The already stupidly crowded to become Mayor of San Francisco just got more crowded, as the Ex reports on the candidacy of Emil Lawrence, a San Francisco cab driver who paid the $5,000 to get on the November ballot on Friday, since he had not collected the necessary 10,000 signatures. Lawrence seems to be a one-issue kind of guy, and he's most pissed off about how the city has been treating cab drivers of late. He's also been a frequent speaker on the subject at Board of Supervisors meetings, and obviously his anger is such that he's willing to spend $5K in a seemingly futile attempt to take control of the situation. (See the almost official candidate list below.)

With Lawrence in the running, the official candidate total came to 16 after the filing deadline at 5 p.m. Friday, down from an initial estimate (which the NYT made fun of us for) of 37.

It looks like SFist's favorite write-in candidate Harold Miller did not get enough offers from willing signature-givers for him to show up at their homes for a signature, and nor did he cough up the $5K. He remains but a write-in candidate, and you should write him in if you would like him to make good on his pledge to rid the streets of homeless in his first seven days in office.

Below is the pre-Friday list of potential candidates, totaling 17, and the official list has yet to be released by the Department of Elections. We'll update this as soon as we know which one of these jokers didn't get their stuff in on Friday.

Jeff Adachi (public defender)
Michela Alioto-Pier (former supervisor)
Cesar Ascarrunz (club owner, business man)
John Avalos (supervisor)
Terry Baum (out lesbian, Green Party rabble-rouser)
David Chiu (supervisor)
Paul Currier (community organizer, likes to capitalize words in the middle of sentences)
Bevan Dufty (former supervisor)
Tony Hall (former supervisor)
Dennis J. Herrera (City Attorney)
Emil Lawrence (cabbie)
Ed Lee (career bureacrat-turned reluctant politician-turned-not-so-reluctant politician)
Wilma Pang (City College professor)
Joanna Rees (venture capitalist)
Phil Ting (Assessor-Recorder, blog-creator)
David Villa-Lobos (small-business owner)
Leland Yee (current state senator, Ed Lee hater)