San Francisco mayor leading in race for new term

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Mayor London Breed appeared to be coasting to victory while a proposition to overturn a city ban on e-cigarette sales seemed destined for defeat in Tuesday’s municipal elections.

Shortly after polls closed, Breed was tens of thousands of votes ahead of her five challengers.

Breed faced five little-known candidates and was considered a shoo-in to win her first four-year term. She has been in office since winning a special June 2018 election following the sudden death of Mayor Ed Lee.

Voters also took up Proposition C, which was put on the ballot by e-cigarette maker Juul Labs. The measure would overturn a new city law to ban sales of e-cigarettes until they have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In early results, the measure was losing.

San Francisco-based Juul dumped $12 million into the campaign before halting financial support for the proposal in September. Opponents of the measure say its passage would harm efforts to curb youth vaping.

Breed is the first African American woman elected mayor of San Francisco, a politically liberal city of nearly 890,000 grappling with high housing costs, an increase in homelessness and a drug crisis.

The former president of the Board of Supervisors was raised by her grandmother in the city’s public housing and has made equity a priority in a city that has become deeply inequitable. She wants to build housing and provide more shelter and services for people who are homeless, addicted to drugs or have a mental illness.

The mayor said in an interview with The Associated Press before the election that she is frustrated by people who want more housing but don’t want more units in their neighborhood.

“We want more housing, and we know we need more housing,” she said. “We can’t have it both ways.”