Political Beat

Edwin M. Lee will be elected Mayor of San Francisco after vote tallies released by the city’s Elections Department Wednesday afternoon showed the career bureaucrat gaining an insurmountable lead over second-choice candidate Supervisor John Avalos.

The Beat expects that Avalos will not receive enough of the remaining votes to overcome the deficit. Lee received 61 percent of the vote in the eleventh round of allocations in the city’s first ranked choice vote for Mayor. Avalos recieved 39 percent.

Welcome to the California Beat’s live coverage of tonight’s municipal elections in San Francisco and around the Bay Area. We’ll bring you the latest returns and reaction from the candidates; keep refreshing this page for the latest.

Six miles from where President Obama pitched his plan for job growth Monday morning, three tech-savvy Republican members of Congress — nicknamed the “young guns” — pitched their own plan to stimulate economic growth during a live chat session at Facebook’s Palo Alto campus.

Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-California), Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) praised the social networking website’s growth before a packed room of employees and invited guests, but criticized Washington lawmakers for “still trying to catch up” to using Facebook as a constituent tool. 

(9/26) — UPDATED 13:45 PDT — MOUNTAIN VIEW — President Obama fielded questions from members of the social networking site LinkedIn on how to stimulate the ailing economy Monday morning, at the end of a 21-hour visit to the Bay Area which also included two big-money Silicon Valley fundraisers.

At an intimate town hall meeting, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and hosted by LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Obama called on wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes so that the nation could invest in education and infrastructure.

President Obama will return to the Bay Area Sunday to headline two pricey fundraisers and host a Monday morning town hall meeting organized by the social networking website LinkedIn, as part of a West Coast swing to raise cash for his reelection campaign.

Interim Mayor Ed Lee announced Monday morning he would seek a full term as mayor of San Francisco, officially filing paperwork with the city’s Department of Elections to declare his candidacy for the post, and ending speculation about whether he would join a crowded field of candidates seeking to lead the city.

Lee’s announcement was almost immediately met with criticism from mayoral challengers, who accused Lee of going back on a pledge he made when appointed to the vacant mayoral job seven months ago not to run for a full term.

California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom announced Sunday morning the birth of the couple’s second child.

In a statement released to reporters, the Newsoms said their son Hunter Siebel Newsom was born at 9:18 a.m. in San Francisco Sunday. 

The San Francisco Giants became the first professional sports franchise in the country to release a video addressing bullying and violence against gay and lesbian youth Wednesday.

The team announced two weeks ago that they would record and release their own rendition of the “It Gets Better” nationwide anti-bullying initiative that was launched in response to several suicides of GLBTQ youth who were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is postponing his movie comeback in the wake of the revelation that he had a child with a member of his household staff, according to a statement released today by his lawyer.

“Schwarzenegger is focusing on personal matters and is not willing to commit to any production schedules or timelines,” said the statement released by Patrick Knapp, his entertainment counsel.

A controversial proposal that, if approved, would ban male circumcision will appear on San Francisco’s November ballot, elections officials said Wednesday.

The Department of Elections certified just over 7,700 signatures gathered by proponents of the ban who aim to outlaw the practice of circumcising males 18 years or younger — even despite religious or cultural traditions.