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.

A fascinating challenge facing today's environmental movement is how to best approach the reversal of past decisions that altered once-pristine environmental spaces for the sake of urgent man-made needs.

Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can't expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages.

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

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.

At some point the rhetoric runs out, and we have to ask ourselves, 'Are we simply going to standby while somebody's rhetoric is good, but their actions are so lousy?' Are we going to stand up for that?

I think that when we're talking about youth violence, we're talking about kids who don't have opportunities, so they're engaged in a certain degree of lawlessness, because we as a society have failed them.