“Exit, pursued by a bear” surely must be the greatest of all stage directions. Shakespeare placed it into “The Winter’s Tale” in 1623 — and, lo, a mere 401 years later it was front-page news in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Yesterday’s big story was about allegations of turmoil and neglect of the animals at the San Francisco Zoo, and it included utterly jarring surveillance footage of a zookeeper making a hasty retreat from a massive, shambling grizzly bear.
Today’s big story is the announcement just made by Mayor London Breed on the tail end of her jaunt to China, that this same zoo will be awarded pandas. Pandas are extraordinarily rare and have an incalculable value; both physically and metaphysically. It is a Very Big Deal that China is granting San Francisco this privilege. It will be a Very Big Deal for a city in dire need of tourism dollars and a zoo in dire need of prestige (and better locks, apparently).
Will it be a Very Big Deal for the re-election bid of Mayor Breed — who registered a putrid 20 percent approval rating among Asian voters in the recent Chronicle poll?
That’s a lot harder to say. Voters do not always behave in intuitive ways, and only a very small percentage strictly adhere to coherent and consistent ideological belief systems. With that said, it is difficult to draw up an equation regarding Chinese-American voters perturbed about a bereft downtown, chaos and filth on the streets, and — especially — the lingering fear of violent attack that is ameliorated by the acquisition of pandas.
It is, again, not difficult to illustrate how San Francisco could benefit from tourists heading to the zoo. Today’s announcement is probably being greeted warmly at Pasquale’s Pizza, Java Beach Cafe and other zoo-adjacent businesses. A black-and-white motif may soon adorn the new housing development across Sloat Boulevard — and, who knows, a retail tenant may yet grace its cavernous vacant ground level.
Other, less-splashy goals of the mayor’s China trip — potential Chinese investment downtown, more flights to and from SFO — would also help this city. Going to China and closing these sorts of deals is a baseline duty of this and every San Francisco mayor. San Francisco is a place that excels in politics, but not necessarily in government. So, this is government — and Breed is doing her job.
But translating that into a political advantage is challenging. Attempting to woo the crucial Chinese demographic with pandas would probably be the crassest San Francisco political pitch since Mayor Frank Jordan took off his clothes and jumped in the shower with shock-jock radio DJs.
Well, that went poorly for him. Exit, pursued by a bare.
Politics aside, it’s worth taking a moment here to re-emphasize what a big, big deal it would be for the city to have pandas in its zoo. Yes, this could move more panda gear than even Pablo Sandoval. But, more than flesh-and-blood animals and the flesh-and-blood people going to see them, this is a signifier from the Chinese government that it wants its citizens to visit San Francisco.
The Chinese government is also hoping to spur inbound tourism. That seems to be at play here, too.
All for the best. But, again, not necessarily a campaign issue.
“I sat through focus groups with Chinese voters,” says political strategist Jim Ross, who ran ex-District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s ill-fated anti-recall effort. “The only person Chinese voters in San Francisco in 2022 disliked more than Chesa Boudin was London Breed. Pandas don’t solve anything.”
Former District 4 supe candidate Leanna Louie was one of Boudin’s chief antagonists. But on this point, Ross and Louie agree.
“I don’t feel like it really affects what’s going on right now,” she says, regarding pandas. “People see a lot of businesses empty downtown. People want to see something real, something that affects their lives.”
On the government side, Breed has, in fact, been racking up wins: Crime is down, her administration is well on the way to striking deals with the city’s many unions and, now, pandas!
But none of these figures to easily translate into a political win. Voters’ impressions of crime and lawlessness in this city have transcended quantifiable statistical realities — and, when it was Boudin’s career on the line, the mayor was happy to stoke the flames nipping at his feet. Now it’s Breed’s turn to face those flames, and voters have grown inured to actual data. San Franciscans can debate about whether or not their city is “safe,” but, statistically, it’s rarely been safer. That was true during the Boudin recall, it was true during the irresponsible furor following the killing of Bob Lee, and it’s true now.
So, the statistics do tell the story Breed wants to tell, but this is a vibes-based election. That was the case for Boudin in 2022, too. Meanwhile, as KQED pointed out this morning, Breed is further undermined by her ideologically aligned supervisorial candidates — including her former adviser and fundraiser Marjan Philhour — campaigning on a public-safety crisis while Breed is assuring everyone that things are good and getting better.
Similarly, labor peace ought to be chalked up as a big win for the mayor. But the generous, double-digit wage increases conceded to workers while San Francisco’s fiscal outlook hits rock bottom and starts to dig is hardly the sort of thing to boast about to Breed’s moderate base.
And now, pandas. It would, again, be very difficult to use this issue to specifically appeal to Chinese voters without crassly pandering. But Breed is in a difficult position here: It is hard to draw a path to victory for her that doesn’t involve winning the Chinese community.
Finally, the notion of pandas coming to the San Francisco Zoo is, today, fraught with worries that may not have been top-of-mind prior to yesterday’s Chronicle exposé. If anything were to befall those pandas — any accidents with prophetically named guillotine doors — it would be an international incident and eternal source of city disgrace.
And this is no hypothetical: Two decades ago, the Chinese government granted a pair of pandas to the Memphis Zoo. Allegations of mistreatment from incensed and concerned Chinese citizens have long dogged Memphis; Le Le died in 2023, and his mate Ya Ya’s haggard appearance concerned Chinese observers. Ya Ya has since been reclaimed by China amid no small amount of acrimony; Chinese social media commenters have likened San Francisco’s pending panda acquisition to Memphis, and have questioned if this city has the requisite safety and budget to care for a Chinese national treasure.
So that’ll be a challenge for a zoo that, in yesterday’s exposé, came off as nothing so much as yet another dysfunctional San Francisco nonprofit in a city replete with them. The plan here would appear to be to solve this problem by funneling vast amounts of new money the zoo’s way.
That is, after all, the San Francisco way. And, who knows, maybe this time it’ll work. Exit, pursued by a prayer.
Let’s hope the panda doesn’t eat shoot and leave!
Or after arriving at the zoo, get into a fight with Gladly, the cross-eyed bear.
Perfect. Candidate London cares more about snuggly pandas than she does about San Francisco’s elders (looking at you seniors in SROs), tenants, unhoused families with kids, small business, cab drivers, union workers or pedestrians. This is exactly what you get when you vote for a photo op mayor and not a policy maker. Breed always goes for the panda……the rainbow……the photo op. She shoukd sell cars.
Mayor Breed’s trip is nothing less than a junket to see China while she can.
Anyone paying really close attention to politics today must take into account how the US and its allies are preparing for a future war with China behind our backs.
Our own Nancy Pelosi helped get that ball rolling with her provocative trip to Taiwan.
The APEC summit that was recently held in San Francisco was less about building honest international cooperation and competition than about Washington flexing muscles and drawing red lines.
The Chinese leaders, for all their faults, are hardly as foolish as ours who are best at deceiving themselves.
Breed’s trip to China will only serve to flatter herself and ingratiate herself with political elites in her own party.
Putting a panda on it is (like most everything else the city accomplishes today) a mere gimmick. Worse though, it is an insult to all of us: Does she take us all as simple-minded children with short attention spans?
Zoos are disgusting jails for animals…it’s time to close them down except for rescues who can no longer live in the wild….that’s my opinion.
I totally agree. SF Zoo in particular is dreadful for animals.
The only person benefiting from this nonsense is Breed herself, maybe the board of directors of the zoo.
The real losers here are the pandas.
Nora,
I’m with you.
The Zoo had elephants whose feet were rotting off from no access to range and Gonzalez raised cane and only one survived to be relocated.
Recall the SF tiger who killed the guy ?
Turns out the tiger could always jump the moat but did not choose to.
One staff member brought another over to the tiger pit and said, “Watch this !” and tossed a big chunk of meat on the Public side of the moat.
Tiger quickly and easily jumped the moat, grabbed the meat and jumped back.
Animal cruelty as a Platform Plank doesn’t fly with this ole Dawg.
Go Niners !!
h.
… And while Breed is “panda”ing to the communist mainland China government, I’m seeing very little mentioned about Hong Kong: Maybe she didn’t notice the crushing of freedoms there, or maybe she and her funders support that given her focus on reducing police oversight here in SF.
“People want to see something real, something that affects their lives.” – To that end, Jeff Tumlin via SF Chron lets it known this week that parking enforcement will soon fan out to the neighborhoods on a mission to mass-ticket ppl parked in their driveways and the like. This will go over real well.
The sidewalk is not their driveway.
This is not leaning one way or another – the point is, there will be political fallout, and it won’t be pretty for Mayor Spite IMO. But we shall see, assuming SFMTA is going through with this as advertised.
The only way Breed can benefit by this deal is to get those pandas into SF well BEFORE the election. The only way that happens is to have their (PRC) government-approved condo built.
The only way this helps Breed’s election chance, however, is if enough out-of-towners visit the pandas by election day, AND, Breed is there to hand each of them SF voter registration forms and ballots. (Before they learn her record.) She might lease a couple of the vacant condos across the street to serve the residency angle.
However, getting a commitment to make a pair of pandas SF residents is worthy of praise.
Hunh. We don’t have enough money for our non-profits that help our kids and seniors but we do have 25 million to bring pandas to SF? It’s been reported that China doesn’t sell the pandas but they lease them to countries for $500,000 to$1,000,000. How does that work? Exactly how much will this arrangement cost San Francisco London Breed?
Is this a parody? It reads like the local version of “The economy is improving. Here’s why that’s bad for Joe Biden”
Dave —
If you think pandas in the zoo outweighs or even mitigates all of the other problems worrying San Franciscans and leading to London Breed’s 71 percent disapproval rate in recent polls then, congratulations, you’ve come up with a fantastic analogy.
JE
Take away: If the SFUSD Board had renamed SF schools after pandas then they might not have been recalled.
pandas
breed
win!
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3words
SF has rarely been safer? Get off the cable car and walk down Hyde to Market st. There are statistics, damned statistics,and outright lies. SF being safer is the latter. Stop abusing “The Data” trope and start looking around.
Paul —
Thank you for missing my point and making my point.
JE