Supervisor candidates envision future for beloved District 8 | Politics

The candidates include Manny Yekutiel, the owner of Manny’s cafe, bookstore, and civic events and gathering space in the Mission; Gary McCoy, a longtime aide to U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi; and Michael Nguyen, a patent attorney and drag performer.

In addition, Darshini Patel — a former DoorDash employee who helped launch the meal-delivery service in hundreds of markets and led get-out-the-vote efforts for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in New Hampshire in 2024, among other things — is also a candidate.

Yekutiel, who co-founded a nonprofit focused on enlivening public spaces with Daniel Lurie before Lurie became mayor, has jumped out to an early fundraising lead. Yekutiel’s campaign had raised more than $475,000, spent $217,000 and been approved for the maximum $255,000 of public financing as of Tuesday, a spokesperson said.

Yekutiel said he wants to build 10,000 homes in the district in the next eight years and proposed creating “a housing priority district” on Market Street between Castro Street and Octavia Boulevard that would “remove all the barriers to building housing on our main street for eight years.”

He said he wants a special economic zone in that area that would remove most zoning regulations, and that he’d like to create an unrestricted grant program that would give out up to $100,000 per vacant storefront.

“My goal will be to make District 8 the most business-friendly district in The City,” Yekutiel said.

Yekutiel said his priorities also include increasing general affordability in The City, reducing the cost of child care, getting help for people suffering on the streets and pursuing what he called his “joy agenda,” which he said includes filling 63 vacant storefronts in the district.

Yekutiel grew up in Los Angeles in a conservative, orthodox Jewish family; he said that when he came out as gay, his father “disowned” him. He later found a home in the Castro, where he rents an apartment next to the former camera shop once owned by the late gay civil-rights leader Harvey Milk.

As a youth, Yekutiel attended Williams College on a scholarship, raised money for Equality California in the Bay Area, interned in former President Barack Obama’s White House and won a fellowship to study LGBTQ movements in six nations abroad.

He was a New Hampshire field organizer for the Obama campaign in 2012, became chief of staff in the Bay Area for FWD.us, an immigration reform group, and was deputy finance director in Northern California for Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

In November of 2018, Yekutiel launched Manny’s, which hosts a wide variety of events and fundraisers and has attracted local, state and national political figures, among other luminaries.

A past president of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, Yekutiel says he has experience helping fill vacant storefronts — including Milk’s old shop, which now houses Queer Arts Featured, a boutique, gallery and events space.

He was a member of the Small Business Commission in 2020 when former Mayor London Breed appointed him to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors.

Yekutiel left the SFMTA after nearly three years to devote himself more to the Civic Joy Fund, the nonprofit he co-founded in December 2022 with Lurie, who was executive board chair of the antipoverty group Tipping Point at the time. Yekutiel left his executive-director role when he declared his candidacy in September.

The Civic Joy Fund has installed string lights along commercial corridors in neighborhoods across The City, sponsored night markets and hundreds of block parties, and helped organize regular neighborhood trash cleanups.

Yekutiel and the Civic Joy Fund were also instrumental in the launch of Downtown First Thursdays, the monthly parties that since 2024 have regularly drawn tens of thousands of people to 2nd Street below Market Street for music, food and other attractions.

“One of the things I’ve learned with the Civic Joy Fund and with Manny’s is that joy is not just about fun,” Yekutiel said. “Joy is an economic-development tool.”

Up against Yekutiel is McCoy, who also launched his candidacy in September. He has been endorsed by Pelosi, the former two-time speaker of the House of Representatives. He had raised $76,227 as of May 13 (more recent figures were not available Tuesday), according to the city Ethics Commission’s website.

McCoy has been the campaign manager for Pelosi’s Save Our Healthcare initiative since January 2025. He has also been a consultant for her PAC To The Future committee, a political director for her campaign committee, and was vice president of a mental-health and substance-abuse treatment provider HealthRight 360, among other positions.

McCoy has also served as policy and community affairs manager at the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department, chief of staff to former Supervisor Julie Christensen, campaign manager and legislative aide for former Supervisor Scott Wiener, and legislative aide to former Supervisor London Breed.

“I am not running on theory,” McCoy said. “I’m running on an actual track record with proven experience through 15 years of work in public service, from City Hall to Sacramento to the halls of Congress to city departments.”

“I’m ready to hit the ground running on day one,” he said. “Experience matters, especially right now in our comeback in San Francisco. It’s not the time to be learning on the job.”

For more than four years, McCoy was also an appointed member of the California Homeless Coordinating & Financing Council.

A past president of the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club and the Harvey Milk LGTBQ Democratic Club, McCoy promises to support more housing creation, cut city red tape and costs for businesses, and support funding for the SFMTA’s Muni service.

McCoy said he wants to find incentives for vacant storefronts to get filled, even on a temporary basis. He wants to protect rent control and expand the number of rent-controlled apartments.

In addition, McCoy said he wants to increase safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. He is a past member of the SFMTA’s pedestrian-safety advisory committee.

Born and raised in Norfolk, Va., McCoy said he left as soon “as I could.” He said he came to San Francisco to work in radio, but addiction led him to homelessness.

McCoy, who has lived with HIV for more than 20 years. said he got sober 15 years ago. He expressed gratitude for the subsidized housing he got in the Castro area, where he felt comfortable as a gay man.

“I’m a fighter,” he said. “I was a fighter when I was on the streets, and I was a fighter for my recovery and sobriety, and will be a fighter for District 8.”

Also in the race is Nguyen, a patent attorney with an alter ego named “Juicy Liu,” who said he will celebrate 20 years in The City in August.

“I’m a drag queen, I’m a lawyer, a community organizer, and activist,” Nguyen said. “Code switching is my superpower.”

A self-described progressive, Nguyen won a seat on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee in 2024 on the Labor and Working Families slate as a first-time candidate. He filed to run for supervisor in October.

Nguyen said he is a child of refugees from Vietnam who grew up in Texas and that he came to San Francisco to study law. He has been active since then in numerous organizations, including what is now known as the GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance, and is the president of the National Conference of Vietnamese American Attorneys.

After multiple crimes against Asians locally and elsewhere in the wake of COVID-19, Nguyen in 2021 helped organize the LGBTQ March for Asian Lives, in which more than 1,000 people marched from the Castro to City Hall.

Nguyen vowed to make the lack of affordability in The City a top priority — particularly concerning housing — and he asked whether the minimum wage can be raised, rent control can be expanded, Muni can be made free for people under the age of 26, and child care could be free.

Nguyen was disappointed that voters earlier this month rejected Proposition D, a union-backed ballot measure that would have increased a city tax on companies at which executives are paid more than 100 times what their median workers receive.

He said he would like to see a public bank established, and that he supports the proposed Affordable Housing Guarantee Act — which would dedicate city transfer taxes to affordable housing — that activists are now trying to qualify for the November ballot.

Nguyen described Yekutiel’s proposals for housing development as “very extreme.” He said he opposed Lurie’s recently approved Family Zoning plan, which provided for denser development in parts of The City to meet state mandates, in part because he did not think there were adequate protections against demolition of rent-controlled apartments.

“I wouldn’t be a rubber stamp to any mayor’s agenda,” he said.