• Meanwhile, the MAGA folks are trolling California Governor Gavin Newsom over how he was sitting during the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit Wednesday, to which his office responded with a preposterously Photoshopped yoga-like pose on social media. [Daily Beast, Buzzfeed]

• In addition to removing Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of free days at US National Parks, President Trump added his birthday, as well as Flag Day. [CBS News]
• Downtown SF’s annual Let's Glow holiday light event kicked off Friday night featuring stunning displays at eight locations. [NBC Bay Area]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie is positioning himself as an "outsider" candidate for San Francisco mayor as he makes his 2024 candidacy official today. And he's promising, among other things, to compel more mentally ill people into treatment even if it's against their will.

The 2024 mayor's race in SF gained a new power player on Tuesday, with philanthropist and heir to the Levi's fortune Daniel Lurie making his all-but-declared candidacy official. Lurie held a campaign kickoff event Tuesday morning at a Potrero Hill community center, saying in his announcement, "I love this city, and I know that working together we will overcome our most pressing challenges and turn San Francisco around."

Lurie, 46, tells the New York Times that "he decided to run for mayor when he was walking his 9-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter to school, and they saw a man stumbling down the street, naked and screaming."

"Our kids have come to a place where they’re inured," he says. "It’s almost like they accept it, which is not OK."

In truth, though, Lurie has been working up to a run for the mayor's office since at least 2017, when SFist first wrote about his rumored ambitions. At the time he and the nonprofit he founded, Tipping Point Community, had announced a campaign to raise $100 million to address homelessness in San Francisco.

Lurie's campaign also kicks off with a slick introductory video, seen below. In it, Lurie touts his background as the founder of Tipping Point, the local nonprofit dedicated to lifting people out of poverty; and his work as chair of the Bay Area Super Bowl 50 Host Committee.

"I love this city, but what we are seeing on the streets of San Francisco is not progressive," Lurie says in the video. "We have too many people that have been in power for far too long, doing things the same way they've always been done. We need the courage to try to do things differently."

Lurie tells the Chronicle in an interview, "There is a hunger for change. There is a hunger for someone from outside this entrenched system to go in and hold people accountable." He also says, "There is a sense of lawlessness and disorder in this city. … I do not believe that anyone so far in this race has the ability to stare down these very real problems, because they are part of this entrenched system."

Whether you consider Lurie an "outsider" is a matter of perspective. As far back as a decade ago, in 2013, he was personally tapped by Mayor Ed Lee to chair the Super Bowl committee, so his links to the City Hall establishment date back a bit.

He is the son of billionaire businesswoman Mimi Haas and stepson of the late Levi’s CEO and president Peter Haas — who was the great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss. And Lurie's father is a rabbi who ran SF's Jewish Community Federation for 17 years, and now runs the New Israel Foundation.

Lurie suggests that he would do more than Mayor London Breed has to address crime and mental illness on the street — though on the latter front, any candidate next year will be helped by another wheel that's been in motion for some time. Starting this fall, San Francisco will be among seven California communities instituting the first Care Courts under a 2022 directive from Governor Gavin Newsom that was signed into law last summer. These non-traditional courts will give those arrested and deemed mentally ill the option of treatment for their illness in lieu of jail, and if they refuse they can be compelled into that treatment.

"We need to go in and rip the Band-Aid off in many different departments," Luries says of his intention to shake things up. "We need commission reform, we need to rethink how we help our small businesses."

As role models, Lurie points to Willie Brown and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, both moderate Democrats who "got stuff done" — with Bloomberg formerly being a Republican.

Lurie enters a race in which many assume Mayor London Breed will be vulnerable, given the general mood of the city in the last two years. But as the Times notes, it's been 28 years since an incumbent mayor was defeated here — when Willie Brown, a well known local politician already, unseated Frank Jordan.

A spokesperson for Breed, Maggie Muir, gave a statement to the Times about Lurie's candidacy saying, "Mayor Breed is working every day to make San Francisco safer and cleaner. Why should we trust a beginner to accomplish these things faster?"

