The conventional wisdom used to be that you needed to be a gay Jew to run for supervisor in San Francisco’s District 8. Well, it’s just not so — you don’t have to be gay, at least.
Come Nov. 7 voters in District 8 — an Illinois-shaped chunk of the city including the Castro, Noe Valley, Twin Peaks, Glen Park and a few other neighborhoods — will choose between incumbent Bevan Dufty and challenger Alix Rosenthal, both Jews.
Four years ago, Dufty defeated Eileen Hansen (both are gay Jews). Eight years ago, Mark Leno defeated Hansen (the same). And now Dufty takes on Rosenthal (who is not gay, breaking the pattern), meaning that, no matter what, a Jew will be the district supervisor for the third straight election cycle.
“That’s interesting, because I don’t think District 8 has a very high percentage of Jews,” mused Rosenthal, 33, a deputy city attorney in Oakland.
“District 8 has really great parks. Maybe Jews love parks.”
The incumbent — a self-proclaimed “proud Jew” despite the counter-intuitively Semitic moniker Bevan Doyle Dufty — recently found himself in the news when local radio host Pete Wilson chided him and co-parent Rebecca Goldfader for having a baby girl in a situation in which the couple is not romantically involved.
Sidney Maely Goldfader-Dufty (named for Goldfader’s late father and Dufty’s late mother) was born on Yom Kippur; Dufty and Goldfader had attended Kol Nidre services at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav the night before.
Last year, Dufty visited Israel along with fellow Supervisor Sophie Maxwell on a Jewish Community Relations Council-sponsored trip.
Rosenthal grew up in a Reform Jewish family in Claremont, near Pomona, where she still returns for High Holy Days services. Locally, she describes herself as “shul-shopping.”
“I’m running for all kinds of reasons,” she said. “I see the city changing and I think the city is becoming more hostile to families, artists and the middle class. The middle class is moving out rapidly because we’re not doing enough to preserve affordable housing.”
One of her top goals would be to mandate more environmentally friendly building practices, introduce more electric and hybrid vehicles into the city fleet and give home and building owners incentives to go solar.
Rosenthal chided Dufty for, in her words, voting against all but one tenant-friendly measure put before the Board of Supervisors. Representing a district with a fairly sizable majority of tenants, she claimed he is more conservative than his constituency.
Dufty countered that his opponent and her backers are engaging in “polarization in the landlord-tenant arena. I’ve tended to be a centrist … in this election I’m neither endorsed by the tenants’ union or the small property owners’ association. And I’m very comfortable with that.”
He said he was especially proud of bringing in millions of dollars in federal money for the Glen Park neighborhood plan, and has high hopes that perhaps 700 new housing units could be developed on nine or 10 land parcels in his district; he’s lined up $100,000 from city planning to examine the “Castro Charette” plan.
“I’m a very proud Jew and I’m very involved in the Jewish community,” he said.
Added Rosenthal, “There’s really something about Jews culturally that makes us work harder. I don’t know what it is. I was raised with the belief no one is going to do it for me. I believe that comes from the Jewish side of my family.”