The San Francisco Democratic Party endorsed Manny Yekutiel in the District 8 race on Wednesday evening after two rounds of indecisive votes in a fraught meeting that, at times, elicited cries of “shame!” from outraged attendees.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey, in the third round, flipped his position from supporting rival Gary McCoy to Yekutiel, handing Yekutiel the sole endorsement from the San Francisco Democratic Party.
It was a perplexing move: Dorsey has personally ranked McCoy first and Yekutiel second.
Before the vote, Dorsey shared a story: When Dorsey was appointed to the Board of Supervisors, McCoy, who was in the same recovery meeting with him, called him “with more joy than I had ever heard in his voice,” and said that “now we’ve got a seat at the table.” Dorsey and McCoy have both been in recovery for addiction.
“I know Gary very well. He is somebody I consider a friend. I think he would be a terrific colleague,” Dorsey said, even though McCoy and Dorsey have very different approaches to addiction — McCoy stresses harm reduction, and Dorsey sobriety. “It would mean a lot to people in the recovery community.”
As the vote came to the third round, however, the only two options left were Yekutiel or no endorsement — McCoy had been eliminated because he received the least votes in the second round of voting — and Dorsey voted for Yekutiel.
The vote took place after an emotional public comment session stretching to nearly two hours. The sexual assault allegation against Yekutiel was front and center.
Brad Chapin, a political organizer who, in June, accused Yekutiel of a 2020 assault, spoke first among over 70 people giving public comments.
“Most of [public comment] is going to be in support of someone credibly accused of sexual assault, not just by me. I’m the only one who came public,” Chapin said, choking on tears. “You should all be fucking ashamed of yourself.”
Chapin alleged that Yekutiel grabbed his testicles at a house party in the Mission six years ago and attempted to penetrate him with his finger. Chapin came forward with the accusations, first reported by the San Francisco Standard, after seeing Yekutiel declare his run for supervisor. Yekutiel denied the allegations.
The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, the local party’s governing body, started an investigation in July, a protocol that was established in 2024 after sexual misconduct allegations against city politicos Jon Jacobo and Kevin Ortiz.
The investigation into Chapin’s claims found that it could not substantiate the allegations against Yekutiel because the venue where the alleged sexual assault happened was not at a Democratic Party event, and therefore not within the Democratic Party’s jurisdiction.
That’s according to a letter sent to party chair Nancy Tung on Wednesday morning from Gina M. Roccanova, the chair of the judicial commission tasked with the investigation. The letter was first published by the San Francisco Standard.
“This is not a determination on the merits of whether a sexual assault occurred,” Roccanova wrote.
“The jurisdiction of this body is limited in nature,” Tung told the crowd on Wednesday. “We are not a body to make a determination on any event that happens.” Tung urged the members of the committee to take public comment into account.
Chapin was livid.
“I went to your attorneys, I asked him explicitly if this was a waste of my time because none of this happened at a Democratic Party event. And you knew that,” Chapin said, during the public comment period. “This is a sham.”
On Wednesday evening, as Tung read out the party’s code of conduct against verbal and physical harassment during public comment, Chapin yelled from the first row, “If any of that is true, you should ask Manny to leave.”
“I’m asking you to do the bare freaking minimum,” added a representative for the Teamsters Local 856, “and believe survivors when they come forward.”
Following Chapin, a line of dozens of Yekutiel’s supporters spoke at a microphone directly in front of Chapin. “He’s willing to take on the problems of the city that are challenging with innovative ideas,” one said. “I support Manny for two reasons: Authenticity and action,” said another.
“Shame on all of you,” an audience member yelled from the second row.
Yekutiel’s supporters continued to step forward. They talked about neighborhood cleanups, the Civic Joy Fund and Manny’s Cafe.
“I personally observed the integrity of Manny by having him deal with lots of issues coming his way,” one said. “He is very much in concert with the mayor. The mayor needs Manny for his agenda,” another added.
As Janet Tarlov, the founder of Glen Park’s Canyon Market, spoke in support of Manny, Chapin blurted, “She smiled at me when I was talking about what happened!”
“I understand this is an emotional thing for you,” Tung interrupted. “You can’t continue to have outbursts during public comment.”
But the heated exchanges continued. “Stop, stop, stop!” Tung said at one point. “We are not going to have back and forth between people. People came all this way to say something. What we’ll do is hear people out.”
“You are gonna hear everyone out?” Chapin said.
At this point, Tung announced that the meeting would take a recess until the mood settled down. After five minutes, the meeting resumed and another hour of public comment ensued on various issues such as Prop. G to reopen the Great Highway and California Prop. 40, the billionaire tax.
Following the meeting, Dorsey emphasized that his vote for Yekutiel came only after his preferred candidate, McCoy, was eliminated. A “no endorsement” vote, he stated, “would have betrayed my endorsed positions.”
And yet Dorsey’s move gave a significant electoral boost to his No. 2 candidate at the expense of his professed No. 1 candidate.
“I’m grateful to have earned the San Francisco Democratic Party’s endorsement,” Yekutiel said in a statement following the vote. “Our campaign is focused on delivering results on the issues voters care about most, making San Francisco more affordable, building the housing we need, supporting small businesses, and keeping our neighborhoods safe.”
