” she said.

Generally, people aren’t well-informed about political parties and ideologies, Romero said, and voters use shortcuts when trying to engage in politics.

But those shortcuts leave room for misinformation and disinformation, Romero said.

The Public Policy Institute of California conducts regular polls of the state’s residents but does not use the terms “moderate” and “progressive” to categorize its respondents, according to Mark Baldassare, the institute’s survey director. Instead, it asks voters where they identify on a spectrum from very liberal to very conservative — terms voters may be more familiar with on a national level.

Traditionally, progressive “is often used to talk about how much an individual, whether it is the person in office or the voter, wants an expansive role for government,” Baldassare said.

In that same historical lens, the word progressive stands in contrast to the populist who is “for the people” and wants the government to stay out of the way, he added.

“This isn’t something that pollsters use, but this is something that we are definitely aware that people are using to self-identify, or that candidates or people in elected office will use to describe themselves as different than their peers,” Baldassare said of the words progressive and moderate.

In San Francisco, and more widely in California, issues that distinguish a progressive from someone who identifies as a liberal could include whether they support a universal basic income or single-payer health care. The state and city are both facing a major budget deficit, and a progressive will be more likely to see taxing large companies as a solution to closing that fiscal gap.

One illustration of the difference between moderate and progressive on the local level — and the role of government — can be seen in housing policy.

Peskin introduced legislation in April allowing The City to issue bonds to help fund the construction of new housing for middle-income renters. His assumption is that the rent paid by tenants of that housing — which will be privately built — will offset the debt, ensuring The City government is footing the bill for housing projects but still facilitating them.

In Peskin’s vision, the government should actively address The City’s housing woes.

Breed, by contrast, is backed by yes-in-my-backyard housing advocates, who tend to view government — particularly in San Francisco — as inventing regulatory obstacles to new housing production. Though they don’t fundamentally oppose the construction of affordable housing, their focus is removing barriers to the production of market-rate housing.

The use of terms like moderate and progressive could be a consequence of California being a one-party state and San Francisco being almost entirely a one-party city. Each of the five prominent candidates for mayor proudly describe themselves as lifelong Democrats.

Chicago is also reliably Democratic when it comes to national politics, but locals choose between candidates labeled as moderate and progressive.

But even where the terms are commonplace, one shouldn’t assume voters have a shared understanding of their meaning.

Although San Francisco is known as one of the most liberal cities in the country, it may not be as liberal as its elected officials are, according to Anthony Fowler, professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Elites and elected officials tend to be on more extreme ends of the political spectrum than the general public.

Fowler pointed to research that shows, across cities and states, there is a noticeable gap between how popular proposals like increasing deportations or instituting a carbon tax are with residents and how popular political elites believe they are. Research in the same vein has found that, for members of Congress, nearly every Democrat is to the left of his or her constituency, while every Republican is to the right.

So, as divided as San Francisco politics might feel, voters "are not that far apart," Fowler said.

Then there’s also the question of whether or not the definition of progressive has changed over time. Democrats, Fowler noted, are increasingly likely to be wealthy, educated people who live in cities — and those people often hold views that don’t align with traditional progressive values.

“The things that people think of as progressive are sometimes not actually very economically progressive,” Fowler said.

In San Francisco, economic policies are just one factor of the political equation, where major debates play out over real estate and housing development, homelessness policy, and how to combat the opioid overdose crisis, often revealing clear division.

Polarization can play a role in the candidates who run for office.

To have competent elected officials who more closely align with voters, Fowler suggested that people need to “think they can actually accomplish something.”

“If you feel like San Francisco [Board of Supervisors] is mostly just performative and not accomplishing much, you mostly get extremists who want to run,” Fowler said.