I have voted to make tough decisions in budgetary times, I've served on two recessionary budgets, my opponent has never served on any a budget committee where there was less money to spend than the year before.

I've run for office, and I've stood on street corners, while people walked by me and didn't want to talk to me, and did not think I was a credible candidate. And then four years later, I was nearly elected mayor of San Francisco, so I know what it takes.

As a young boy I won a few dollars in 1972 when Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby. I had overheard someone say he was going to win, and I guess that made an impression on me.

If you are doing well, your business will pay more in tax; if you're not doing well, you pay less.

When I got into politics, it was a shock. People promise all sorts of things and then never deliver.

If you engage people honestly, and you're willing to do the leg work, people will respond to that.

This idea that once you get into politics you are now signed up for lifelong duty being in elective office, makes a fundamental error - and that is believing that the only way you can hold progressive views and implement them is in elective office.