Previously: It Sure Looks Like Levi Strauss Heir Daniel Lurie Is Running for Mayor Against London Breed

Candidates running for mayor of San Francisco in 2019 will not be running against Ed Lee, as Lee is termed out after this, his second full term. That means a large litter of candidates is likely to pursue the mayorship this time around (including possibly a full third of the current Board of Supervisors), and Matier & Ross report that the “outside businessperson track” candidate may be CEO Daniel Lurie, whose Tipping Point Community nonprofit is trying to raise $100 million to fight homelessness in San Francisco.

"Daniel Lurie, head of the Tipping Point Community charity, was spotted having lunch the other day at AT&T Park’s Gotham Club with Giants President Larry Baer and a mutual friend, Hyatt Hotel heir John Pritzker — where they were overheard discussing Lurie’s prospects for a 2019 mayoral run in San Francisco," Matier & Ross write.

Lurie himself did not comment for the Matier & Ross story, but had previously told the mustached newshounds that he wasn’t going to run because has “too much on my plate right now” and “I don’t view myself as a politician.”

It should be noted that Lurie himself did not donate $100 million to fight homelessness — but his Tipping Point Community is trying to raise that amount among donors, and at last count they were more than halfway to that goal. The Tipping Point Community is perhaps best known for their Punk’d-style hidden camera videos that showed Nob Hill shoppers how much their groceries would cost if adjusted for a family living below the poverty line,

But before we go lionizing Lurie as a pure-hearted knight in shining armor fighting the good fight against homelessness, realize that Lurie was the chairman of the Super Bowl 50 host committee that saddled a less-than-outstanding deal on the city of San Francisco. Much of Lurie’s wealth comes from an interest in Levi Strauss, as his mother Mimi Haas was the second wife of the late Levi’s CEO and president Peter Haas.

Former press secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom Nathan Ballard told Matier & Ross that “It’s no secret that people do frequently ask Daniel if he will get involved in politics, because he is so committed to alleviating poverty and he is a charismatic public speaker,” in kind words perhaps meant to get Ballard considered for a role in a potential Lurie campaign or administration.

For those keeping an informal scorecard on likely 2019 mayoral candidates, former state senator and onetime supervisor Mark Leno has already announced he’s running. Other likely candidates include Board of Supervisors President London Breed and District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell, and you can never count out District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin, though for now he's endorsed Leno and said he won't run. Journalist and Re/code co-founder Kara Swisher has also expressed interest in running for mayor of San Francisco, though has indicated she wouldn’t run until 2023.

Related: ‘Potential Successors To Mayor Ed Lee 'Saddling Up'

For a few glorious days in early November, political wonks mulled a possible successor for current San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee after he was mentioned as a possible cabinet member for Hilary Clinton, whose ascendancy to president seemed to be assured. (HAHAHA remember that? OK, now I just want to go back to bed and cry.) Though Lee's hopes of being Education or HUD head are likely dashed for now, the fact remains that on November 5, 2019 San Francisco will vote for a new mayor, and the speculation on who that might be has just begun.

In his increasingly elliptical column for the San Francsico Chronicle, former Mayor Willie Brown says that even now, "City Hall has more candidates saddling up to replace Mayor Ed Lee than there are horses in the Kentucky Derby," a pleasant message of hope given how afraid many of us are that by 2019 all that will remain of humanity is a charred radioactive mess caused by an early-morning tweetstorm from an elected manic.

"It’s clear that board President London Breed is running, as is Supervisor Mark Farrell," Brown says, echoing former Supe John Avalos. The latter predicted that If London decides to run, she’ll wipe the floor with (Supervisor) Mark Farrell," as she "has evolved into a shrewd and charismatic politician...but is flawed by pride and vindictiveness and a lack of consistent vision for social justice."

Other likely candidates, Brown says, are City Attorney Dennis Herrera (who, if we're just talking here, is my prediction for dark horse success in the race) and Assemblyman David Chiu. After that, it starts to sound like Brown is just saying names of people that he sees on Dave Kujan's bulletin board, as he bandies about Jane Kim, Aaron Peskin, and (perhaps most preposterously...or not?) Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu as other candidates seeking Room 200.

Yes, assuming we're not all dead by then, this could be a fun race to watch...and if SF follows the alleged trend of "nontraditional candidates — with backgrounds in business, not politics" running for office, perhaps we'll see a local tech titan toss his hat in the ring. Mayor @Jack, anyone?

Previously: Supervisor John Avalos Not Afraid To Burn Bridges On His Way Out Of Casterly Rock

Tech journalist and Re/code co-founder Kara Swisher has spent two decades sniffing around board rooms and harassing tech executives and venture capitalists over Instant Messenger, and now she's looking to pivot into an entirely new line of work, albeit seven years from now. She tells the Chronicle that she'll be running for Mayor of San Francisco in 2023, because she no longer wants to sit on the sidelines as the nation's most tech-connected city fights over how close a relationship it should have with the tech industry. And apparently 2019 is too soon?

She tells Inc. that the delay is because she's currently too busy with her job at Re/Code.

New York Magazine recently called her "Silicon Valley's most feared and well-liked journalist," and that's in part because she's been around for a long time. At age 53, she's been covering the tech industry basically since the beginning of Web 1.0, and the Industry Standard was already saying, in 1999, that she was "the writer who has most influenced public opinion about the internet economy."

She's also openly gay, lives in the Castro with her two dogs, and would likely be a highly progressive candidate for the mayor's office — she's already had a falling out, professionally, with investor Ron Conway over things she's written, so don't expect big campaign funds to come from him.

But as to what her positions might be, or how she'd plan to solve some of the city's most difficult problems, we'll have to wait and see.

What she has said, via the Chron, is this:

We all yammer about politicians and how bad things are, and I think it important that we stop bellyaching and act if we want change. Also this whole election cycle has struck a chord in me that I have always thought about, related to professional politicians and how we need to shift thinking about who should serve and the duty of citizens to be, you know, citizens. There is an important and necessary role for good government and I hate this wholesale tearing down of it. Also the increasing divide between tech sector and the city is something that I think a lot about. Not that I have solutions as yet.

When once and again San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin announced his run to reclaim his Board seat last spring, some asked how he could do that, given that he's already served the legally-allowed two-terms in office. However, since San Francisco's city charter only prevents two consecutive terms, nothing prevented Peskin from mounting his successful return, nor would it prevent, say, Willie Brown (or Gavin Newsom, etc etc) from ending up back in Room 200. But now a group of unnamed pals of Ed Lee are rumored to be working to lock this down to a lifetime two terms, all to send a message to SF's revived progressive forces.

According to the SF Chron's Matier and Ross, "City Hall sources on the second floor" say that the charter amendment intended for the November ballot is currently "being floated around" by "a group that hasn't identified itself" but "appears to have the fingerprints of a cadre of business-friendly loyalists to Mayor Ed Lee."

It would seek to limit members of the Board of Supes or the Mayor to two consecutive life-time terms per seat — so, at the very most, you could be supe for two terms, then mayor for two more, period.

M&R say that the measure would prevent "do-overs down the road for soon-to-be-termed-out Supervisor John Avalos, or the loser of the upcoming contest between Supervisors Scott Wiener and Jane Kim for the state Senate," as well as "disqualify the likes of former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier should she contemplate a return to the Marina district seat held by Mark Farrell, who is eyeing a run for mayor in three years."

The shadowy alleged Friends of Ed are hoping, M&R say, "to send a message to Peskin and his newly energized board progressives not to get too carried away with any of the ballot reforms they've being contemplating."

Though, if I know Peskin (and I think I do), it's exactly this kind of stuff that gets him even more riled up. Backfire in 3, 2, 1...

An inauguration of a city's mayor is supposed to be a time of celebration, of excitement for the future, and of pride and joy. But when you're Ed Lee, announcing your third inauguration (after promising only one, just BTW) the same day that one of your dearest pals calls you out in the paper and at least one city agency is rebelling against you, it seems less like a party and more like another place for people to protest against you.

