Gavin Newsom
Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base.
As Mayor, I will use my experience to make San Francisco a place where small businesses can thrive.
San Francisco businesses face many challenges, including high rents, regulatory burdens, and the rising cost of workers compensation insurance and employee health plans.
Accessing capital to start a business can be a daunting process, especially for entrepreneurs who start out with a great idea, but have no real familiarity with the business world.
We need to allow people to bypass government... to look to themselves for solving problems rather than asking the government to do things for them.
Government doesn't have to come up with new killer features on its own. It has to step aside and let others come up with them.
Are we going to solve the issue of poverty? Absolutely not. Are we going to have an impact? I'm committed to it, and if we don't, I'll have no regrets because we're going to try everything we can.
We do not have the right to discriminate against people.
We must continue to step in and stand up to resist reckless rhetoric and actions in a peaceful and forceful manner.
California is a bellwether state. California was the first state in the United States to overturn the laws against interracial marriage. It took 19 years for the rest of the country to come around to that point of view.
Do I support a driver's license for everybody? The answer is yes.
I'm not courting labor. I come from a labor background. To me, it's just intuitive.
These Millennials are volunteering more; they're smarter than ever.
If Wikileaks didn't resolve that question for folks - at the end of the day, there are no secrets. We're living in a glass neighborhood, in a fishbowl, and technology, white hat hackers, the folks that are doing the right thing with hacking.
My daughter's met Hillary Clinton, so she's got a strong bias. But she, of course, parrots me and goes, 'Oh, Donald Trump, I don't like him!' I'm like, 'That's good!'
If you're trying to understand why it is that certain things happen in Sacramento and certain things don't, at the end of the day, it comes down to the issue of incentives: We do what we're incentivized to do.
The tech genie is out of the bottle; you can't put it back in.
We have rules that no longer are relevant to the world we're living in. Our regulatory system can't keep up.
We are not going to turn our backs on people who have been persecuted, turn our backs on people who have been threatened by terror.
There's something called CEQA in California - NEPA at the federal level. There's indigenous lands and autonomies relating to governance on those lands. There are all kinds of obstructions as it relates to just getting zoning approval and getting building permits.
Guys like me don't necessarily progress very far, which is fine.
Founders Den provides the kind of collaborative and creative atmosphere to foster new ideas not only for emerging new businesses, but government as well.
The Republican Party - that was the end of the Republican Party. What Pete Wilson did with the xenophobia and the negative attitude, all this sort of anti-crime backlash.
The kind of cynical politics of divide and conquer, that's shameful stuff, and I don't know - people live their life like that, but I don't know how they look back and feel good about themselves.
There's a secret sauce in California, and I hope people pay attention to it.
No-Drama Obama? Yeah, that's not me.
Do what you think is right, because one damn thing is an absolute, certainly: We come and go. Politicians are a dime a dozen.
People don't care anymore because they don't believe in us; they don't trust us. And that's why we should change politics, not just accept the cynical frame that, 'Well, that's just politics.'
People always thought I'd never get elected outside San Francisco; I was always more worried that I'd never get elected again inside San Francisco.
Californians are blessed with the remarkable leadership of Gov. Jerry Brown, who... has led our state to firm fiscal footing and brought us to the enviable position of dreaming - and achieving - big dreams again.
You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger champion of high-speed rail than me when the bond went to voters. I believed in it.
Since Sandy Hook, I have sat back as a father and been mesmerized by the inability of the federal government to do anything substantively on gun safety.
Good people can disagree.
Separate is not equal. Civil unions are civil unions. Marriage is marriage. They're different institutions.
It was difficult to realize, 'I'm lieutenant governor.' And Brown appropriately reminded me of that.
The question for politicians here is fundamental: You can read the polls, or you can change the polls. Stand up on the things you believe in.
If, in this country, a simple majority of people can start stripping away the rights of a protected class in the minority, that's a pretty alarming thing.
People don't have to agree with me. They can say, 'My gosh, I can't believe I'm listening to this guy. I can't disagree with him more.' But at least they know that I'm going to fight for things that I believe in. And I don't need to be in formal office to do that.
There was a lot of hype about social media in President Obama's first campaign. It was important, but it wasn't as important as I think people let on.
When Californians see something we truly believe in, we say so and act accordingly - without evasiveness or equivocation.
I don't know many better training grounds than being mayor of San Francisco - those were pretty intense years in terms of reporting and scrutiny.
I will negotiate with my worst enemy.
If we continue to fight the National Rifle Association on their home court, which is the legislative front, I think we'll continue to be frustrated. But when you have an ability to go directly to the public, that's a completely different field of engagement, and I think the NRA is not adept at that kind of engagement.
A mistake that a lot of us have made, related to those who advocate for gun safety legislation, is that we try to process it through our legislative bodies, and that's where the NRA's strength lies.
At the end of the day, there's not a day that goes by without a mass shooting.
Even though he's a third-generation San Franciscan, my father's very European in some ways, and he loves wine.
The whole idea that the Constitution of the United States would be used to advance a political agenda is absurd.
I have differences of opinion within my own family, an Irish Catholic family. So, I do respect those that disagree.
The people that are serving you gas, the people that are in your restaurants serving you, the firefighters, and police officers are members of the gay and lesbian community. They're members of our broader community.