San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy’s decision not to run for re-election in November has city officials buzzing over theories on who will replace her.

So far, two department staffers have filed papers signaling an interest in the job, but candidates have until August to get their names on the ballot.

So a race with no incumbent — and no progressive candidate so far — raises one inevitable question: Will former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi reappear on the political scene and run for the position?

Mirkarimi didn’t return messages from The Chronicle about whether he was planning a comeback.

But while insiders at the Hall of Justice and City Hall couldn’t help but throw around the former sheriff’s name, no one seems to be taking the idea too seriously. Mirkarimi, after all, lost in a 2015 landslide to Hennessy, now 66, after a tenure marked by blunders and scandals.

“Unless he said he plans to run, I think that would be humorous at best,” said San Francisco political consultant Jon Golinger, who last year managed Jane Kim’s campaign for mayor. “A more plausible scenario would be Sheriff Michael Hennessey coming out of retirement and running.”

Still, the 57-year-old former member of the Board of Supervisors was a favorite among some city progressive politicians. They even voted to reinstate Mirkarimi after the late Mayor Ed Lee booted him from his job as sheriff over a domestic violence incident with his wife just days before he took office in 2012.

His unusual transition from the hyper-political Board of Supervisors to running the city jails was seen by many as a failed experiment.

“It’s rare that sheriff becomes an ideological race, because it’s much more of a practical job,” Golinger said.

After pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment, patching things up with his wife, and winning his job back, Mirkarimi faced a string of other messy incidents.

Among them: The 2013 death of a woman in a San Francisco General Hospital stairwell, the escape of a federally indicted drug trafficker and the case of Jose Garcia Zarate, who fired the shot that killed Kate Steinle on Pier 14.

And accusations of misconduct by deputies came to light after Mirkarimi left office.

Since losing his re-election race, Mirkarimi has been working as a private consultant on marijuana issues. Last year, his family dog attacked a woman’s small Chihuahua-mix at a Potrero Hill dog park.

The Sheriff’s Department’s rank-and-file are waiting to see how the field ultimately shapes up in the next four months before taking a position on any candidate. As of Friday, Chief Deputy Paul Miyamoto and Lt. Ronald Terry are the only candidates.

Ken Lomba, president of the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association, said he wouldn’t shun a possible Mirkarimi candidacy.

“Whoever wins the candidacy for sheriff, we will work with them and it will be business as usual for us,” he said. “We’re going to continue pushing for the members and better working conditions.”

— Evan Sernoffsky

Fast funds: An online fundraiser pooling money to support Mayor London Breed’s proposal to bring a 200-bed Navigation Center to the Embarcadero brought in more than $84,000 in just over a day.

William Fitzgerald of San Francisco launched the fundraiser Thursday morning in response to a rival campaign on the GoFundMe website that’s raising money to hire attorneys to help block the Navigation Center.

That campaign, called “Safe Embarcadero for All,” was started nine days ago by Neel Lilani, a resident of the Watermark, a condominium building across the Embarcadero from where the center would be built. The money Lilani raises would be used to hire the Zacks, Freedman & Patterson law firm.

“We are worried that the rushed process puts the political goal of building a large Navigation Center ahead of legitimate concerns about public safety, drug use, and other problems that a large shelter may bring to the community,” the group says on its GoFundMe page.

By Friday afternoon, after nine days of fundraising, the opposition campaign brought in just over $70,000 from 174 donors.

The pro-center page eclipsed that amount in less than two days with contributions from more than 1,000 people. Tech CEOs Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Jeff Lawson from Twilio each chipped in $10,000 and GoFundMe itself donated $5,000. By Friday evening the Navigation Center fund stood at more than $84,000.

Join me in supporting @TheCoalitionSF and @fbach4 and @LondonBreed in building a new navigation center in San Francisco on the Embarcadero. Homelessness is our number crisis and it requires all of our attention and resources. https://t.co/hY6KxeT5D9 — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) March 29, 2019

The response has been “crazy,” Fitzgerald said. “There are a lot of good people in this city who believe that people deserve housing” and the resources they need to get off the streets.

The money raised will be donated to the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, which supports the Navigation Center.

The next public meeting on the Navigation Center is scheduled for 6 p.m. on April 3 at the Delancey Street Foundation, 600 The Embarcadero.

— Dominic Fracassa

Email: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfcityinsider @evansernoffsky @dominicfracassa