According to a press release sent by the Mayor's office late Tuesday, "Mayor Edwin M. Lee today announced plans for the Mayoral Inauguration Ceremony for his second term as Mayor of San Francisco on Friday, January 8, 2016 in City Hall." Which is an interesting choice of words since, as the Chron also notes (it's the second item), this is actually "his third stretch in office," after being appointed to the position in 2011 when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom became California's Lieutenant Governor.

At the time, Lee promised that he wouldn't run for a non-interim term, a move endorsed by Newsom, who said that an appointee who tried to hold onto the gig "...will be immediately discredited as the political appointee. Everybody running against that person is going to say that. I will say that, and I'm not going anywhere."

Well, as it turns out, Gavin didn't say that about Lee, and he's been mayor ever since — in fact, notes the Chron, Lee "will be in office for nine years, the fourth longest-serving mayor in San Francisco history." Yay?

Lee's ceremony comes the same week that, even in this current state of economic bounty, the mayor informed city agencies that a $100 million budget deficit means still more belt-tightening, this time to the tune of 1.5 percent. While many raised their eyebrows at the news that SF, the flushest of cities, found itself short by millions, San Francisco’s Ethics Commission is raising more than brows: It's raising hell.

As the Ex reports, the Commission is balking at the requirement to submit a revised, cut budget this February. Ethics Commissioner Peter Keane says mischief is afoot, arguing that the cuts are intended to keep the governmental watchdogs "as a completely castrated body without any kind of ability to do its job.”

In fact, says Keane, they're going to ask for more money, not less.

“It’s going to be a lot more than the budget that we have now. It is not going to be any 1.5 percent cut. Let’s submit that budget to the Mayor’s Office with a forceful justification of why we need those increases and let’s fight for it and let’s get it.”

“The city has slid into a fair amount of corruption, tremendously soft corruption but corruption. It’s pay to play. It’s a game of bribery, whether or not we can actually identify it as bribery, it’s there," Keane said. “Our group is the group that should be ferreting that out and getting on top of that and reversing that.”

The Ethics Commission isn't the only political force questioning the mayor's motives — Chinatown power player Rose Pak, who was once Lee's closest ally, tells the Chron that during a late-2015 meeting between the two in Asia, she told Lee that “he was being isolated by his staff and that he is being completely controlled."

“Not even his friends or department heads can get in to talk with him," Pak said, in a conversation that the mayor's spokesperson characterized as one that "went really well."

So, here we have it. The mayor who promised not to run, with an approval rating that just dropped 18 points, now being sworn in for a third time as his once-dearest friend cries foul and Ethics flouting his decree. Should be a fun four years!

Here's the full press release for the inauguration, just in case you want to go celebrate with the mayor. Or whatever.

San Francisco, CA—Mayor Edwin M. Lee today announced plans for the Mayoral Inauguration Ceremony for his second term as Mayor of San Francisco on Friday, January 8, 2016 in City Hall.

“This is a celebration of the people of San Francisco that make our City great,” said Mayor Lee. “With a strong, diverse economy as the foundation for San Francisco’s continuing progress, we will tackle longstanding challenges like affordable housing and homelessness while making historic investments in our schools, transportation system and public safety network. I have dedicated 26 years of service to our City to make sure everyone has a chance to succeed, and I am humbled to be sworn in as Mayor of the ‘greatest City in the world’ for a second term.”

Board of Supervisors President London Breed will open the program as the Master of Ceremonies and California Governor Jerry Brown will administer the Mayoral Oath of Office to Mayor Lee.

Musical selections during the Inauguration Ceremony will be performed by the Glide Ensemble and Change Band and the St. Mary’s Girls Drum and Bell Corps.

City Hall doors open at 11 a.m. The ceremony will begin at 11:30 a.m. The event is open to the public.

Previously: Mayor Calls For Budget Cuts Amid $100 Million City Deficit
Survey: Mayor Lee's Approval Ratings Plummet, Majority Says SF Is 'Pretty Seriously Off-Track'
Rose Pak Suffering From Kidney Failure, Calls Mayor Lee 'The Biggest Disappointment'

Tomorrow is election day (you're going to vote, right?) and a couple of controversial ballot propositions have received a lot of (deserved) attention. As a possible voter you have been asked to make decisions on a slew of important matters, including Proposition I (the Mission moratorium) and Proposition F (that Airbnb one). But what about the mayor? Mayor Lee is up for reelection as well, despite the fact that he is running what many in the media have called a "virtually unopposed" campaign. And yet, he does have some opponents — three of whom have banded together in an attempt to unseat the incumbent mayor via the ranked-choice system. Just how many votes would his opponents actually need in order to be successful? Well, about 65,000 between the three of them, calculates one publication.

