See full election results here →
Gary McCoy declared victory Tuesday in the race to become the next Castro neighborhood supervisor.
As of final results on Tuesday evening, McCoy, a former aide to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, had 65% of the vote after ranked-choice voting permutations. Darshini Patel had 35% of the vote.
Inside McCoy’s campaign party at the IBEW Local 6 office at 55 Fillmore St., supporters were glued to their phones, following the initial drop of results at 8:45 p.m.
“Congratulations!” someone said, and the loud rock music playing in the background abruptly cut off. The crowd began to applaud as McCoy was ushered to the front of the room.
“I made a decision to be very public about my recovery, and District 8 took a chance on that,” said McCoy, who has been open about his past struggles with drug addiction. “This is about relationships, it’s about unity, it’s not about our progressive divide.”
The race to represent District 8 — which includes the Castro, Noe Valley, Duboce Triangle, and Cole Valley — has undergone several twists and turns.
McCoy only became the front-runner in the last month of the race after Emanuel “Manny” Yekutiel suspended of his campaign when the San Francisco Standard on Oct. 1 reported two allegations of sexual assault.
Those allegations came after a similar one in June from progressive activist Brad Chapin, who said Yekutiel painfully grabbed his testicles at a house party in 2020.
That story had little impact and Yekutiel went on to pick up valuable endorsements from Lurie and the San Francisco Democratic Party. But his endorsers quickly pulled their support after the October news, and within hours that day Yekutiel was done.
Yekutiel denied the allegations from Chapin and said of the more recent ones that he had “no memory” of the encounter but apologized if he had “crossed someone’s boundary.”
McCoy’s election means that Mayor Daniel Lurie has lost a reliable vote on the board. District 8’s current supervisor, Rafael Mandelman, will term out of office in January.
McCoy’s politics, which are only partly aligned with the mayor’s priorities, defy the typical progressive-moderate divide. While he is a YIMBY and favors building large amounts of new housing, a position that fits into the city’s moderate camp, his views on policing and drug use fit into the progressive camp.
He has expressed opposition to police use of license-plate-reader cameras, and supports clean-needle exchanges and other harm-reduction policies aimed at keeping drug users safe. McCoy, who is nearly 16 years sober, has been open on the campaign trail about his past.
His rival Darshini Patel, a former DoorDash and President Barack Obama staffer, shared many of McCoy’s positions. In September, the two formed an alliance, encouraging their supporters to rank the other candidate second on their ballot.
Michael Nguyen, a patent attorney and drag queen, ran a traditional progressive campaign, opposing efforts to build market-rate housing and aligning with Patel and McCoy on policing and drug use. He was eliminated after the first round of ranked-choice voting permutations.
Prior to the October allegations, Yekutiel was the favorite, buoyed by his substantial fundraising lead and popularity in the district. Many already knew him from his cafe and political salon, Manny’s.
With Yekutiel out, most of his former supporters flocked to McCoy — but not everyone made the switch. GrowSF, a moderate political advocacy group uneasy with McCoy’s policies on police and drug use, put out a poll suggesting McCoy’s past struggles with drug addiction 15 years ago made him unfit for office.
GrowSF’s poll also asked if respondents would support Yekutiel if he restarted his campaign.
A few days later, GrowSF endorsed Patel, who said the group’s backing came “without my consent.”
Initial returns Tuesday showed Yekutiel with 13% of the vote after the first round; he was eliminated in round two. He had slightly more votes than candidate Michael Nguyen, who was eliminated in the first round.
