Courtesy photo

Assemblywoman Fiona Ma talks to a Midwest group about her experience working on high-speed rail in California

You can cross state Assemblywoman Fiona Ma off the list of potential candidates for mayor of San Francisco.

On the day Board of Supervisors President David Chiu proclaimed he would join an extremely long list of candidates that includes state Sen. Leland Yee, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, and former supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier and Bevan Dufty, Ma emphatically declared she was through with San Francisco politics.

"San Francisco is a snake pit, with no permanent political alliances," Ma told The Bay Citizen Monday as she attended an event in Daly City in support of pensions for Filipino World War II veterans.

Ma said she grew sick of city politics while she served on the Board of Supervisors from 2002 to 2006, comparing the atmosphere at City Hall to the reality TV show "Survivor," "where everyone is backstabbing everyone else trying to get them off the island."

"I voted myself off the island," she joked. "I'll get my own reality show."

And yet, Ma's future in politics remains inextricably linked to the vagaries of San Francisco politics.

After six years in the state Assembly, Ma will be termed out in 2012, at which point she said she will run for the state Senate seat currently occupied by mayoral candidate Leland Yee.

If Yee is victorious this November, his win would set off a special election for his Senate seat which almost certainly would pit Ma against Assemblyman Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo).

Hill — anticipating a showdown with Ma — has been casting himself as the anti-San Francisco candidate by introducing bills to punish the city for its local hiring law and proposed congestion pricing plan.

On the other hand, if someone besides Yee becomes San Francisco's next mayor, Yee will likely complete his term, meaning his state Senate seat wouldn't become available until 2014 — at which point Ma will have been out of office for two years.

And, as Ma probably knows, two years can be a long time in the snake pit of politics.