San Francisco Magazine, a publication whose editor called Mayor Ed Lee's opponents "a clown car of neophytes and eccentrics," last Friday published a "back-of-the-election-mailer" estimate of the numbers that Lee's opponents would need in order to unseat the Mayor. They note that three of Lee's challengers — Stuart Schuffman, Amy Farrah Weiss, and Francisco Herrera — are attempting to use San Francisco's ranked-choice voting system to defeat Mayor Lee with a slogan of "Vote 1-2-3 to replace Ed Lee.” The slogan suggests that if enough voters select three candidates other than Lee for the top three spots, the combined votes might be enough to ouster Ed. And that doesn't sound like a lot in a city of 800,000, but given that probably only a quarter of registered voters (around 150,000 people total) are likely to vote at all in this election, it amounts to almost half.

The magazine is thus very quick to assure us that this is all basically pointless.

"The trouble with the 1-2-3 strategy is that it has to be executed flawlessly in order to have any effect at all. In reality, says political consultant Alex Clemens, many people don't fill out a second and third choice on the ballot [...]."

In conversation with SF Mag, Clemens continued that "[ranked-choice voting] doesn't work particularly well when the three candidates promoting the strategy have in aggregate a very small percentage of support."

So, in other words: Make sure to vote tomorrow, although your vote in the mayoral race is probably meaningless.

Got it.

Previously: Video: Mayor Ed Lee's Vision For San Francisco

Award winning actor/San Francisco native Danny Glover has never been one to shy away from public comment on local issues, as you can see from items like his impromptu appearance in a 2011 video in support of the (now defunct) Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council Recycling Center. This week, he's appearing in another locally focused video, this time to support Propositions F and I.

Presumably, you're familiar with both props at this point, but just in case (and grossly simplified) Prop F is the one seeking to more closely regulate short-term-rental companies like Airbnb, and Prop I seeks to suspend development of market-rate housing in the Mission for 18 to 30 months in order to plan for and encourage more affordable housing.

Glover appears to support both, and in a video posted to Facebook Tuesday says that “We’ve always been a welcoming city, and it’s wonderful that people from across the world continue to come here to discover how magical a place it really is."

"Unfortunately, the city government hasn’t done its job creating a housing policy that keeps up with an influx of new people.”

The Chron reports that the two-minute commercial for the props was shot at Beyond Pix Studios on Battery Street, and was paid for by the campaigns for props F and I.

Back in 2007, as some of you older-timers might recall, Glover's name was floated as a mayoral candidate against then-incumbent Gavin Newsom. As we all know, Glover never ran, Gavin remained mayor long enough to appoint Ed Lee, and here we all are today.

(Of course, I'm not saying that a single thing in SF would be different if Glover had indeed ran for and been elected mayor, but speaking as a blogger, the fodder there is mind-blowing.)

According to the Chron, Glover isn't the only local celeb casting their weight behind those measures. Actor and SF native Benjamin Bratt (whom I was once behind at a Bikram class, ama), hosted a fundraiser for Prop I earlier this year, prompting I spokesperson Jim Ross to say that Glover and Bratt "are our two good celebrities."

But will their star power translate into votes for the props? Ross seems to think that their word means more than the imprecations of folks like tech titan Ron Conway, saying that Glover and Bratt are "famous in the real world, not in Silicon Valley."

Related: The Mission Moratorium (Sort Of) Explained At Yesterday's City Hall Press Conference

Stuart Schuffman, best known by his writing moniker and eponoymous website Broke-Ass Stuart, formally announced today via his column for the San Francisco Examiner that he is running for Mayor, challenging Ed Lee in what he tells SFist is a "journalistic experiment."

