John Upton/The Bay Citizen

Chris Daly serves drinks at Buck Tavern

Chris Daly, the hot-headed former San Francisco supervisor who assails the rich and seeks to represent the impoverished and the working class, will run for mayor if other leading progressives choose not to run, he told The Bay Citizen.

Since the defeat of the city's political left in the November elections, progressives have been without a clear-cut candidate to carry their banner in the mayoral race. Several names have been floated, including supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, David Campos and John Avalos, as well as former board President Aaron Peskin.

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey’s announcement that he will not run for re-election in November, following 31 years in the job, increased the likelihood that Mirkarimi would run for that office instead of mayor.

Following a meeting with Peskin and other progressive leaders last week, Daly told The Bay Citizen that if other leading potential progressive candidates choose not to run, he will put himself forward.

Peskin is considered an unlikely mayoral candidate, but he said Friday that it was “too early to say” whether he would run. Avalos said his “latest thought is that I am not running.” Campos did not respond to a request for comment.

If those four progressives do not run for mayor, Daly said Friday, “it will be me.”

“I’m an interesting candidate in that, if I ran, the whole race would be about me,” said Daly, who has begun operating Buck Tavern, a bar in his former supervisorial district that he bought shortly before being termed out of office last year and intends to rename Daly's Dive. 

Daly acknowledged that he would be a polarizing candidate: “There are a lot of Daly-haters out there, and they’ll go buck wild with their attacks on me and on my small corner of the city here. I don’t think that’s my first choice of what to do for progressive politics, but the progressives need to have a big-name challenger in this race, and I have the power,” he said.

In this interview, recorded at his bar on Friday, Daly explains that the progressive camp will base its campaign for mayor on a bid to end "corruption" at City Hall: