Gay SF man Manny Yekutiel announces District 8 supervisor race

The race to replace gay San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman in his seat representing the Castro and Noe Valley on the board as District 8 supervisor is heating up. Gay cafe owner Manny Yekutiel announced his candidacy September 19.

Yekutiel, 36, owns an eponymous cafe in the city’s Mission district, but is a Castro resident. He’s one of several who the Bay Area Reporter previously reported was considering a bid in the race, which will be in November 2026, when Mandelman is termed out.

Yekutiel spoke to the Bay Area Reporter after a listening tour of the Castro Monday, September 22.

“I’m starting this campaign by listening,” he said in a phone interview. “All I did was ask the questions, ‘How’s a-going? What do you need? What do you want to be improved?’ and I took lots of notes. That’s the kind of supervisor I want to be. Before I tell you what I think should happen, what do you want? What do you need?”

One of his top priorities is going to be housing, saying he sees it as “a justice issue and a small business issue as well.”

“I’m going to be tenacious in trying to make sure projects get built to the extent that I can,” he said. “Really working with the community, working with people to build housing, working with people trying to fund new development.”

Asked what some good sites may be in District 8 for housing, he said he’s just starting to seek community input.

“Every neighborhood is different, right? Duboce Triangle is different from Dolores Heights, which is different from Cole Valley. … So there’s some neighborhoods that don’t mind density or height. They have different issues.”

Nonetheless, because many housing developments are on land that wasn’t being utilized, Yekutiel wouldn’t be among those sounding the alarm about neighborhood character being impacted negatively – arguing instead that more housing “means more people filling these neighborhoods with life.”

“I am not as afraid of neighborhood character being affected by new housing,” he said.

Mandelman has already endorsed Yekutiel, telling the B.A.R. in a September 19 phone call that, “I think he’s accomplished an amazing amount for a relatively young person and I’ve been just incredibly impressed with what he's done with Manny’s, on the MTA board and with the Civic Joy Fund, and I think he's well known in the district, has relationships in the neighborhood and he’s going to be a very strong candidate and a good supervisor.” 

Yekutiel co-founded the Civic Joy Fund with Daniel Lurie, before Lurie was elected mayor last November.

Yekutiel told the San Francisco Standard that he is running to be “the builder supervisor.”

“More housing, more businesses, more ideas, more events,” he said. “For too long, we thought of the government as an entity that can stop things.”

That focus on housing harkens back to a high-profile event he held earlier this year with liberal columnists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, promoting their book “Abundance,” which is about cutting red tape particularly around housing. The B.A.R. reported that Yekutiel had praise for the book at the event, saying it could be Democrats’ answer to Republican President Donald Trump after losing the 2024 election.

In a way, the supervisor bid is an outgrowth of what Yekutiel has already been doing. As the B.A.R. previously reported, in addition to running his cafe, Yekutiel is also executive director of the Civic Joy Fund, which helps produce events across the city, from the Castro Night Market – the next iteration of which after September 19 will be on Halloween night – to Downtown First Thursdays.

When asked why he wanted to be District 8 supervisor, Yekutiel tied the political ambitions to his prior work. He said, “My decision to run for supervisor is an extension of the way I’ve tried to serve my community in the last 10 years since I’ve been here,” and that the city has seen “a lot of positive momentum, but there’s still a lot of work to do and a lot of ways the Castro can be made better.”

On the matter of the imbroglio between the Castro Theatre operators, Another Planet Entertainment, and the Castro Coffee Co. and nail salon, Yekutiel said, “I think at the end of the day it’s extremely important these businesses be able to stay in the neighborhood.”

“It does hurt my heart as a coffee shop owner myself, as a brick-and-mortar owner. These businesses have been here a long time,” he said. “At the same time Another Planet is putting $40 million into the neighborhood, and that’s considerable. … My hope and expectation is a compromise is met.”

