The endorsement followed a tumultuous turn in the race. Manny Yekutiel, previously considered the front-runner and GrowSF’s preferred candidate, withdrew Oct. 1 after a second public allegation of sexual misconduct. Political figures then rallied around Gary McCoy, a former aide to Rep. Nancy Pelosi and several city supervisors. GrowSF instead backed Patel, a Democratic Socialists of America member who says her campaign has knocked on 20,000 doors.

Patel says GrowSF contacted her in July with a request to complete its candidate questionnaire. The group said a second-place endorsement was still possible, she recalled, but Patel declined to submit answers. She says GrowSF co-leads Steven Buss Bacio and Sachin Agarwal called her on Oct. 9 and told her they wanted to endorse her. “I said no in so many different ways,” Patel said.

Phone records reviewed for the report show a 20-minute call that day. Patel says she called the group again on Oct. 12, after learning of the endorsement, and was told GrowSF could not discuss it with her because that could amount to illegal coordination between an independent expenditure committee and a candidate. GrowSF did not respond to a question about whether its leaders remembered the conversations as Patel described them.

The group said it endorsed Patel because she was the best candidate for the district. It said it did not require complete agreement with candidates and believed that, among the three remaining contenders, Patel’s values most closely matched those of District 8 voters.

An independent political group can endorse a candidate without that candidate’s approval. But the episode highlights a problem for voters: an endorsement can shape a campaign’s public identity even when the candidate says she neither sought nor welcomed it. Patel says the decision has left her fielding accusations of being “morally corrupt” for support she says she could not reject.

The endorsement also sits awkwardly beside GrowSF’s announced plans to spend six figures on ads attacking McCoy. In its endorsement materials, the group called McCoy “unfit for this job,” citing his past drug use and criminal record, as well as his work advocating harm reduction.

McCoy has said he is 16 years sober. He worked at HealthRight 360 from 2021 to 2025, and Patel is now a board member of the same organization. Patel and McCoy have also held similar positions on harm reduction, policing, surveillance cameras and housing, and formed a political alliance in September. Their overlap makes GrowSF’s decision to back Patel while targeting McCoy especially consequential — and likely to draw scrutiny of what the group hopes its spending will accomplish.

Patel’s own résumé includes work in the Obama White House, on Kamala Harris’ New Hampshire campaign and at DoorDash. She identifies as a YIMBY, while aligning with the city’s left on several public-safety and harm-reduction issues. She says her campaign has relied on small contributions and volunteers, including her parents and her fiancée’s mother, rather than big-money backing.

That distinction matters in a city where political spending can overwhelm local candidates’ efforts to reach voters directly. Patel says the endorsement has undercut the positive, neighborhood-level image of her campaign: “The trust I spent months building,” she said, “eroded overnight.”

GrowSF is entitled to support the candidate it chooses, and the available facts do not establish that its endorsement violated the law. But Patel’s account raises a question broader than this race: when an outside group can attach its name and resources to a candidate who says she objected, whose campaign is the public seeing? Patel says her positions will not change. Whether voters continue to see her campaign as her own may be harder to control.