San Francisco’s progressives are all but certain to lose the majority of seats they’ve held on the Board of Supervisors since 2019, according to Sunday’s election updates .

That six-year-long iteration of the board clashed with Mayor London Breed on housing policy and police crackdowns, but also helped shepherd the city through the tail end of the Trump administration and the urban ills wrought by the pandemic.

At the same time, the board is also on the verge of losing several seasoned legislators, with four of its incoming class brand new to politics. The inexperienced members will take office as San Francisco faces the prospect of a second Trump administration poised to assault the city on several fronts , the continuing downtown vacancy crisis, and an $800 million budget deficit that will likely herald deep cuts to city services.

“This is really difficult to do under the best of circumstances,” said Myrna Melgar, the District 7 supervisor who appears headed for re-election and has often served as a fulcrum for the city’s progressive-moderate divide. The next four years, Melgar said, would be difficult even for the most tested legislators, but with an “inexperienced mayor and a very green” board? “It’s daunting,” she said.

“The bottom line is this mayor” — mayor-elect Daniel Lurie — “and this board are going to have an ongoing set of budgetary and fiscal challenges the likes of which are unimaginable,” said Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who was termed out and lost his mayoral bid .

The next four years, Peskin said, presage “tight times locally” and “a vindictive federal government that’s got its target set on California and San Francisco.” The Trump administration will use lawsuits, funding cuts, deportations, and more against the city. “They’re going to have a lot of tough fiscal sledding. They’re all going to have to be very disciplined.”

Melgar pointed to the past and new targets. Trump, she said, “threatened to take money away because of the sanctuary ordinance — we are going to be faced with that again. We have an Office of Transgender Initiatives, how is that going to go for us? We just passed Prop. O guaranteeing sanctuary for those seeking medical refuge.”

All six open seats in this year’s supervisorial races were held by progressives, yet progressive candidates are likely to lose in at least two of those races: Already, Danny Sauter , a YIMBY-endorsed candidate and neighborhood organizer, has declared victory in District 3 while in District 5, the incumbent democratic socialist Dean Preston on Sunday night all but conceded his loss to Bilal Mahmood. The tech founder benefited from more than $300,000 in outside spending by the public pressure groups GrowSF and TogetherSF.

Both of their wins would shift the board to being more reliably moderate than progressive: In District 1, progressive Connie Chan is nearly 1,000 votes ahead; in District 7, Melgar is comfortably ahead in her own race; District 9 was a rout for democratic socialist newcomer Jackie Fielder ; and in District 11, Chyanne Chen is pulling ahead of Michael Lai in a tight race. Future vote drops would seem likely to benefit all the leading candidates , but some 42,000 ballots remain and all must be counted.

District 2, currently held by Catherine Stefani, who is headed to the State Assembly in January, will go to another moderate, as outgoing mayor London Breed can appoint Stefani’s replacement.

District 4 is held by Joel Engardio, a moderate who, in 2022, became the first supervisor to unseat an incumbent. But Engardio is now facing opposition in his district for his creation and support of the Great Highway measure Prop. K, which the Westside opposed. The District 6 supervisor is former police communications head Matt Dorsey, while the District 8 supervisor is Rafael Mandelman, who votes between moderates and progressives.

District 10 is held by progressive Shamman Walton, who, for his part, cautioned against predictions that the board will be more moderate: The new members may vote idiosyncratically, or switch positions during their tenure.

“Some of the folks may get a label, but we don’t know how people are gonna vote until they actually get a seat,” said Walton. “I would not be too quick to label anyone.”

The progressive-moderate divide has always been tenuous and inexact: Supervisors do vote along an ideological spectrum , but some supervisors, like Melgar and Mandelman, straddle the fence; others, like the outgoing District 11 supervisor, Ahsha Safaí, have confounded easy labels by voting as a labor stalwart who can espouse both law-and-order rhetoric and a strong defense of sanctuary policies.

Plus, said several sitting supervisors, a silver lining of the Trump administration may be that the heated local rhetoric calms down substantially.

“I suspect that they will all be united around their common federal woes,” said Peskin, who said legislative unity was common during the first Trump term and the pandemic. “There’s nothing like having a common enemy to bring everyone together.”

“You’re gonna see right out the gate folks coming with fresh ideas on how to combat his stances on immigration, his stances on people of color,” added Walton. “We’ll be ready and geared up. We’ve gone through this before.”

Melgar, for her part, offered a concrete proposal: An experienced hand at the helm as board president, a powerful position that can appoint supervisors to committees, helping or hindering legislation before it gets to the full board — someone like herself.

“I feel like at this time we have a hostile federal administration … we need someone who can talk to everyone and negotiate more than anyone,” she said, adding that she has “played the role of mom” and can “talk to everyone and negotiate more than anyone.”

“The government infrastructure below the level of neophyte elected officials has been to this rodeo before,” added Peskin. As to the city’s new legislators, “Hopefully they’ll be interested in the workings of government,” Peskin said, “and not just the politics of politics.”

“Try to work together as much as possible,” said Hillary Ronen, the outgoing District 9 supervisor. “That’s what I hope for this next board.”