Perhaps they should take some tips from Stephen Colbert and footnote their remarks with “Not intended to be a factual statement.” Mr. Colbert minted that disclaimer last month and has had a lot of fun with it on Twitter, after Jon Kyl of Arizona declared on the Senate floor that more than 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s budget was spent on abortions — and then had an aide explain, when confronted with the real number (3 percent), that his boss had never intended his statement to be understood as being actually true.

Mr. Mirkarimi and other candidates here are hard at work perfecting their own routines. Consider these developments from just the past week or so:

¶ Dennis Herrera, the city attorney and a leading mayoral candidate, hired a registered lobbyist, Alex Tourk, as his campaign manager. A 2004 law — passed when Mr. Tourk was Mayor Gavin Newsom’s deputy chief of staff and Mr. Herrera was already city attorney — made it illegal for campaign consultants to lobby their clients.

Nonetheless, Mr. Tourk reports lobbying Mr. Herrera on behalf of a hospital seeking city approval to expand.

(The same day that the lobbying reportedly took place, the hospital’s chairman made a donation to Mr. Herrera’s campaign.)

Image Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi Credit... Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen

“Dennis does not believe those meetings” with his registered lobbyist/campaign manager “were lobbying,” said Mr. Herrera’s campaign spokeswoman, Jill Nelson. Are there any records of what was said, considering that Mr. Tourk certainly regarded those meetings as lobbying when he submitted his report to the city ethics commission?