Mark Leno won’t challenge Lee for S.F. mayor

Senator Mark Leno Senator Mark Leno Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Mark Leno won’t challenge Lee for S.F. mayor 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

After weeks of examining San Francisco’s political landscape, State Sen. Mark Leno has decided not to run for mayor against incumbent Ed Lee.

“After significant consideration and examination, I have determined that now is not the time for me to enter the race,” Leno tells us.

Leno’s possible entry into the 2015 mayoral sweepstakes began in August. While on break from the Legislature, he was repeatedly approached by various labor, business and neighborhood leaders upset about the direction of the city under Lee.

In particular, they pointed to the explosion of high-rises and influx of tech companies into the city. The resulting rent hikes and general feeling that longtime residents are being priced out to make way for newcomers was an oft-repeated concern.

Some of the talk was fueled by a poll taken earlier this year, showing Leno could beat Lee in a head-to-head race.

On the other hand, those close to Leno say it was clear that his longtime campaign managers, John Whitehurst and Mark Mosher — who have worked with the Lee administration on various ballot measures in recent years — were not enamored with the idea of running someone against the mayor.

Plus, Lee is expected to raise and spend $3 million to $4 million — a considerable sum for any challenger to match given the city’s $500 individual contribution limits.

In the end, it also became clear to Leno that while there was a significant bloc of voters who wanted change, it wasn’t large enough to oust a sitting mayor.

So instead, Leno will concentrate on his final two years as the city’s only state senator and “make the very most of that responsibility and that opportunity.”

Clipped: A Stanford professor and her husband, driven to distraction by loud music from a nearby frat party, decided to take matters into their own hands with a pair of wire cutters — and while they got the music turned off, one of them also wound up under investigation for assault.

The short, noisy saga of economics professor Caroline Hoxby and her husband, Blair Hoxby, an associate English professor at Stanford, began on the night of Sept. 26 when their neighborhood was rocked by the party sounds from Kappa Sigma fraternity at 1035 Campus Drive, a couple of blocks from their home.

This wasn’t the first time. The couple, as well as others in the neighborhood, had been complaining about the noise and other problems there for years. The Hoxbys even had a decibel meter in their home to measure the racket, and according to university and law enforcement sources, have threatened legal action against Stanford for not doing enough to keep their frat row neighbors quiet.

This time they had had enough. After a call to the police went nowhere, they marched over to the fraternity house themselves to confront the party goers at about 11 p.m., according to the Stanford Department of Public Safety.

Exactly what happened next is a bit murky.

According to an anonymous Stanford student blog, the Fountain Hopper, Caroline Hoxby bee-lined to a set of speakers and allegedly tried to cut the wires. When students intervened, she grabbed one and hollered at him to turn off the music “right now.”

We’re told a scuffle ensued, and Hoxby reached for her cell phone and called the Stanford police to say she had just been assaulted. The police quickly arrived and shut down the party.

Stanford cops declined to make the police report publicly available, saying only that “deputies responded to a report of a noise complaint that escalated to a physical confrontation at Kappa Sigma.”

However, a university source tells us the account given by the Fountain Hopper accurately reflected the statements given by a number of students that evening.

After one student asked to press assault charges against Hoxby, the cops turned the case over to the Santa Clara district attorney. Following weeks of review, supervising Assistant Santa Clara County District Attorney Brian Welch tells us that his office decided not to file charges, in part because of conflicting accounts of what happened and absence of serious injuries.

“Obviously it was an extreme reaction from those folks (the Hoxbys) about something that goes on in their neighborhood all the time, and they had decided they had enough,” Welch said.

The Hoxbys, through their attorney, David Lurie, said: “Our intent was to restore some calm to the neighborhood. We had a houseful of kids, it was late at night and the fraternity party was louder than a jet engine.”

So they “thought the right thing to do was to go over, as a good neighbor, and ask that they turn down the volume. In hindsight, we should have let the police handle the matter. It’s unfortunate that parties like this hurt the entire neighborhood.”

Overheard: The other night, a young blond couple on a date were leaving the Latin American Club, at 22nd and Valencia streets in the Mission, when a swaggering hipster told them, “You can catch the No. 22 down at the corner.’’

The woman, a newcomer to San Francisco, was confused. But her date understood perfectly: You two belong in the Marina.

How’s that for a culture war?

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross