Leno concession caps week-long vote tally

San Francisco mayoral candidate and former state Sen. Mark Leno announced Wednesday that he will concede to Board of Supervisors President London Breed in The City’s mayor race seven days after the June election.

Leno said:

“I called Supervisor London Breed to congratulate her on her victory and to wish every success both personally and professionally in her new job as mayor of San Francisco.”

Leno added:

“She is a remarkable young woman. She is going to do a very fine job. I wish her best because her success is San Francisco’s success.”

Later Wednesday afternoon, Breed claimed victory and thanked Leno in a press conference on the steps of City Hall.

The results have been excruciatingly close from Election Night onward, as seen through the daily figures released from the Department of Elections.

Breed had led Leno by 1,861 votes by Tuesday afternoon after the elections department counted 7,300 provisional ballots leaving only 6,700 provisional ballots left for the department to count.

Breed had 11,446 votes (50.42 percent) and had a total of 109,585 votes (49.58 percent).

For days after the election, it was unclear who would win.

On election night, Breed led the first-place votes in The City’s ranked-choice system by more than 10 percentage points over Leno.

But because Breed did not receive more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, ranked-choice voting kicked in, and by Wednesday morning, Leno led by more than 1,100 votes.

As the elections department counted more and vote-by-mail ballots each day, Leno’s lead shrunk significantly, putting the two only a few hundred votes apart last week.

Breed finally snatched the lead from Leno last Saturday and never looked back.

Mayor Mark Farrell said in statement on congratulating on mayor-elect Breed:

“I want to offer my sincere congratulations to Mayor-Elect London Breed on her election victory. I commit my full support, both personally, and through my staff, to make this transition between our administrations as smooth as possible.”

Jerold Chinn

Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.