Take a ride through the endorsement process Unlike many endorsements out there, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is one of a handful that can really swing the outcome in district elections, particularly in bike-heavy D5. And the vote was anyone's guess, since 8 of 22 candidates are card-carrying members and each of the group's 4,500 members was able to vote electronically for the endorsement.

The Bicycle Coalition has decided on a single candidate: Ross Mirkarimi.

What surprised many candidates was not that Mirkarimi won. He agreed with every position the bike coalition laid out in its candidate questionnaire. (Go to www.sfbike.org/vote for all of the candidates' responses.) The surprise came when the group announced it was backing Mirkarimi and only Mirkarimi – even though coalition members selected their top three candidates.

"That led me to believe that the coalition was going to do ranked-choice voting," Lisa Feldstein told us after the vote. Dan Kalb, who lobbied hard to win the endorsement, said the group should at least reveal who came in second and third, something candidate Robert Haaland also wondered aloud to us.

So we called Bicycle Coalition executive director Leah Shahum, who said the board of directors makes the final decision and decided early on to concentrate its support on a single candidate. The competition was extremely tight, Shahum said, before letting us in on who came in second and third place: Lisa Feldstein and Susan King. (Matthew Hirsch)

SFSOB gets nasty, but Peskin pushes back Wade Randlett and his SFSOS group have long lurked in the shadows as they work for San Francisco's wealthiest individuals and corporations to subvert progressive causes and candidates, but now Sup. Aaron Peskin wants to expose them to the public scrutiny they so richly deserve.

"Independent expenditure" groups like SFSOS have minimal disclosure requirements because they're supposedly just helping to educate voters on the issues, not doing "express advocacy" political work that targets particular candidates or causes.

Yet with SFSOS unloading nasty hit pieces on Sup. Jake McGoldrick all season, everyone knew Randlett was gunning for the guy even before Randlett reportedly told the S.F. Sentinel for its Sept. 14 issue that "we're going to go after him and we're going to rip his throat open if we have to."

That precious little quote served as a nice setup for Peskin, who at that afternoon's Board of Supervisors meeting introduced legislation that would force these groups to disclose their contributions and expenditures before Election Day.

Peskin and the City Attorney's Office are still hammering out the language. No hearing date has been set yet, but unfortunately this is something that won't affect this election, so you'll just have to keep reading the Bay Guardian. We'll do our best to let you know how Randlett (who, once again, did not return our phone call) is using Republican money to sully San Francisco. (Steven T. Jones)