San Francisco Candidates
BART Board, District 8
James Fang*
James Fang, the president of AsianWeek, was elected to BART board in 1990 and since then has served as BART board vice president and president. He serves as chairperson of BART’s Engineering and Operations Committee, a member of the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Board, the San Francisco Transportation Authority Liason, San Mateo County Negotiation/SFO Extension and the Strategic Finance Advisory Committees.
Vesko Marinov
A computer consultant with a Ph.D. in both computer science and applied mathematics, Marinov came to the Bay Area in 1973 from Norway. He has had experience in designing transportation system improvements and believes his technical abilites will be an asset to the board. Marinov, who was encouraged to run by his Libertarian party mates, wants to bring increased coverage of the Bay Area and ensure the rights of BART passengers.
Board of Education (3 seats)
Eddie Chin*
Chin is a bilingual education teacher at City College of San Francisco. For the past four years, he has served as chair of the Board’s Budget and Facilities committees. Chin wants to recruit quality teachers by building new homes and providing subsidized housing. Chin is an advocate for teacher housing on school property and was involved in the fiscal planning for a new school in the Tenderloin to serve children from low-income families.
Attila Gabor
Gabor is the coordinator and founder of the Office of Shared Governance at City College of San Francisco. Because Gabor believes every child should have a safe trip to school, he hopes to work out a partnership between SFUSD and MUNI to provide fast and safe transportation for students.
Daniel Guillory
Aside from his duties as an attorney, Guillory is a community volunteer and a small-business owner. Among his community endeavors, he tutors at Moscone Elementary School in the Mission district, serves on both the SFUSD Task Force on Improving High Schools and the San Francisco PTA. Guillory wants to implement a quarterly review of schools during a public Board meeting to improve accountability for student performance.
Jason Jones
Jones runs a small family business that his father started more than 30 years ago. He has worked as a high school social studies teacher. Jones believes there needs to be major changes in the city’s school district. Some of those changes he hopes to see include increasing teachers’ salaries, improving school facilities and using the money allotted for school upgrades and rehabilitation for only schools and students and nothing else.
Daniel Kelly*
Kelly is a pediatrician and three-term San Francisco Board of Education member. Kelly has served as president, vice president and chair of the Board’s Curriculum, Budget and Rules Committee. A longtime child advocate, Kelly is a member of the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center and the San Francisco Education Fund.
Whitney Leigh
An attorney in San Francisco and a juvenile justice advocate, Leigh was a former deputy public defender with the Santa Clara and San Francisco public defender’s offices. He hopes to improve management of existing funds for child development centers that are federally subsidized and ensure all children qualify for high quality public pre-kindergarten education. Leigh is running as a Green Party candidate.
Sarah Lipson
Lipson has been a first-grade teacher and a resource teacher at West Portal Elementary School for the past six years. Lipson, a Green Party member, is a strong advocate for smaller class sizes and wants to eliminate “high-stakes” testing at school, which she believes are inaccurate measures of student assessment.
Alexandra Pastine
Pastine hopes to use her profession as a consultant for public agencies and municipalities to bring about changes to the school board. She has been actively involved in implementing more efficient contracting mechanisms for schools. One of Pastine’s goals is to focus on school facilities and ensure they are functional and efficient.
Board of Supervisors, District 2
Gavin Newsom*
A current member of the Board of Supervisors, Newsom is an entrepreneur with several businesses in the city. He serves as vice chair of the San Francisco Transportation Authority and is a member of the Bay Area Water Transit Authority. Newsom is proposing the Care Not Cash Initiative, which would change the cash assistance program for the homeless.
Harold Brown
Brown is a political columnist for the San Francisco Call. Brown is a Navy veteran, former special-education teacher and fireman. Brown wants to make San Francisco streets safer and cleaner, and give back control of local parks to the city’s residents.
Lynne Newhouse Segal
Segal works as a San Francisco Parks and Recreation commissioner. Segal has also worked with the mayor’s Office of the Budget, the Board of Supervisors and the city’s attorney’s office on renovating the Harding Park Golf Course. She played a major role in the drafting of San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Bond Measure. She has been active in charity events that benefit local AIDS organizations.
