[Editor’s Note: Mark Leno did not win. After all of the instant run-off votes rolled over, he finished in second, about 1% behind the winner, London Breed.]

Former State Senator Mark Leno is campaigning to be San Francisco’s next mayor, which would make him the first openly-LGBT mayor of what may be the gayest big city in the country.

Leno was the only candidate to have already declared for the 2019 mayor’s race when Mayor Ed Lee unexpectedly passed away in December 2017. Lee’s passing opened up a special election for June 5, 2018, which may be the first demonstration of the alliance possibilities of the city’s Ranked Choice Voting.

Leno served 4 ½ years as a San Francisco Supervisor representing District 8 (covering the Castro and Noe Valley) before being elected to the California State Assembly for six years and then the California State Senate for another eight years. This gives him both the longest and most diverse experience of the eight candidates running for mayor.

The other top tier candidates include Supervisors London Breed and Jane Kim, with former Supervisor Angela Alioto and homeless advocate Amy Farah Weiss in the second tier. The remaining candidates include Michelle Bravo, Richie Greenberg, and Ellen Lee Zhou. Greenberg is currently the only Republican-endorsed candidate in the race.

Other openly-LGBT candidates have run for mayor before. In 1995, former Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg challenged incumbent Mayor Frank Jordan. Achtenberg was the first openly-LGBT nominee to face a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing when President Bill Clinton nominated her to be Assistant Secretary of the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Office in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She finished third behind former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and Jordan. Brown won the run-off.

Four years later, Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano decided to mount a last-minute write-in campaign against incumbent Willie Brown. He finished second with write-in ballots, forcing Brown into a run-off, but lost the December run-off.

In 2011, former Supervisor Bevan Dufty ran for mayor in a crowded 16-candidate field that was the first mayoral election with the City’s new ranked choice voting. Appointed incumbent Ed Lee won; Dufty finished seventh.

Leno’s campaign includes detailed plans to address the city’s homeless crisis, clean streets, public safety, housing, and education.

Leno’s experience in the State Legislature has shown him to be idealistic, but also effective. Of the 161 bills he introduced in Sacramento, 55% passed the Legislature, a significantly higher rate than the 33.7% average for California Legislators. He got the California Legislature to back same-sex marriage equality legislation twice years before California voters were ready for it, though the bills were vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. A few examples of his other bills that became law included:

• Amending the Ellis Act to preserve affordable housing for seniors and the disabled
• Allowing San Francisco to build large-scale solar systems on public buildings, expanding solar power generation
• Providing protection to women and men experiencing domestic violence
• Raising California’s minimum wage to $15
• Exempting Single Room Occupancy units (SROs) from the Ellis Act
• Extending “no-fault” eviction notices to give displaced tenants more time to find housing

The special election will be held on June 5, 2018. Leno and fellow candidate Jane Kim have co-endorsed each other, each asking their supporters to rank the other as the second choice on the ballot. Under San Francisco’s Instant Run-off Voting, voters can rank their top three choices for mayor. If their first choice has the fewest votes, they drop out and those ballots roll over to each voter’s second choice. This continues until there are only two candidates left, with one of them having a majority of remaining votes. Leno and Kim hope that at least one of them will make it to the top two, with the other’s votes helping them prevail against the third top-tier candidate, London Breed.