Mayor Lee, Schuffman himself notes, isn't truly without competition, as "something like 20" people are running against him already, including a few notable non-establishment candidates like self-declared YIMBY Amy Farah Weiss. Still, Lee is commonly referred to as running "unopposed," with potential contenders such as Mark Leno bowing out, and it's likely that the media will continue to describe the situation that way.

"How is it that someone with less than 50 percent of the voters’ confidence, is running basically unopposed?" Schuffman writes of Lee, who had a 47 percent approval rating in a 2014 KPIX poll. "I’m not very good at math but those odds seem pretty good for anyone one who wants to challenge him." And yet, Stuart isn't hoping to win. "Do I think I’m gonna win?" Schuffman concedes, "Come on, I’m not as dumb as a I look, but I’m fascinated by all the shit I mentioned above. San Francisco is beyond growing pains, it’s getting stretch marks. And for me, as a writer and chronicler, there’s no better way to see this first hand than throw myself in the middle of it."

But Schuffman is more than a writer. In the words of his Twitter bio, he's a "TV Host. Travel Writer. Poet. Motherfucking Hustler." Self-promoter that he is, Schuffman's choice to enter politics might come as little surprise. Recently, this "hustler" rustled up $30,000 in a campaign on IndieGogo to help grow his website. Of course, not a penny of those funds can go toward Schuffman's mayoral campaign, so he's ponying up the initial campaign cost of $5,700, himself.

"First and foremost, this is a protest campaign," Schuffman reiterates his purported motivation to SFist, "I'm not gonna win this, and to anybody who thinks that they’re going to beat Ed Lee, they're deluding themselves. That’s why Mark Leno’s not running." In particular Schuffman is critical of some of Ed Lee's backers, calling out Ron Conway by name. "We saw what Conway’s money did in Campos’ campaign, and that was fucking dirty. The mayor has given pretty much free reign to developers and tech companies, not making them pay their taxes. Basically he’s on the take, not illegally, of course."

Schuffman, save his role as high school vice president and treasurer, has no first-hand political experience. And, on the issues, he hasn't really delineated a platform as of yet. "Affordable housing is very important to me," says Schuffman, and "taking a serious, real look at the homeless problem. It's an epidemic here in SF." Asked about the possibility of a moratorium on market-rate development in the Mission, Schuffman is in agreement with Supervisor David Campos. "I think it’s a great idea, because look, there are, look what needs to happen is we need the city to build affordable housing. Campos isn’t saying don’t build in the Mission,he’s saying build affordable, plus there’s other parts of the city where we can build."

Schuffman recalls noted local stunt artist Chicken John's candidacy in 2007 a somewhat similar gambit which netted him more than 1 percent of the vote. "Chicken’s great," says Schuffman, "but the campaign I’m doing is different. Chickens’ smart and he’s obnoxious and he knows that that’s part of his weird fucking charm. I’m doing this as a journalist, using the written word."

via Facebook

Yet that may present a bit of a conundrum. Though Schuffman insists that he means his candidacy and his chronicle thereof to be "an exploration of the crookedness of politics in San Francisco," invoking the legacy of Norman Mailer's 1969 run for the New York mayor's office, that rhetoric only goes so far. Broke-Ass Stuart is kind of the poor man's Mailer, and writing about the campaign during his candidacy could get tricky. During his recent round of fundraising, Schuffman drew criticism for plugging that IndieGogo campaign in the pages of the Examiner. But, says Schuffman, "There’s nothing stopping the Examiner from writing about other people [who are running]... and in my articles I’m going to be interviewing other people who are running." Of course, it's unlikely that the Examiner, who put Schuffman on today's front page, will object to very much.

Before concluding our interview, Schuffman was sure to get in one last plug. "Mention that the official official announcement will be at my Bar Mitzvah party," a final fundraiser for Broke-Ass Stuart's website. There, I've mentioned it.

