The worst-kept secret in San Francisco politics can finally be told.
Cafe owner and event-thrower extraordinaire Manny Yekutiel is running for District 8 supervisor. After 12 years living in the district and amassing a public persona as a politically connected, pumps-and-pearls-wearing civic leader who pushes hard for the city’s economic recovery, Yekutiel is ready to change his title from small business owner to elected official.
“I would like to be the builder supervisor,” Yekutiel, 36, said in an exclusive interview with The Standard while strolling through Buena Vista Park, not far from the Castro neighborhood he calls home. “More housing, more businesses, more ideas, more events. For too long, we thought of the government as an entity that can stop things.”
You could even call it a version of the “abundance” movement, though Yekutiel doesn’t exactly love that label.
“I don’t know if the word ‘abundance’ is the thing that inspires me, but the idea that has undergirded it, or the foundation of it,” he said. “We need to make it easier to do stuff.”
Yekutiel’s rise in San Francisco has been rapid, starting when he moved to the city in November 2012, with $600 in his bank account, after serving on the second Obama presidential campaign. His hometown of Los Angeles was not an option after his father disowned him for being gay.
After the Democrats’ loss in the 2016 presidential election, Yekutiel felt the city was missing a place to have timely conversations. In 2018, he opened Manny’s, a cafe and bookstore on 16th and Valencia that is now one of the West Coast’s hottest liberal civic gathering spaces. It has seen the likes of former first lady Jill Biden, former Obama adviser and “Pod Save America” podcast host Daniel Pfeiffer, and countless others.
As the city’s bars, restaurants, and concerts shuttered during the pandemic, things got pretty depressing. So Yekutiel and Daniel Lurie, now mayor, founded the Civic Joy Fund in 2022, with help from philanthropists, to get people out to patronize businesses and bring energy to the empty streets. The project has taken off, hosting around a dozen night markets and Downtown First Thursdays, which attract up to 25,000 attendees.
In the meantime, Yekutiel served on the Municipal Transportation Agency board and the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association and briefly flirted with running for mayor last year. He’s also made a foray into national politics, introducing former Vice President Kamala Harris at a June 2024 fundraiser in the Mission.
“This decision to run for office is a continuation of that desire to be of service,” he said. “How do I help my city, my community, in a time where there’s a real movement to solve its problems?”
As he delves into politics, he’ll still oversee the cafe during the campaign and can rely on many political allies as supporters. Those backing his supervisorial bid include current District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, state Sen. Scott Wiener, former Supervisors Bevan Dufty and Mark Leno, and former Mayors Willie Brown and Art Agnos.
Yekutiel is close with Lurie through their philanthropic projects, and an endorsement wouldn’t come as a surprise, though the mayor declined to comment on the race through a spokesperson.
Mandelman, who has served in the district that stretches from the Castro in the north to Glen Park in the south since 2018, has been going on weekly morning walks with Yekutiel since the start of the pandemic and said he’s talked with him extensively about the job. The district struggles with hot-button urban issues, such as homelessness and a lack of affordable housing.
“It’s been a long-term conversation,” said Mandelman. “He’s a remarkable person. He has energy and focus that I envy.”
The supervisor said Yekutiel, an observant Jew who keeps kosher, has the resilience to be a public official. He brought up the string of antisemitic attacks against Manny’s, including an incident in June when windows were broken and “Die Zionist” and “Intifada” were graffitied onto the cafe’s exterior walls. “He’s never really let it get him down,” said Mandelman. “He hasn’t been broken by it.”
Asked if Yekutiel has the experience to be a supervisor — having not come from a traditional City Hall background as an aide or department employee — Mandelman was unequivocal. “He knows way more about politics than I do,” he said.
Others said Yekutiel has been a problem solver for them. Jim Woods, who owns a handful of breweries across the city, said Yekutiel helped save his business from near collapse. In early 2025, Woods had issues with the Planning Department over a taproom he was opening in Cole Valley. He reached out to Yekutiel, who made some calls to the city agency and helped resolve the problem.
“Manny stepped up,” said Woods. “He saw the fear in my eyes. … You almost need a Ph.D. to navigate some of these mazes.”
Though the election is more than a year away, Yekutiel will likely face off against Gary McCoy, a former policy and public affairs vice president for the drug treatment nonprofit HealthRight 360. Powerful political allies, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, could juice his campaign. McCoy runs Pelosi’s Save Our Health Care initiative. He also brings a rise-from-the-ashes story to the race, having overcome drug addiction that led to being homeless more than a decade ago.
To help with his race, Yekutiel has recruited BMWL, a public affairs and campaign consultancy firm.
“I think it’s the right time to be running as someone who’s not part of the Democratic political establishment of the city and has not spent 20 years in Democratic clubs,” said Yekutiel. “Because I don’t think that’s what people are seeking right now in their elected officials.”