Yekutiel’s newly launched crusade to vie for next year’s District 8 Supervisor race in San Francisco presents contentious foreshadowings.
The past two weeks have seen a whirlwind blow through San Francisco’s political landscape. The ACLU officially sued ICE in San Francisco in an effort to stop courthouse arrests; Governor Newsom hinted at support of a $750 million budget deal that could lessen Muni’s looming $322 million deficit; Mayor Laurie has been seen seemingly everywhere across the city.
The successful recall of District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio — a first-ever of its kind, largely fueled by criticism over the Upper Great Highway closing off to private vehicles — sent the most shock through SF politics. Immediately after Engardio’s concession, whispers, rumors, and longings began building as to who Mayor Laurie might put in his place until a November special election that would fill the seat.
On Monday, September 22nd, Manny Yekutiel, a longtime San Franciscan and owner of Manny’s cafe in the Mission District, announced his candidacy for District Supervisor 8, adding yet another frenzied topic into the already frenetic state of local discourse.
A cheeky campaign video was released. Newsletters went out. Instagram comment sections were disabled. And all too predictably, the red flags encircling Yekutiel’s supervisorial bid began undulating, one after the other.
Shady political actions have an intrinsic way of beginning in the most unassuming of places. The silhouettes are small and inconsistent in scale. But they, nevertheless, forerun more nefarious activities.
For Yekutiel, the initial dimness came in the form of something spartan: an email address.
Early Monday morning, presumably hundreds, perhaps thousands checked their inboxes and found an email sent from Manny’s, the 3092 16th Street-addressed LLC, filled in May of 2017, titled “Manny’s This Week: I’m Running For Supervisor.” Authored in the first person and, one can infer, sent by Yekutiel himself, the email announced the thirtysomething’s bid to become District 8’s newest supervisor come the 2026 consolidated general election, canvassing for support and attaching hyperlinks to his campaign video, a new Instagram handle, and a dedicated campaign website.
The email reads mullishly … rife with tip-offs.
In the newsletter, Yekutiel refers to Manny’s as a “project,” not the business entity it is. The dictional nuance is smallish but has broad implications; “projects” can exist as indistinct bodies that hold no intended conceptual influence, absolved of any conflicts of financial interest or unethical utilization that could attach to businesses.
Yekutiel promises Manny’s will continue running unaffected, but perhaps not unconnected.
“I’m still going to run Manny’s, and the space will continue to operate exactly as it is without any changes,” reads the newsletter. Yekutiel later in the email notes his campaign newsletters, which we presume will be sent by a sending address attached to mannyforsf.com, will read differently. It’s unclear if the two newsletters will have future overlap.
But whatever attempt to separate Yekutiel’s business leverage from his supervisor campaign strategies was already dissolved.
The campaign newsletter launch was sent from “events@welcometomannys.com.” The digital mailing address is tied directly to Manny’s business dealings; it’s the only email address listed on the company’s contact footer.
Yekutiel’s personal political ambitions were forced through contact details gathered under his business operation, instead of being sent through voluntary sign-up forums or revealed by way of organic pushes to individual social media channels.
It’s hard not to raise an eyebrow at such a misuse of company relations.
(I know what you’re thinking: Manny Yekutiel could be the next Harvey Milk! The shared happenstances between the pair feel almost cosmic, right?
If elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Yekutiel’s District 8 proxy would be none other than Harvey Milk, an openly gay Jewish man who sat in the same seat from 1977 until his untimely assassination in 1978. Throughout his candidacy and supervisor service, Milk owned Castro Camera at 575 Castro Street. Like Manny’s, Castro Camera grew into a community fixture and safe hub for San Francisco’s queer culture.
Castro Camera served as a location for the sale of physical goods and film processing; the space also doubled as Milk’s campaign headquarters for several elections. Manny’s, on the other hand, was organized from the beginning as an event space to host politicians, journalists, artists, culture shakers, and the like … with Yekutiel often leading interviews and assembly panels; any sitting member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in that position, no matter his or her or their intent, would immediately be compromised solely for the influence they have over routinely manipulating discourse and ideation in such a public-facing way.
Yekutiel and Milk’s small business similarity is uncanny. But their individual conflicts of interest couldn’t be more different or prescient.)
We’re in a period of political vagueness — hollow pontifications that lack any specificity, but echo near universal appeal. Complex problems require critical thinking; they demand intense cognition, intricate plans of both execution and maintenance, and the ability to share that attentiveness in digestible ways to the general public.
Vagueness isn’t a proper communication modality. It’s only an omission of well-informed certainty. Yekutiel’s take on San Francisco issues and his solutions for them read not only gauzy in distinction, but, more worrisome, absent of deep thought.
