San Francisco’s District 8, home to the Castro, Noe Valley, Glen Park, Diamond Heights, and the surrounding neighborhoods, will choose a new supervisor this November for the first time since 2018. With Supervisor Rafael Mandelman terming out, voters face a pivotal decision about who will carry the district’s voice to City Hall.
Commonwealth Club World Affairs and the San Francisco Democratic Party present "The Gr8T Debate," a live, one-hour debate featuring candidates Gary McCoy, Michael Nguyen and Darshini Patel. They’ll go head-to-head on the issues that matter most to District 8 residents: housing and affordability, public safety, small business recovery, homelessness and the drug crisis, and preserving the district’s LGBTQ+ history and culture.
Moderated by KQED’s Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos, co-hosts of "Political Breakdown," this is your chance to hear the candidates in their own words, compare their plans side by side, and decide for yourself before you mark your ballot.
About the Speakers
Gary McCoy has spent his career getting things done for San Francisco, with experience at every level of government, from City Hall to Congress. He served as Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s political director and led her national Save Our Health Care campaign to defend Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, and before that he was her senior congressional aide. He served as a legislative aide to three members of the Board of Supervisors, where he learned the job he is now running for in District 8. For nearly 10 years he has been Speaker Pelosi’s proxy on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, he was appointed by two governors to California’s homelessness council, and he has led both the Alice B. Toklas and Harvey Milk Democratic Clubs. McCoy has earned the support of a coalition that rarely lines up behind one candidate, with the endorsements of both SF YIMBY and the SF Tenants Union, and Alice and Milk, a reflection of the relationships he has built to deliver from Day 1. His top priorities are making it more affordable to live here, improving transit, making our neighborhoods safer, and ensuring small businesses can thrive.
From SRO resident to accomplished tech patent attorney, 20-year community organizer, drag performer (Juicy Liu), and elected SF Democratic Party member, Michael Nguyen’s story is San Francisco's story. As the only candidate in the District 8 race who has held elected office, Nguyen brings analytical precision, lived experience, and a two-decade track record of bringing people together—co-founding QTAPI Week and the LGBTQ March for Asian Lives. He’s not learning how to bring people together on the job; he’s already done the work. District 8 deserves a fighter who puts people first, rejects corporate PAC money, and knows how to turn complex problems into workable, community-powered solutions. Michael is running to stomp on the status quo that has failed to fix our ever-increasing problems. He is the leader that will deliver the bold solutions that San Franciscans deserve!
Darshini Patel studied economics and architecture at Wellesley College. She worked on social innovation and civic participation in President Obama's White House, where she saw how far public policy has to travel to change anyone's daily life. During the 2012 reelection campaign, she helped turn around a struggling organizing region in Virginia, building a 250-person team that made more than 250,000 voter contacts. In 2024, she ran get-out-the-vote in New Hampshire for Kamala Harris. At DoorDash, she helped a young company grow from 15 cities to more than 7,000, launching over 300 markets herself. She then built a team to advocate for small restaurants, bringing owners' needs into company decisions. During COVID, that team helped deliver emergency relief to more than 100,000 small businesses in weeks. She serves on the board of HealthRIGHT 360, a nonprofit providing health-care and recovery services. As supervisor, she would work to get approved housing built, open childcare spaces, make streets safer, improve Muni, protect LGBTQ health clinics, and revive neighborhood commercial corridors. She would publish a housing tracker and a quarterly public scorecard of her office's commitments, spending, outcomes, and mistakes.
Marisa Lagos is a correspondent for KQED’s California Politics and Government Desk and co-hosts the award-winning show and podcast, "Political Breakdown." At KQED, Lagos also conducts reporting, analysis and investigations into state, local and national politics for radio, TV, online and onstage. In 2022, she and co-host Scott Shafer moderated the only gubernatorial debate in California. In 2020, The Washington Post named her one of the top political journalists in California; she was nominated for a Peabody and won several other awards for her work investigating the 2017 California wildfires. She has worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Los Angeles Times. A UC Santa Barbara graduate, she lives in San Francisco with her two sons and husband.
Scott Shafer is the senior politics correspondent with the KQED Politics and Government desk. He is co-host of "Political Breakdown," the award-winning radio show and podcast with a personal take on the world of politics. Shafer came to KQED in 1998 to host the statewide "California Report." Prior to that he had extended stints in politics and government. He uses that inside experience at KQED in his, reporting, hosting and analysis for the politics desk. Scott recently completed a 5-part podcast titled "The Speaker," examining Rep. Nancy Pelosi's life and legacy. Previously he collaborated on "Political Breakdown" and on "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown," an eight-part series about the life and extraordinary political career of the former governor. For fun, he plays water polo and swims with the San Francisco Tsunami.
Notes
Attendees must pre-register; no tickets will be available at the door.
This program has 2 types of tickets available: in-person and online-only. Please pre-register to receive a link to the live-stream event.
If you have symptoms of illness (coughing, fever, etc.), we ask that you either stay home or wear a mask. Our front desk has complimentary masks for members and guests who would like one.
Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming.
This program presented in partnership with:
The San Francisco Democratic Party
See more Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.
Photos courtesy of the speakers.
Notice of Filming and Photography: When you attend this event, you enter an area where photography, audio and video recording may occur. By entering the event premises, you consent to such recording media and its release, publication, exhibition or reproduction.
Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs.
All ticket sales are final and nonrefundable.