The race to succeed District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has entered its final stretch, with four candidates vying for the open seat in a contest that could help determine whether a moderate majority holds or progressives gain ground.
With all of the candidates agreeing that the rising cost of living in The City is a top issue, the race has featured questions around how to create more housing, invigorate commercial corridors, and treat drug addiction and homelessness, as well as whether to use surveillance technology in policing, among other things.
The candidates are Manny Yekutiel, the owner of Manny’s, a Mission-district cafe, bookstore, and space for civic events and gatherings that was launched in 2018; Gary McCoy, a former aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former health-policy executive; Michael Nguyen, a patent attorney and drag performer; and Darshini Patel, a former campaign staffer for both President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris and DoorDash employee.
Anchored by the LGBTQ-heavy Castro neighborhood, District 8 includes Noe Valley, Glen Park, Diamond Heights, Twin Peaks, Cole Valley, Duboce Triangle and other areas.
The district has consistently elected men from the LGBTQ community to be supervisors since district elections were adopted in 2000. All four of the current candidates are also from that community.
Mandelman — who has served since 2018 on the Board of Supervisors and is currently that body’s president — will be termed out in January. He has endorsed Yekutiel, as did Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, Assemblymember Catherine Stefani and police, sheriff’s deputy and firefighter unions, among others.
Among the current candidates, the leader by far in terms of fundraising — with about $770,000 collected as of Aug. 26 — was Yekutiel. His campaign’s total included $511,558 in contributions from 1,468 donors and $255,000 of public financing.
“I’m proud of that,” Yekutiel said. “It’s allowed me to focus on talking to voters. I’m really proud of the variety of people that are supporting this campaign.”
Contributors giving the maximum $500 to Yekutiel’s war chest have included numerous well-heeled and recognizable figures, including venture capitalist Jeremy Liew, Esprit clothing brand co-founder Susie Tompkins Buell, and tech CEO Zack Rosen, who co-founded the Abundance Network and California YIMBY groups.
Yekutiel said his campaign has received many smaller donations, as well.
“The moment that our city is in, I think, requires all of us working together — small business, big business, philanthropy, teachers, firefighters, parents — to solve our city’s big issues, and I think my donor pool reflects that completely,” he said.
Expenditure limits — as agreed to by all four candidates when taking public financing — are currently set at $450,000, but could be raised in increments of $50,000 based on various factors, according to the city’s Ethics Commission.
In addition to direct contributions, an independent “Team Manny” expenditure committee had raised at least $104,000 to support Yekutiel, while the group GrowSF reported spending $84,000 backing him with its voter guide, along with $8,000 to oppose McCoy.
Yekutiel also recently won the potentially influential endorsements of the San Francisco Democratic Party and Mayor Daniel Lurie, with whom Yekutiel in 2023 co-founded the Civic Joy Fund before Lurie became mayor. The program sponsors trash pickups, night markets, street celebrations, public art and the like.
Lurie has now endorsed moderate candidates for all five supervisorial seats that are at stake in the Nov. 3 election.
Those two endorsements came despite the fact that in June, a man publicly alleged that Yekutiel had sexually assaulted him at a party in 2020. Yekutiel denied the allegation and said it was investigated by police, who did not pursue charges.
The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee’s narrow vote to endorse Yekutiel occurred last month in a contentious meeting in which Yekutiel’s accuser spoke. It came after a panel reported, among other things, that the alleged incident did not occur at an official function or club, and that the panel could not substantiate the allegation or whether a violation of the organization’s code of conduct occurred.
The party’s judicial-commission chair said in a letter that the finding was “not a determination on the merits of whether a sexual assault occurred.”
Nguyen, who was elected to the committee in 2024, voted for no endorsement rather than for Yekutiel.
Right before the endorsement meeting, GrowSF — which is backing Yekutiel — sent an email to local party committee members that, among other things, criticized McCoy’s stances on matters of drug policy.
The organization also called for an examination — in keeping with the probe into the charge against Yekutiel — of old criminal convictions McCoy received for offenses that included grand larceny, violating probation and driving on a suspended license.
Asked about the letter, McCoy insisted he had been open about his past struggles before getting sober, and the criticism was “to be expected.”
Asked recently whether he felt winning the endorsements from the mayor and the local Democratic party put the controversy in the past, Yekutiel did not answer directly.
“From the very beginning, we’ve been very consistent to go to the voters and talk directly about the issues that matter to them, to listen to them,” he said.
Amid the uproar, Yekutiel has pushed his expansive visions for how to improve The City, including by building 10,000 homes in District 8 over eight years and working towards construction of an extensive subway system.
Yekutiel, who served a nearly three-year stint on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors, said he is serious about the subway idea.
“Every major city worth its salt has a public transportation system, both above ground and below ground, that can get you everywhere you need to go quickly, efficiently and safely, and we deserve that kind of public transportation system,” Yekutiel said.
Spain is an example of a country that built subway service for far less than what the Central Subway in San Francisco cost, he said.
“That is exactly the kind of vision you deserve from your supervisors,” he said.
Yekutiel vows to meet immediately with all of the landlords of the district’s more than 60 vacant storefronts to find ways to get properties leased, and he says he wants to relax city rules to ease the way for most types of businesses. He said he has been able to successfully play matchmaker between business owners and landlords in the past.
“I’m a small-business owner,” he said. “I ran a merchant association, and I was on the small-business commission. We should be rolling out the red carpet for people who want to open up small businesses. But instead, we give them an obstacle course to run through.”
The next biggest fundraiser in the race was McCoy, who has received Pelosi’s endorsement. He had collected $322,000 as of Sept. 18, including $217,524 of public financing.