Board of Supervisors, District 4
Ron Dudum
A lifelong Sunset resident, Dudum, a Democrat, says he is running to make sure City Hall puts neighborhoods first. A small businessman, Dudum emphasizes that he is not a politician, and he wants only to champion homeowners and neighborhood schools. He hopes to improve transportation so Sunset residents can go anywhere in the city within 45 minutes.
Barry Hermanson
Owner of Hermanson’s Employment Services, a temp agency, Hermanson — a Green Party member — is also an avid homeless activist. He is running on a platform that favors living wage, comprehensive healthcare and a real solution to homelessness.
Ed Jew
Endorsed by outgoing District 4 Supervisor Leland Yee, Jew is very active in the Chinese American community and is the president of a local taxi company. He wants to make public funding of campaigns part of his platform, saying he will not take any public financing in a time of fiscal crisis. Jew claims to be nonpartisan but recently switched over to this from the Republican stronghold.
Marks Lam
With the slogan “A Public Servant, Not a Politician,” Lam emphasizes his independence from all interests, not even seeking any political endorsements. A real estate licensee, Lam says that he has an understanding of and relationship with the business that will help enable renters to become homeowners.
Andrew Lee
Currently the executive director of the San Francisco Neighbor’s Resource Center, Lee was a former aide to Mayor Willie Brown and has the big guy’s endorsement for this race. He wants to have a “customer service plan” for the city that will hold every department accountable with performance reviews, customer service training and a customer service hotline. Lee is a Democrat.
Fiona Ma
A licensed CPA, part-time aide to Senator John Burton and AsianWeek entertainment columnist, Ma vows to use fiscal watchdog diplomacy to improve services. She is a supporter of the HOPE home ownership initiative and for a reform of general assistance disbursements for the homeless. Ma is a Democrat.
Krista Spence Loretto
A real estate agent and active member of the Junior League, Loretto — running nonpartisan — is pushing for commercial street cleanup, Ocean Beach beautification and more trees in the district.
Joel Ventresca
San Francisco Airport administrator Joel Ventresca, a Democrat, saved San Francisco taxpayers $1 billion by successfully fighting unjustified tax and fee increase proposals, and helped write the city’s first comprehensive landmark sustainability and the toughest growth-control law in America.
Board of Supervisors, District 6
Chris Daly*
A former homeless advocate, Daly was elected in a landslide in the new district elections. Since then he has proven himself a fiery representative, butting heads with the mayor in political altercations and even getting arrested in a protest. He says he is committed to using the office as an organizing center for a broad-based constituency. Daly is very vocal in the fight for homeless rights and immigrant rights.
James Leo Dunn
According to Dunn, San Francisco’s problems would be solved by building large pyramids throughout the city that would house hundreds of people. He also believes that immigrants who come to this country only to send aid back to their home country should “go back to where they came from.”
Roger Gordon
Most recently the executive director of 10-year-old nonprofit Urban Solutions, which helps San Francisco small businesses, Gordon is also an EMT and the founder of Minority Law Journal, among other achievements. He plans to expand daytime indoor spaces for the homeless and improve police/community relations in the district.
Arthur Jackson
Founder of the Jackson Personnel Agency and longtime member of the San Francisco Public Health Commission, Jackson believes his experience makes a difference. A recent recipient of a kidney transplant, Jackson points to his strong record of activism during his many years of dialysis.
Garrett Jenkins
A community activist and seven-year District 6 resident, Jenkins says he has spent an average of 40 hours per week volunteering for different community organizations. He wants to utilize his leadership to create more business opportunities and clean up the streets.
Malinka Moye
A strong believer of diagramming out his plans for the district — literally — Moye has spent the last five years performing research. On what exactly this research has been is unclear, but he promises that he now has a grasp on exactly what District 6 needs.
Robert Power
With a degree in aerospace engineering and industrial engineering, Power — a proud Libertarian — says he knows how to “turn an expensive, wasteful process (like city government) into a lean, high quality system.” He vows to uphold the Constitution.