The B.A.R. also asked Yekutiel about how he would advocate for District 8’s policy priorities if they came in conflict with Lurie’s, citing the B.A.R.’s reporting from earlier this year that Mandelman blamed displacement of people with mental health and drug addiction issues from downtown – a Lurie administration priority – for an increase in deteriorating street conditions in the Castro. Mandelman had stated, “I have supported and continue to support Mayor Lurie’s efforts to restore order in some of our more troubled neighborhoods. However, it seems plain to me that these efforts have led to the displacement of people with severe mental health and substance abuse challenges to the Castro. This cannot continue.”

Yekutiel said that as a supervisor he will leverage relationships to advocate for District 8 residents. 

Mandelman “has done a lot of this. I’ve seen it first hand,” Yekutiel said. “When he sees a need in the neighborhood, he does text the police captain. I would be no different.”

On public safety, Yekutiel said he’d work for more beat officers in District 8.

“If I were elected supervisor, that’s one of the first things I would work on, is bringing beat cops back,” he said.

Potential rival Gary McCoy, a gay man, stated to the B.A.R. September 19 that, “I’ve spent my career fighting for San Francisco, from leading our city’s LGBTQ Democratic clubs to pushing for more housing, better public transit and worker protections. It would be an honor to serve this community, and I’m seriously considering a run. I’ll be making a final decision soon.”

Potential rival Tom Temprano, also a gay man, had been listed in the B.A.R.’s report. Temprano stated to the B.A.R. that he has “no official plans to run for supervisor at this time.” He had served as Mandelman’s de facto chief of staff at City Hall, his former boss’ early endorsement of Yekutiel could be a signal that Temprano is unlikely to enter the race.

After Temprano was elevated in the spring to managing director at Equality California, the statewide LGBTQ rights group, speculation has grown that he is in line to one day become its executive director. A DJ and nightlife promoter, he had served as an elected trustee of the board governing City College of San Francisco.

As for Yekutiel, he had flirted with the idea of running for mayor in the 2024 race following his being stuck in Tel Aviv for several days when international flights were grounded at the start of Israel’s  war in Gaza in response to the terrorist group Hamas' attack on the country in October 2023. While he opted against doing so, he did resign from his seat on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors after his returning home that fall.

After the experience in Tel Aviv, he said queer Jews were sometimes held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.

Manny’s has been vandalized in the past with antisemitic graffiti. Recently, as the B.A.R. reported, at least two windows were broken, and the San Francisco Police Department investigated the matter as a hate crime.

The cafe hosted a Queers Against Antisemitism event in January, where Yekutiel opened up about his own personal story.

Yekutiel, a native of Los Angeles, said his father, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, had immigrated to Israel from Afghanistan, and that he himself was from Los Angeles, where as a youth he figured he was gay "as soon as I saw the live-action 'Hercules,'" he quipped.

"I had a bag packed in my closet with all of the things that I might need if my family were to find out that I was gay," Yekutiel said. "I had my Social Security card, I had a change of clothes, I had some food, I had a couple books."

Yekutiel recalled that when he still lived in the City of Angels, he went to his first gay bar.

"I didn't know any other gay people and so I snuck in to this gay bar, got kicked out immediately, the security guard pulled me up by my shirt – it was Rage in West Hollywood – but I had walked into my first gay bar and, as I learned over the years, a queer bar, a gay bar, is one of those sacred places that no matter who you are, no matter where you've come from, you can go in, you can get a drink and you can begin the adventure," Yekutiel said.

After that, he said queer Jews were sometimes held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.

"People came up to me at El Rio and said, 'You don't belong here. You have to leave. You're not welcome here. You're a murderer. You are a genocider,'" he said, referring to the San Francisco LGBTQ bar.

Yekutiel reflected that it was "very sad" that LGBTQ spaces became "places of anger, of hatred."

"All of us have our own individual story, our own reasons for being there," he said, referring to LGBTQ bars and other spaces.

Yekutiel stated he raised $120,000 on September 22, his first day of campaigning, and had 40,000 views of a video announcing his candidacy.

Updated, 9/22/25: This article has been updated with comments from Manny Yekutiel, and to correct Derek Thompson's first name.

Updated, 9/24/25: This article has been updated with the statistics Yekutiel reported about his first day of campaigning.