Mannyforsf.com, the dedicated website for Yekutiel’s campaign, lists his only four addressable campaign issues as the following: “Housing for Everyone,” “Clean, Safe and Joyful Streets,” “Vibrant Neighborhoods,” and “Government That Works and Gives People a Voice.”
Each collapsible content page explains why the relevant San Francisco issue is necessary to address in one to three sentences, sans much expounding. Below each issue’s headers, Yekutiel shares only five vague declarative statements, listed as bullet points.
For example, under “Housing for All,” Yekutiel writes that a solution to solve housing matters is to “cut red tape and delays that make building housing take years.”
Of course. That’s obvious. Limit bureaucratic oversight to meet housing goals? Groundbreaking. Yekutiel reiterates nearly the identical sentiment, almost word for word, when discussing how to grow vibrant neighborhoods in San Francisco: “Cut through red tape so small businesses can open and survive.”
The list of solutions to some of the most pressing issues of any major American city continues with equal indistinctness, all while promising everything yet nothing at all.
There’s no call to expand tenant rights, no push for more inclusive local and state rent control ordinances; no emphasis on affordable housing units and City-organized lodging over unregulated units constructed by the private sector; there’s no acknowledgment that Yekutiel’s district contains zipcodes vulnerable to 100-year-flooding events that the climate crisis has increased in frequence; no thoughts on introducing safe injection sites as means to mitigate potentially fatal drug use, spread of disease, and connect people to applicable services; there’s not a single mention of bolstering pedestrian safety and shoring up cycling infrastructure to create less car dependency; etc.
Of course, there’s also no recognition of Yekutiel’s nonprofit, Civic Joy Fund, which he co-founded in 2023 with then Tipping Point founder, now San Francisco Mayor, Daniel Lurie. The current San Francisco Board of Supervisors has received criticism from both constituents and journalists alike for not holding mayoral power in check. The previous philanthropic relationship between Mayor Lurie and Yekutiel exists as a point of perpetual contention.
Some conflicts of interest are utterly, profoundly unbelievable in their duplicity. A would-be San Francisco Board of Supervisors member, having co-founded a nonprofit with the now-sitting San Francisco Mayor, is one such example.
(Before excavating this brainworm, I would like to firmly preface that I’m not a mental health professional. I’m not in any field of medicine, nor do I claim to hold any degree-worthy grasp on the complex workings of the human brain. I’m merely a decorated wordsmith who’s spent nearly fifteen years gnashing teeth over syntax and diction and honing a certain proclivity toward pattern matching — call it self-taught qualitative analysis, if you must.
But, as someone who’s hypercognizant of content length, format, and style, I can’t shake loose that Yekutiel spent far more time, energy, and page space talking about himself than he did about the San Francisco issues his campaign is centered around.
Tallying the collective word count displayed for his campaign website’s “WHY I’M RUNNING” and “MANNY’S STORY” static pages — these two content blurbs feature personal point of view statements and first-person narratives — and you’re left with a total of around 1,100 words, give or take the inclusion of headlines, subheadlines, and page-specific deks. These words, too, are largely deployed in a way that highlights Yekutiel’s upbringing, individual relationship with San Francisco, and his professional accomplishments, the latter of which include much more subject specificity and detail than observed in his explanation of San Francisco issues and the resolutions for them.
Conversely, fewer than 500 words [again, depending on prudency] are used on the “PRIORITES” static page, which, as mentioned prior, details Yekutiel’s reasons for running for San Francisco supervisor and his plans to address the concerns of his would-be constituents.
The delta between the two word counts is glaring, telling in its discrepancies. The slumbering copywriter inside of me picked this up immediately. I’d wager I wasn’t alone in this secular hunch.
We’ve all grown too familiar with throwing out self-assessed Narcissistic Personality Disorder diagnoses, especially online. However, there’s no denying that something inherently humanistic in all of us can recognize egocentric grandiosity and excessive needs for both attention and validation when they present themselves.
Those who don helmets covered in disco ball mirror tiles only reflect suspicion in my eyes.)
About 14 months separate this moment from the 2026 consolidated general election. Five San Francisco Board of Supervisors seats will be up for election. The final months, weeks, and days leading up to November 3rd, 2026, will see mad dashes and fast dances to sway voters.
Some candidates will solidly land on platforms built on meritocracy. Others will wobble on three-legged stools, stabilized by personality cults. A few will exude confidence rooted in unshaking knowledge, but struggle to find a stage light. More than likely, everyone will exist in a sort of mercurial presence that includes all of these quirks.
Be diligent in your intention. Ask questions, hold candidates accountable. Exercise your right to nudge this city toward a brighter utopia — a paradise that includes and supports and uplifts every single resident, not just the ones with majority privilege.
When you see a collection of red flags, be curious; stay engaged; stand as an advocate for transparency. Call out the bullshit. The shadows can only grow so long in the presence of an open window.
Feature Image: Screenshot via Mannyforsf.com