Michael Sweet
A lawyer and South Beach resident, Sweet promises to improve the quality of life for all neighborhoods of District 6, pointing out that Supervisor Daly ignored the South of Market crowd. He also promises to bring community-serving retailers to the district.
Burke Strunsky
An assistant district attorney, Strunsky says he understands the district from an insider’s perspective. As a late entry into the race, Strunsky may be one of the candidates with the most insight and legislative experience.
Board of Supervisors, District 8
Bevan Dufty
This candidate, who claims Billie Holiday as his godmother, has worked on Capitol Hill and served as director of San Francisco’s Neighborhood Services until last year. Duffy is limiting his campaign contributions to only $100 from individual citizens, rather than the $500 allowed by law. He is not accepting contributions from businesses, political action committees or lobbyists — nor donations from individuals who do not live or work in San Francisco.
James Green
Green is a paramedic, an ex-San Francisco police officer, a registered nurse and a firefighter. He supports the Care Not Cash Initiative as well as the low-income housing bond, Proposition B. Green sees the Board of Supervisors as a place to solve problems and not as a political stepping stone.
Eileen Hansen
A 14-year resident of the Castro and a longtime community activist, Hansen lost to Mark Leno by only some 700 votes in the 2000 election. She vows to plan a vibrant city for all residents and fund a budget that reflects the future of San Francisco.
Tom Radulovich
On BART Board for six years, Radulovich is also a founding member of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition and has been involved with progressive campaigns and organizations throughout the Bay Area. He vows to clean up neighborhoods, increase affordable housing, improve public transit and protect the environment
Shawn O’Hearn
O’Hearn won a seat on the powerful Democratic County Central Committee in 2000 without spending a penny or collecting any political club or newspaper endorsements. An HIV prevention educator, he wants to create solutions to the homeless program and convince the LGBTQ community to help house queer youth in its district.
Community College Board (3 seats)
Amarcy Berry
This self-employed bookkeeper is pushing for a prudent expenditure of taxpayers’ money and a better preparation of City College students to enter a four-year college.
Johnnie Carter Jr.
Currently a trustee of the Community College Board, Carter is also a legislative aide to Senator John Burton. He wants to lead the fight to secure the largest portion of the state budget allocation for part-time faculty parity and increase job-training opportunities for people unemployed due to the current economic downturn.
Peter Gallegos
Gallegos has dedicated his career to drop-out prevention programs for at-risk youth within the San Francisco school district. If elected, he will work toward improving student outreach and mentoring programs for high-school students and their parents.
Abel Mouton
This is Mouton’s second time running for Community College Board. As a Democratic Socialist and Green Party member, Mouton says his strength is that he is “not beholden to the political machine.” If elected, Mouton wants to empower students by replacing the Community College Board with an elected board of faculty, staff and students who will have full control over policy and budget.
Lawrence Wong*
A longtime Community College Board member, Wong is a strong supporter of the Chinatown and Mission campuses. He had a close finish behind Aaron Peskin to represent District 3 (Chinatown) in the 2000 race.
Superior Court Seat 10
Sean Connolly
After graduating from the University of San Francisco School of Law, Connolly worked for the public defender’s office for eight years. After that, Sean switched teams and served as general counsel to the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association for two years. Most recently, he has served as a deputy city attorney under Louise Rene. Connolly won the March primary.
Gail Dekreon
Dekreon’s law office focuses on criminal defense work. She is a neighborhood attorney who has never worked for the government. She says that people like her — with no big connections — are rarely appointed into office and must be elected by the people.
Assesor-Recorder
Doris Ward*
Before her tenure as assesor-recorder, Ward served on the Community College Board and as president of the Board of Supervisors. In office, she has modernized the assesor’s job with technology, and hired and trained a staff of the nation’s top assessment experts. Ward has challenged opponent Teng to a vigorous schedule of some 11 debates before the election.
Mabel Teng
Teng, who won the March primary, served as San Francisco supervisor to District 7 before being pushed out by Tony Hall in 2000. She has a 10-part reform plan for the office, and pushes her management and administrative experience as her strong points for this race.
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