In addition, a labor-union-backed independent committee that received support from the International Federal of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21, among others, reported having spent $163,000 supporting McCoy.
McCoy recently worked as campaign manager for Pelosi’s Save Our Healthcare initiative. He is a former legislative aide to state Sen. Scott Wiener and former Mayor London Breed when they were supervisors, as well as former chief of staff for former Supervisor Julie Christensen.
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He was also policy and community-affairs manager at the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and vice president for policy and public affairs for HealthRIGHT 360, a provider of addiction-treatment services in The City, among other things.
McCoy has also been endorsed by state Controller Malia Cohen, Supervisors Connie Chan, Matt Dorsey and Myrna Melgar, and former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, as well as numerous unions — including several Service Employees International Union locals — and both the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club and the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, both of which he previously helped lead.
McCoy recently unveiled what he called a comprehensive behavioral-health policy proposal that calls for establishing addiction and mental-health treatment campuses next to hospitals, starting with Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.
He said such an arrangement would more quickly free up police officers and other emergency-response personnel and reduce effects on neighborhoods, and it could draw on federal funding.
The issue is close for McCoy, who has said he previously struggled with addiction and homelessness. He says he has been sober for more than 15 years.
McCoy called for ending San Francisco’s contract with the controversial company Flock Safety for automated license-plate-reading cameras, along with the deletion of data, following reports that Flock’s network had been improperly accessed by outside agencies.
Both Nguyen and Patel have also expressed opposition to the use of the technology. Yekutiel, by contrast, has said he supports its use with appropriate guardrails.
Police officials in June announced that they had recently discovered through a regular audit that the department’s Flock automated license-plate-reader network was “improperly queried” on behalf of out-of-state and federal agencies other than Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.
The queries came from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, which had been authorized for data sharing.
McCoy’s campaign said new rules are needed for handling and retention of data, and to prohibit “searches tied to immigration, reproductive health or LGBTQ+ spaces.” Further, The City should not contract with vendors that share data with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, it said.
Money now going to Flock should go to mental-health crisis teams, better street lighting, a dedicated district property-crime investigator and more speed cameras, the campaign said.
“First, we can fight crime without turning our neighborhoods into a surveillance dragnet of Flock cameras that ICE can access, which puts so many of our community members at risk,” McCoy said in a press release. “And second, we have to offer real places for people who are experiencing a mental health crisis or addiction to get back on their feet and off the streets. We’re failing the most vulnerable San Franciscans, and we can do better.”
California law does not allow law-enforcement agencies to share license-plate-reader data with out-of-state or federal agencies.
Though the queries were simultaneously made to between 531 and 763 other law enforcement agencies, the San Francisco Police Department said it was the first and only agency to discover the statewide improper queries.
The department said the license-plate readers had “revolutionized the department’s ability to solve and deter crime since launching in 2024.”
Nguyen, who uses the name Juicy Liu in his drag persona, had raised $145,000, including $55,364 in contributions and $89,364 in public financing. He has been endorsed by the Working Families Party, the San Francisco League of Pissed Off Voters and the Rose Pak Asian American Club, among others.
Nguyen called the rising cost of living in The City a “crisis” and an “emergency.” He said he wants The City to invest more in housing; seek to reform Proposition 13, the 1978 constitutional amendment limiting tax increases, in order to collect more from businesses; and tax wealthy people locally.
“If you make over $100 million, I think you should help San Francisco out and contribute to the infrastructure needs that we have here,” he said.
While Nguyen said The City needs “big solutions for the big problems that we have,” he said Yekutiel’s proposals are not “grounded in reality.”
In particular, he said promoting multiple thousands of housing units on Upper Market was a bad idea, lifting rules and regulations for businesses was reckless, and the idea of subway tunnels all over The City was “pie in the sky.”
“We don’t want skyscrapers on Market Street,” Nguyen said. “I’m not going to promise you unicorns and rainbows to earn votes.”
Nguyen said he wants to fund affordable housing, ban data centers and make Muni free for people under the age of 26.
“I’m not backed by the big money,” he said. “I’m not backed by the huge establishment. I’m just a drag queen with a wig and lashes, and just trying to say, ‘Hey, shouldn’t we fight for just everybody here in San Francisco?’”
Darshini Patel had raised a total of just over $80,000, including $20,354 in contributions and $60,000 in public financing. She launched her campaign in April — at least six months after the others — and said she did not focus on raising money until August.
Born in Mountain View to parents who immigrated from Tanzania, Patel attended Wellesley College near Boston and went on to be a White House intern during President Barack Obama’s administration and a regional field director for a Virginia campaign operation for Obama that grew to 400 people.
Yekutiel also interned in Obama’s White House and was a New Hampshire field organizer for the Obama campaign.
Patel says that in 2016, she took a job at DoorDash and traveled across the country working around the clock, seven days per week, helping the company launch service in some 300 cities and working with small businesses.
After nearly six years, she said, she left DoorDash, having done well enough to buy a home in Noe Valley, though not to retire.
Later, Patel went to work for Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, running get-out-the-vote operations in New Hampshire, a state Harris won.
While exploring whether to run for supervisor in District 8, where she has lived in Noe Valley for a total of about 10 years, Patel said it was commonplace to hear that she was being unrealistic because a woman had not been elected to represent the district for nearly 30 years.
“I would argue I’m much more qualified than any of the other candidates, and because I am not interested in the spotlight, I think I can actually focus on the parts of the job that create the most impact,” Patel said. “My whole career has been about strategy, operations, and execution, whether it was in policy organizing or in tech.”
Patel said her identification of The City’s severe shortage of child-care facilities was an example of how her analytical approach could produce real solutions. City funding for child care can’t be effective if there’s nowhere for kids to go, she said.
“We’re solving the wrong side of the problem,” she said.