San Francisco Mayor London Breed listens at a press conference on Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, in San Francisco. 

San Francisco Mayor London Breed has sharply criticized the progressive wing of the Democratic Party over the past two years, and went on offense again in a Monday KCBS interview on two separate fronts.

First, Breed was asked to respond to an SFGATE report on the first meeting District Attorney Brooke Jenkins held with senior staff in the DA's Office. Jenkins was appointed by Breed to replace the recalled Chesa Boudin, a progressive backed by several leftist groups. People in the room told SFGATE the meeting was "icy" and that they had to ask for a specific directive.

"Well the fact is previous DAs have always had challenging starts to the beginning of their term," Breed said. "I will say this is not about one particular individual, this is about trying to maintain public safety, and part of that is going in, which is what the DA did, went in with an open mind and having a conversation with the senior staff to talk about ways to move the office forward. And sadly, you know, there are some people there who aren't necessarily interested in doing that.

"I think she's going to do a really great job for the city, and what that's going to require is for her to have various meetings and have different conversations with folks and hope they are willing to not make this about one person but more so about the job and public safety of San Francisco."

Later in the interview, KBCS asked Breed about a proposal put forward by Supervisor Dean Preston to move elections for San Francisco offices such as mayor, district attorney and sheriff to coincide with presidential elections, as opposed to the current odd-year format (the last such election was in 2019, and the next one is 2023).

"You're talking about one supervisor, who decided with a group of democratic socialists that they want to change elections in San Francisco in order to have more control and power and being able to get more of their people elected," she said. "I don't think that's the right way to do things. No members of the public have had any say in how we shape this policy and what it all means."

In a statement to KCBS, the Democratic Socialists of America — the group Preston is a member of — said it "had no role in directly crafting this legislation" that will "increase democratic participation in city government — something that Mayor Breed consistently opposes."

Breed did not precisely explain why she believes moving the elections to a presidential year would benefit democratic socialist candidates like Preston, stating, "when you talk about a city like San Francisco that's primarily Democratic, you have a lot of Democrats in this city who participate in these presidential elections." (One could plausibly argue that people who identify as democratic socialists follow politics more closely than rank-and-file Democrats do, and thus their candidates would do better in lower-turnout elections where less-engaged voters stay home. Boudin was elected in 2019, for instance.)

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on Preston's proposal on Tuesday.

You can listen to the full interview from KCBS.

Eric Ting is SFGATE's politics editor. He is an East Bay native who has a Master's degree in journalism from Stanford University. Eric did his undergrad at Pomona College, where he majored in politics and minored in economics. Email: eric.ting@sfgate.com