Willie Brown has done something unusual even by his standards: endorsed both frontrunners in the race to replace District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton — first the progressive, then the moderate — and now Gavin Newsom is quietly hovering over the contest too.

The race for the District 10 seat, which covers Bayview-Hunters Point and goes to voters in November, has emerged as the sharpest local test yet of whether San Francisco's progressive bloc or its tech-moderate coalition has the stronger hand — in one of the city's most historically Black neighborhoods, with the usual power brokers already betting heavily on the outcome.

Ten candidates have already qualified for the November ballot to succeed Walton, who is not seeking re-election, and the endorsement landscape is already sorting into two recognizable camps.

On the progressive side sits DJ Brookter, backed by Walton himself along with former Mayor Art Agnos, former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, and former Supervisor Dean Preston — the standard-bearers of SF's left-wing establishment. On the moderate side is Theo Ellington, who has accumulated support from former Mayor London Breed, State Senator Scott Wiener, and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis.

Then there is Willie Brown, who apparently decided he could not lose. Brown, who left the mayor's office more than two decades ago but has never really left San Francisco politics, endorsed Brookter first, back in March. Earlier this month, according to Mission Local, he announced he was backing Ellington as well — a dual endorsement that is either a shrewd hedge or a statement that the old dealmaker sees the D10 race as too consequential to get wrong.

The Ellington camp has also attracted attention from a rather different direction. The moderate candidate recently appeared at an event hosted by Y Combinator president Garry Tan at YC's headquarters at Pier 70 in Dogpatch — a short distance from Bayview. Also in attendance: Governor Gavin Newsom.

The meeting had personal history behind it. Ellington first met Newsom in 2005, when he was a middle schooler who had made a documentary called "Homeless Orchestra" — a film that then-Mayor Newsom submitted to the World Economic Forum. When the two crossed paths again at the Pier 70 event, it was a reunion two decades in the making.

"He wished me luck and asked me to follow up," Ellington told Mission Local. "There's no indication of an endorsement yet, but I'm hopeful."

A Newsom endorsement in a San Francisco supervisor race would itself be news: the governor has not previously weighed in on such a local contest, though he has backed candidates in San Mateo's supervisor race. But Newsom's mere presence at a Tan-organized event carries its own signal.

Tan has been one of the most polarizing figures in recent San Francisco politics. He backed the 2022 school board recall and the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, spent to defeat the Overpaid CEO tax, and, two years ago, posted on X what many read as a wish for the deaths of several board of supervisors members — a moment that sparked outrage and dominated local headlines for weeks. For Newsom to share a stage with Tan — and for both of them to talk up the importance of local elections, including the D10 race — is a meaningful signal about whose political machinery is aligned with whose.

None of that erases the fact that the race will ultimately be decided by District 10 residents, who are living a different set of pressures than the political establishment orbiting this contest. Bayview is one of San Francisco's few remaining historically Black communities, and it is wrestling with familiar questions: rising rents, economic development along Third Street, and how to maintain cultural identity against the rising tide of city-level gentrification forces.

Those tensions were on plain display this weekend, when Bayview marked Juneteenth with a free all-day festival at Gilman Playground Park — featuring live music, a car show, food vendors, and rides — co-produced by community organizer Tamara Walker of Burge LLC Productions alongside the SF Human Rights Commission and the African American Arts and Cultural District. The festival is precisely the kind of neighborhood bedrock that candidates for the D10 seat will spend the next five months scrambling to be seen near.

The race is still early. But with Brown covering both bets, Newsom attending Tan's events, and the governor leaving Ellington "hopeful," the D10 contest is already pulling in more political gravity than most citywide races manage in their final weeks.