Amy Farah Weiss Announces She’s Running for SF Mayor

Amy Farah Weiss just announced that she is officially running for mayor of San Francisco. If you recall Amy, Francisco Herrera, and I ran on a ticket of 1-2-3 to Replace Ed Lee in 2015. The idea behind it was that with ranked choice voting one of us could actually beat Ed Lee. None of us actually won, obviously, but we kicked some ass and Lee only ended up getting 51.85% of the vote.

Mayor Lee’s unexpected death this week shook up local politics in a big way and now people are beginning to wonder who will run in the special election to elect a new mayor in June 2018. As of now President of the Board of Supervisors London Breed has taken over as interim Mayor of San Francisco. Before Weiss’s announcement the only other person officially running was Mark Leno, who announced his candidacy back in March. The final filing date to run for mayor is January 9th, 2018.

In my phone call with Amy Weiss today she mentioned she was still incredibly committed to the idea ranked choice voting and working collectively with other people running for mayor. This time she plans to call the campaign Vote 1-2-3 for Equity 2018 and has already started the Facebook group. The Facebook group Vote 1-2-3 to Replace Ed Lee was started during our campaign but since the election in 2015 has continued to be a place of organizing and activism for nearly 10k members. With Mayor Lee’s death, the group’s name has been changed to Vote 1-2-3 SF.

“I had just asked Ed Lee if he had signed the Eviction Protections 2.0 into law. He said that he hadn’t and I announced that to the room. He chose not to sign it but it was veto proof.” – Amy Farrah Weiss

Weiss also stated that she plans to continue to push many of the things her 2015 campaign focused on. She outlined these in this candidate statement video:

Amy followed up our phone conversation with this quote that she sent by text:

Vote 1-2-3 for Equity! I fully support Jane Kim and Mark Leno running for Mayor and would like to see a collaborative progressive platform and leadership team.

I am going to continue what I began in 2015, and hope to usher in a revolution of equity, healing, and sustainability through the 2018 Mayors race.

Jane Kim is mentioned because there are many progressives in SF hoping she will run for mayor.

Here is Amy Weiss’s announcement about her candidacy that she posted in the Vote 1-2-3 SF group.

“So many institutions in our society need reinventing. The time has come for a new dream. That’s what being a revolutionary is.” Grace Lee Boggs

After being re-elected, Ed Lee raised his salary to $297,387. A raise in salary directly corresponds to a raise in the filing fee, so it now costs $6,531 to officially run for Mayor (it was about $5,800 in 2015). It took me almost 5 months of campaigning to raise the filing fee two years ago. Yesterday, in under 8 hours, I received pledges from 56 supporters totaling $6683.

Here is Amy Weiss absolutely killing it during the League of Women Voters Mayoral Forum in 2015:

On December 13th, Weiss posted her platform of priorities in the Vote 1-2-3 for Equity group with the ask that members of the group add other priorities or prioritize what’s already there.  Here it is below:

How about this for a Mayoral platform of priorities for Equity in 2018? What would you add or prioritize?

Creating two additional jobs out of the Mayor’s salary.

Public bank.

Vacancy tax with teeth to get more housing, storefronts, and vacant plots in use.

Safe Organized Spaces to address encampment and shelter/housing shortage.

Creating funding streams and programming to
build and acquire affordable housing for our people and workers.

Money out of politics.

Equitable access and occupational opportunities for Cannabis.

Additional de-escalation pilot programs and training requirements for SFPD.

Career pathways for local high school and college graduates that heal, manage, and sustain our systems.

Progressive taxation.

Regional job to housing balance.

Pragmatic regulations on Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb.

Vote16

This is going to be a very fascinating election and I hope that whoever ultimately becomes mayor has the political will to pull away from the tech and real estate developer ties that the last three administrations were so cozy with. The mayor of San Francisco should have the interests of the people of SF in their heart, not the corporate elite that have taken over and ruined our city.