In The Cut: Supervisor Bevan Dufty

Dufty is a likable politician and his heart is in the right place. But his election to the mayor's office seems unlikely for a few reasons.

First, if, as expected, Leland Yee and Dennis Herrera are running (and all signs point to at least Herrera throwing his hat in the ring; witness his self-aggrandizing advertisements as city attorney), Dufty will be a distant third horse.

Second, if the City continues to trend progressive, I'm not sure Dufty is progressive enough for some. He's an in-between candidate: too conservative for the progressives, too liberal for the machine.

Third, his interests typically are narrowly focused on his own district. Running a city is not the same as being mayor of the Castro. If he wants to be mayor, he needs to find issues that resonate with the rest of the city.

@blooms

You make some great points, and I don't dispute the particulars of your analysis, but I'm not sure the uber-progressive wing of the city would be willing to overlook the symbolism. (I certainly wouldn't, and I fucking love Denny Herrera.) In light of all the recent Prop 8 activism, we're long overdue. The prospect of a gay mayor would resonate; the X factor is how much, and with who.

And I'm impressed with Dufty. His transit background is solid. A Sup 8. should advocate for the interests of his district, so I don't hold the "narrow focus" charge too strongly. I like him precisely because he's a centrist in a city of fringes. Conversely with Herrera, I'm not convinced that legal municipal work makes one great at executive governance. I think Kamala and Jeff Adachi would've made shitty mayors.

I dunno. Before I volunteer (for either campaign) I need to see polling and clearer contrasts. Before we handicap the horserace, we should discuss who would make a better mayor for San Francisco. An un-launched website and a non-defined agenda is pretty weak tea.

@generic - Dufty has some good things going for him, but I'm not sure if transit is one of them. For example, he was the swing vote on the last muni budget and he voted the wrong way twice. Until the last few months, when he seems to have decided to make transit his marquee issue, he's been pretty absent on the issue. Even now, he's only given some press-conferences about the topic - I'd like to see real action - our fares are going up while our service is being cut. What is Dufty doing about it?

Dufty is my supervisor. He's not a bad guy and he'd certainly make a better mayor than Gavin, but he's also politically unremarkable. His primary goal seems to be making everybody happy and as a result he can be quite wishy-washy and can bow to political pressure when he ought not. We could do worse (Gavin, for example) but I think we might be able to do better. I'll also be waiting to see who jumps in the race before volunteering and such.

His life story is only a little less interesting than Liza Minnelli's, huh? I never knew all this, which is something since we get banged over the head constantly by Gavin's connections to the Getty family. I've previously had a less-than-stellar opinion of him, but that has changed over the past few years as I've seen him be a good public servant for a City that is generally poorly served by its elected officials. Supervisor Dufty is a good man, and would be a good mayor. I agree with others, however, that he has serious competition and cannot simply be the Castro district's candidate in the race.