Previously: Ed Lee Has A Mayoral Opponent: Amy Farah Weiss, The YIMBY

We haven’t had a notable non-establishment candidate for mayor in this town since 2007 when Chicken John and Josh Wolf both cracked 1%. But those guys didn’t have the fortune to run against a mayor whose approval rating is now below 50%, and with no other candidates in the race. Amid speculation that no one will challenge Ed Lee for mayor, the sole opposition at this point is Amy Farah Weiss of the YIMBY campaign. You saw her here last week when nightclub owners spoke out at a Planning Commission meeting which she attended as a community organizer advocating to preserve the Harding Theater.

You think a community organizer can’t win the election? Tell me again who’s your President.

“I started off with YIMBY/WEISS for Mayor thinking that my campaign would help direct votes to a more established candidate like Leno or Ammiano through ranked-choice voting,” Ms. Weiss told SFist. “But as the months passed by and more established candidates stayed out of the race, I have become confident in my ability to win this race with the support of my citywide network and the growing number of neighbors who want to take part in positive and meaningful change.”

Amy Farah Weiss is the founder at a nonprofit 501(c)3 called Neighbors Developing Divisadero, best known for their efforts to revitalize the Harding Theater on Divisadero St. and for spearheading the renovation of a sizable community garden effort at Divisadero and Eddy.

The movement’s name, YIMBY, is of course a play on ‘NIMBY’, the old acronym for ‘Not in my backyard’. It’s not a political party, YIMBY is a 'Yes in my backyard' social movement promoting “inclusive development, an economy that truly shares and a local government that protects and supports the well-being of all San Francisco neighborhoods,” Ms. Farah Weiss said. “I named my campaign YIMBY/WEISS for Mayor because it’s important that my values lead the way rather than personal ambition and that the campaign creates a platform that neighbors can personally connect with and shape outside of me as a particular leader.”

Her platform on the housing crisis? “Our focus should be on protecting neighbors from profit-driven displacement, creating policies that support the in-migration of ‘redevelopment refugees’ of the 60's to today and accessing and creating revenue for the development of housing that is responsive to our regional housing needs as well as the impacts of climate change,” Ms. Farah Weiss told SFist.

Her platform on Muni? “The new private buses and ride-sharing platforms could somehow contribute to the betterment of our public transportation,” she said. “I look forward to working with the brightest local policy minds, researchers, workers, transit-riders and companies to evolve our public transportation system and create livable streets and equitable transportation."

Sure, there is still a possibility that some other establishment candidate will run against Ed Lee in 2015. At this point in 2011, John Avalos (who finished second) had not yet announced or filed. But David Chiu, Jeff Adachi and Dennis Herrera already had. Our good friend Leland Yee had already been running for five months. It is getting to be that time, you guys.

Ms. Farah Weiss does not aspire to kick Ed Lee out of City Hall. “If Ed Lee wants to continue working in local government after I become Mayor, I will find a position for him to use his skill-set in support of the public good,” Farah Weiss said.

BAM! If you want to support Amy Farah Weiss for mayor, there will be a YIMBY/WEISS Signature-Gathering Kick-Off & Variety Show at the Purple House Co-op (2059 Fulton St., @ Cole St.) on Saturday, April 4th from 6-10 p.m. with signature-gathering, live music, comedy and spoken word.

It's good being mayor of San Francisco! Sure, there's lots of boring meetings, and you have to work on the weekends sometimes, but there are perks—perks like the over $95,000 of travel Ed Lee received last year.

According to the mayor's annual economic interest statement, of which Matier and Ross have helpfully blogged the high points, San Francisco's many "sister cities" covered trips to places like Paris ($21,986), China and South Korea ($22,292), and Bangalore ($19,837).

The sister city program, San Francisco's office of Economic and Workplace Development says, has "the potential to carry out the widest possible diversity of activities of any international program, including every type of municipal, business, professional, educational and cultural exchange or project."

That, or to send the mayor to places like Haifa, Israel ($3,546) for a symposium on emergency management and again to China (this time for $13,781) to participate in in the Wuhan International Friendly City Summit.

Lee also was the recipient of a number of gifts, M&R note, like a gift worth $1,363 from Cork, Ireland. The mayor also received numerous presents worth around $440 to help pay for his many trips, from folks as diverse as Mercedes Benz of San Francisco and, of course, Rose Pak.

[SF Gate]