Mayor Lurie, S.F. supervisors drop Manny Yekutiel after new sexual assault claim

Mayor Daniel Lurie and six city supervisors have rescinded their support for Manny Yekutiel, the frontrunner in the District 8 race, after he was again accused of sexual assault Thursday morning.

Manny Yekutiel subsequently withdrew from the race by Thursday afternoon.

“My endorsement is a statement of my confidence in someone’s character and leadership, and in light of the additional accounts reported today I am withdrawing it,” Lurie said. “I will not be making another endorsement in District 8. The voters of the Castro, Noe Valley, and Glen Park will decide this race.”

The San Francisco Standard reported today that two men, Ryan Clark and his partner, accused Yekutiel of groping them without consent during a Pride party at a club in 2023. The two said Yekutiel grabbed one’s testicles outside his pants and put his hand down the other’s pants. 

The fallout was swift.

The San Francisco Democratic Party scheduled a meeting on Oct. 11 to reconsider its razor-thin endorsement of Yekutiel. “We owe it to our members and to voters to have thoughtful discussion and deliberation, especially in light of these additional allegations,” said chair Nancy Tung.

The San Francisco Police Department said it is “seeking to contact the reported victims in today’s news story by the SF Standard.”

More than a dozen officials who previously endorsed Yekutiel after a separate sexual assault allegation in June, which was also reported by the Standard, dropped Yekutiel quickly Thursday morning.

Mayor Lurie, and six city supervisors — Bilal Mahmood, Stephen Sherrill, Danny Sauter, Alan Wong, Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman — all changed their positions.

Mandelman, the sitting District 8 supervisor, whiplashed over a few hours: He told outlets he would stand by Yekutiel Thursday morning and, in the early afternoon, said on social media Yekutiel was “not ready to serve as an elected official” but did not mention the allegations.

State Assemblymember Catherine Stefani, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, the advocacy groups GrowSF and AbundantSF, the firefighters union, and more all withdrew their endorsements.

Others called for him to drop out of the race, including Supervisor Connie Chan, the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee and State Sen. Scott Wiener, who previously held the District 8 seat. His three opponents — Gary McCoy, Darshini Patel and Michael Nguyen — did the same.

McCoy is now considered the favorite to win the race.

Clark and his partner are the second and third people to accuse Yekutiel of sexual assault. In June, the Standard reported allegations from progressive political organizer Brad Chapin, who accused Yekutiel of painfully grabbing his testicles at a house party in 2020. 

Yekutiel denied Chapin’s allegations and said of today’s, “I may have had too much to drink. I remember running into Ryan at parties and being physically affectionate with each other, though I have no memory of the specific encounter he describes,” he told the Standard.

When only Chapin was on the record, most of Yekutiel’s endorsers stuck with him. Only a handful pulled their endorsements and Yekutiel picked up a few hefty ones, including the local Democratic Party’s on Aug. 26 and Mayor Lurie’s on Sept. 11. Lurie said at the time that he had asked Yekutiel about the allegation against him. “He assured me that the allegation simply was not true,” Lurie said.

Clark said he was spurred in part by Lurie’s endorsement to come forward with his account. 

District residents, by and large, also stuck with Yekutiel after Chapin’s allegations. In mid-September, Mission Local informally surveyed 30 voters in the Castro, Noe Valley, Duboce Triangle and Cole Valley.

Only half were familiar with the allegations. All but one of those 15 voters said it would not affect their vote — they still backed Yekutiel or had never been planning to vote for him. The one exception said he had moved to being undecided. 

Yekutiel’s supporters gave a variety of explanations. They said people in gay spaces commonly do what Yekutiel is accused of or that they had heard he was cleared of wrongdoing. Others said they still trusted Yekutiel because his endorsers and their friends were sticking with him.

The allegations against Yekutiel have not led to criminal charges. SFPD put Chapin’s allegations into “inactive status” in June, indicating there was not enough evidence to move forward with criminal charges, and it is only starting its look into today’s allegations.

The San Francisco Democratic Party, meanwhile, decided in an internal process that it did not have jurisdiction to investigate because Chapin’s alleged incident did not take place at an official party event. Its terse, one-page letter said the case could not be “substantiated” but then acknowledged, “This is not a determination on the merits of whether a sexual assault occurred.”

Yekutiel had been considered the frontrunner in the race prior to Clark and his partner’s accusations on Thursday. He had raised the most money — and had in fact stopped fundraising altogether — and picked up valuable endorsements in a district that tended to elect moderate politicians like himself. 

Many District 8 voters had also already heard of him — he founded the eponymous political salon and cafe, Manny’s, in 2018.