A San Francisco Sex Scandal Scrambles a Supervisors Race

A leading candidate in a San Francisco City Supervisor race dropped out today after he was hit with new sexual assault allegations. Manny Yekutiel had previously been accused of sexual assault this summer by a political organizer named Brad Chapin:

Chapin made the decision to reveal his identity, telling KRON4 that at a party back in February 2020, Yekutiel violently grabbed his genitals and then insulted him about his looks.

“He squeezed and he yanked and everytime I tried to get away he squeezed harder and yanked,” said Chapin. “It wasn’t the sexual parts that mattered so much as the intentional infliction of pain.”

Chapin said that at the time he disclosed the alleged assault to some of his close friends but waited until this year to come forward publicly because he was afraid. Yekutiel is well-known and well-connected in San Francisco.

The small business owner is the founder of a namesake community space in the Mission. He’s hosted the likes of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Hollywood actress and activist Jane Fonda, among others.

Yekutiel denied the allegations at the time in a statement:

These allegations are false. What is being described did not happen. When he reached out to me, I told him directly that it didn’t happen. He filed a police report, the police investigated and took no further action. They didn’t even need to interview me. His account has changed more than once since. And now, after more than six years, he’s raising it publicly for the first time, just as I’ve entered this race. There’s nothing here. I did not do this.

And, as Chapin predicted might happen, Yekutiel’s campaign rolled along on the strength of his denial. He was endorsed by the SF Dem. Party and by Mayor Daniel Lurie. He was expected to win the race for supervisor of District 8, but today the SF Standard published a story including two more allegations of sexual assault.

Ryan Clark and his partner were dancing at a Pride event in 2023 when a man stumbled out of the crowd toward them. Clark said he and the man had a single date two years earlier, so he wasn’t expecting what happened next. Under the flashing lights of The Midway, just south of Dogpatch, the man allegedly groped Clark outside of his pants and then his partner inside his pants, the couple said. They repeatedly told him they were monogamous and wanted him to stop. He didn’t, they say, until Clark shoved him.

That man, Clark and his partner claim, was Manny Yekutiel, a San Francisco cafe owner, nightlife personality, and now a front-runner in the election for supervisor of District 8.

“I was shocked,” said Clark’s partner, who declined to be named due to his immigration status. “I never had this happen to me before.”

Both men said Yekutiel sexually assaulted them that night. Their claims mirror an allegation made to police by a progressive political organizer, first published in The Standard in June, that Yekutiel sexually assaulted him at a house party in 2020.

This time, Yekutiel claimed not to remember the encounter but did not deny being at the event. He suggested he may have had too much to drink.

I attended the 2023 Electroluxx Pride party. I remember that it was Pride weekend in San Francisco, that everyone was having a good time the way San Franciscans do at Pride parties, and, like many of the attendees, I may have had too much to drink. I remember running into Ryan at parties and being physically affectionate with each other, though I have no memory of the specific encounter he describes. Nobody should be touched sexually without their consent. If I crossed someone’s boundary, then I’m deeply sorry.

After that things started happening quickly. Mayor Lurie and others withdrew their endorsements and people were calling for Yekutiel to abandon the supervisor race. A few hours later he did, though he said he still wasn’t admitting to assault of anyone.

Manny Yekutiel has suspended his campaign to join the Board of Supervisors…

“After a great deal of reflection I have made the difficult decision to end my campaign for District 8 Supervisor,” Yekutiel said in a statement. “As I said from the very beginning, I’m not a typical candidate. Moving through the machinery of San Francisco’s politics has left me with very little light left in my heart.”

Yekutiel said he is “not admitting to having assaulted anyone and some of the things that are being said about me are fundamentally untrue.”

Unfortunately, this clears a path for the other candidate in this race, Gary McCoy, a former congressional aide to Nancy Pelosi who is even more progressive than Yekutiel.

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