Janice Li was riding high in November 2018, freshly elected to the BART board of directors after years of advocacy work for safer streets at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Her victory was decisive, with a 12-point win over her nearest rival. She had earned the right to celebrate.
But Li couldn’t bring herself to leave her apartment. The following weeks were marred by panic attacks and anxiety.
“There’s no feeling quite like being in elected office and the loneliness that you face,” Li said.
Local officials are opening up about how holding office has affected their mental health after Supervisor Jackie Fielder checked into a hospital amid a mental health crisis that led her to publicly consider resignation. Her tenure on the Board of Supervisors has been brief but intense. For just over a year, Fielder has represented a heavily Latino community amid Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, dealt with a drug crisis that has moved into the heart of her district, and weathered a recent investigation into the leak (opens in new tab) of a confidential memo that has put her office in the city attorney’s sights.
San Francisco politics are often described as a “knife fight in a phone booth,” a phrase coined (opens in new tab) by David Chiu, now the city attorney. The city’s unique brutality has for decades sharpened politicians — from the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein to Gov. Gavin Newsom — preparing them for higher office.
But some say there’s a painful personal cost to San Francisco’s unrelenting gladiatorial politics. It bloodies as many people as it hones.
Li has for years spoken frankly (opens in new tab) about her mental health struggles, while the stigma has held others back. Women, people of color, and queer politicians can face more scrutiny, Li said, especially when they’re young and new to office. But she was determined to not let the pressure end her career.
She found solace in a tight-knit friend group of early-career LGBTQ+ Asian politicos, including Board of Education Commissioner Phil Kim and Entertainment Commission member Cyn Wang. That support, therapy, and Li’s own acumen bolstered her continued success on the BART board, where she has served as vice president and president.
Now Li reaches out to freshman politicians to ensure that they too enjoy peer support; among them is Ruth Ferguson, 31, whom Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed (opens in new tab) in January to the City College of San Francisco board of trustees.
Ferguson weathered harassment working in the state Legislature in the 2020s, which she reported in formal complaints and called out (opens in new tab) publicly. But it left her with diagnosed PTSD, which has flared in the San Francisco political fray.
In a city proud of its self-described acceptance of people of all backgrounds, and at a time of unprecedented awareness of social inequities, Ferguson experienced even more vitriol, particularly against herself and other women.
There’s the everyday condescension, and then there’s the rage. Last month, a local political gadfly wrote to her in a Facebook message calling her a “skank bitch” for backing a ballot measure to institute stricter Board of Supervisors term limits.
Comments on Fielder’s mental health crisis and leave from office took a similar disturbing tone. Online trolls accused her of hiding a sexually transmitted disease, and more.
“I don’t think it needs to be this way,” Ferguson said.
Rigel Robinson was elected to the Berkeley City Council in 2018 and soon faced a similar kind of hate. He was stalked, threatened, and harassed over his support (opens in new tab) for a housing development near People’s Park. The pressure led him to resign in 2024. He’s now a consultant for the Bay Area Council, working remotely from Paris, where his wife pursues her dream career as a bioengineer.
“I treasured my time in elected office and am deeply proud of the work I got done for my city,” he said by text message. “But I am also proud to have left when I did.”
Former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, who is running (opens in new tab) to be state insurance commissioner, said she has seen the city’s hard-knuckle politics drum out good public servants, especially young women. Even the regular practice of updating constituents via social media can make you feel exposed, Kim said.
“Whenever I’ve run for office, whenever I’ve been in office, the sensation is you feel raw all the time, like all your skin is peeled off, so the wind is just blowing into your body without any form of protection,” she said.
Running a campaign for statewide office is not nearly as stressful as a local race in San Francisco, Kim said, where politicians have far more face time with opponents and critics. San Francisco’s dense, 7×7-mile peninsula means running into opponents three times a night and having lobbyists accost you at restaurants. There’s no escape.
Two years after leaving San Francisco public office in 2019, Kim had bloodwork done. Every metric showed that she was far healthier than she had been in years.
“Clearly, my body kept receipts,” she said.