Catie Stewart, a spokesperson for McCoy’s campaign, questioned the timing of the completion of the sexual assault investigation, which dropped only hours before today’s vote. She wrote that it was “suspect, bordering on absurd” to conclude the investigation on the same day that the local party voted on its endorsement in District 8.
“The fundamentals remain true: We believe Mr. Chapin. We also believe the whisper network of other survivors who, for several years, have experienced inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment and assault from Mr. Yekutiel,” Stewart wrote. “We will always stand with survivors.”
Lurie’s DCCC loves rape. Lurie’s SFPD leaves rape kits untested.
What does that say about Lurie?
What does this say about Dorsey? Power-brokering in Breed style, for sale again.
SF DCCC is absolutely disgusting from every angle as a longtime SF democrat.
This is just another brick in that wall.
I believe Brad.
> “The investigation into Chapin’s claims found that it could not substantiate the allegations against Yekutiel because the venue where the alleged sexual assault happened was not at a Democratic Party event, and therefore not within the Democratic Party’s jurisdiction”
Tacit acknowledgement that the sexual assault committee was a sham and will cease to exist. Apparently their work was done after putting Ortiz on blast. It never made any sense.
In a “one party” city like San Francisco, this kind of thing (along with so much) is just going to lead to more voters becoming disillusioned that everything is corrupt, no one is working for them, and cause voter turnout to decline…. which is of course exactly what these people want.
Perhaps it’s going to lead to more people moving to Democratic socialists if they want to stop supporting political machines that side with predators since republicans are not an option and now the local Democratic Party has been bought and paid for by the billionaires in the area.
Despite the rightwing takeover of the SF Democratic Party, someone as divisive as Yekutiel won’t pass muster with the majority of voters.
This is disgusting. When the news broke that the SF Democratic Party was preparing to override the California Democratic Party to oppose taxing billionaires, I never imagined that, within a week, that would only be the second-worst thing they’d done.
maybe you should quit the dems… go: “independent”
Brad Chapin recently called into a KQED Forum episode about money in SF politics, mentioned Manny and the SA allegation, and said there are others who’ve yet to come forward because they’re afraid of Manny and the money and power backing him 👀
The fact that the judicial commission ” found that it could not substantiate the allegations against Yekutiel because the venue where the alleged sexual assault happened was not at a Democratic Party event” is absolutely moronic. So if someone assaults a person at a DP meeting, they can investigate, but if that same assault happened on the street in front of the meeting, no jurisdiction? What a joke.
Seems like they’ve determined themselves to be irrelevant in terms of investigating anything other than the actions inside a meeting.
I believe Brad. Who voted to support Manny? People should be aware next time these people show up at survivor events.
This is how the final vote broke down:
Voted to endorse Manny Yekutiel (12): Cedric Akbar, Michela Alioto-Pier, Joshua Arce, Patrick Boileau, Trevor Chandler, Lanier Coles, Matt Dorsey, Lily Ho, Marjan Philhour, Joe Sangirardi, Nancy Tung, Fiona Ma (ex officio, proxy Bertha De La Torre)
Voted No Endorsement (10): Peter Gallotta, Parag Gupta, Emma Hare, Jane Kim (proxy Sydney Simpson), Eric Kingsbury, Gordon Mar, Michael Nguyen, Jade Tu, Nancy Pelosi (proxy Gary McCoy), Malia Cohen (ex officio)
Abstained (5): Dan Calamuci, Mike Chen, Bilal Mahmood (proxy Parag Gupta), Eleni Kounalakis (proxy Carrie Barnes), Scott Wiener
Absent (5): Connie Chan, Michael Lai, Kevin Mullin, Matt Haney, Catherine Stefani
Note that by this point, the possibility of endorsing a different D8 candidate had been eliminated in previous rounds, so it was either endorse Yekutiel or No Endorsement.
I thought that we were supposedly past the heady days of Woke 1.0.
Huh?
Am disappointed there are no other better candidates for D8. He’s a Zionist. Sympathize with the guys or twinks coming forward.
He Sponsors a Sunday volunteer event to clean trash off the streets of our hood with these juniors with orange garbage bags.
They never go to my nearby block on Capp/ by the big construction site loaded with trash , human feces, drug paraphernalia etc. although I tell these kids you have to clean up to the worst parts of the area near Manny’s place
That’s enabling DPW to not do their $$$ job.
He is lucky to live inside D8 borders; he doesn’t have to call popo every night about horrible conditions with drug dealer fights and their customers all over our area.
He is probably a nice person but not enough to run a campaign on.
Chapin doesn’t sound credible from outside. He’s too unhinged.
Yes Patsy, the consensus was that Chapin is being self-serving in only bringing this up now, having previously not deemed it worthy of reporting.
I give kudos to Dorsey for his pivotal vote. Manny is a breath of fresh are. And yes, I am a D8 voter.
What benefit do you think Brad would get from the scheme you describe?
What differences do you see, if any, between accusations of “self-serving” or “unhinged” behavior by alleged abuse survivors in this case vs the notorious case of Brett “boof” Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford?