There are tons of interesting notes to come out of Steve Francis’ press conference today announcing that he was, indeed, running for mayor.
So I’ll do my best to go through them today (and I haven’t forgotten Nos. 2 and 1 in the story countdown).
But one very interesting note to come out of the Q&A with reporters was Francis’ answer to the last question we got in: Mayor Jerry Sanders made headlines across the country when he took a stand for gay marriage. Would Francis have handled that differently as mayor?
Francis said he would have.
He said that the mayor had made his decision based on the sexual orientation of his daughter (whom Francis said he had met and who he thought was very nice) and on the fact that some members of the mayor’s staff were gay also.
Francis said the mayor had let his “personal situation” — his relationships to his gay staff members and daughter — become policy for the city.
“It was inappropriate,” Francis said.
I asked if Francis would have, then, vetoed the measure that the City Council passed expressing support for San Francisco’s stand in favor of gay marriage.
“I would have vetoed it,” Francis said.
Like I said, this wasn’t even the most intriguing of the announcement. He had a lot of interesting ways to answer a lot of interesting questions.