SAN FRANCISCO — It takes just a few steps for San Francisco mayoral candidate Ahsha Safaí to go from supervisor back to father.
“When they say ‘running for office,’ they literally mean running for office. You’re in a constant, constant frenzy,” he told CBS News Bay Area. “And that’s why I always say, if you’re not losing weight during a campaign, you’re not working hard enough.”
He runs to the other side of town in the middle of the workday to pick up his son from camp.
“Rumi, Dad is literally standing by the light. I’ll be there in a minute,” he told his son over the phone.
“When it’s their football games, their events, it’s like there’s a hard line and you know, we’re — I’m dad. I’m there as much as I can be,” he explained to a KPIX reporter.
For Safaí, his connection to his family is intertwined with his journey to public office. An immigrant from Iran, he moved to the U.S. during the Iranian Revolution.
“My mother was American and we had to leave. We had family members who were murdered and it was pretty traumatic. You don’t think about it until later in life how that really helped me to stay grounded,” he said. “It tore my family apart. My mother raised me as a single mother for a while.”
KPIX
Because he wanted to rebuild the city, he studied urban planning.
“I wrote in my MIT admissions essay, ‘I’m coming to your program because I want to be mayor of a city someday,’” he recalls.
He can now say that that goal has a chance of becoming a reality. At every turn he uses his own experience to guide his policy.
He said his own home was burglarized the same night that Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in their San Francisco home.
“They stole my stove, my microwave, my hood. Luckily, we hadn’t moved yet. We were only a few weeks away from moving, but I mean, it was just shocking. So the kids see these kinds of things. They know, they feel it, so we talk about it,” Safaí said.
Stopping for a sweet treat, he enjoyed the moment he got to spend with his son Rumi.
“Do you want an ice cream?” he asked his son. “I promised him we would get an ice cream.”
A sweet reminder of the future he hopes to create for his family and for his city.
MORE PROFILES OF MAYOR CANDIDATES IN THIS SERIES
1) Mark Farrell
2) Ahsha Safaí
