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Remember when Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi isn't shoplifting at Macys in downtown San Francisco she knows how to run your life better then you do.

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Hayashi to run for Alameda County board

Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, Chronicle Columnists

Updated 05:31 a.m., Sunday, July 22, 2012

East Bay Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi has quietly filed papers declaring her intent to run in November for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors seat vacated by Nadia Lockyer.

"She has done her research," said her campaign spokesman, Mark Capitolo, "and she is not going into it blind."

Hayashi, D-Castro Valley, remains on probation after pleading no contest last year to shoplifting $2,500 worth of clothes from the Neiman Marcus in San Francisco's Union Square.

Although the $583,000 stashed in her various campaign and officeholder accounts would seem to give Hayashi a healthy advantage over competitors, County Counsel Donna Ziegler tells us she is barred from transferring more than $20,000 total for a county run.

"Even if there weren't limits, (Hayashi) intends to start from ground zero and seek financial help and endorsements," Capitolo said. "Locally, in Sacramento and from anywhere she has friends."

The supervisors appointed former Union City Councilman Richard Valle last month to fill the vacancy left by Lockyer, who resigned in April amid a drug and sex scandal. He intends to run in November.

Even if Hayashi has a big hill to climb, thanks to her shoplifting conviction, campaign observers say she shouldn't be underestimated - as evidenced by the $15,600 in checks she picked up from the state medical and dental association PACs in February, when she was still eyeing a 2014 state Senate run.

Anyway, Capitolo said, "research shows when people take responsibility for their mistakes, voters are cool with it."

Party time: They're pulling out all the stops for President Obama's visit to Oakland on Monday - canceling police days off, closing off streets and activating the city's Emergency Response Center in preparation for the anticipated protests over the administration's crackdown on pot clubs.

And there is no question that locals are holding their breath over the visit.

"I always get excited when the president of the United States comes to Oakland, but I hope we don't have to deal with all the insanity of the past from Occupy Oakland," said City Council President Larry Reid.

And rest assured, he said, "they're all going to turn out."

In fact, the city-permitted rally to legalize marijuana at Frank Ogawa Plaza should be breaking up just as things get rolling a few blocks north at the Fox Theatre, where Obama is expected to address a sold-out, $100-a-head crowd of supporters sometime after 7 p.m.

The Fox is right across the street from a marijuana ID card center. It's also just blocks from where dozens of federal agents back in April raided Oaksterdam University, the big pot training and cannabis dispensary founded by legalization crusader Richard Lee.

As for Mayor Jean Quan, who was attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Philadelphia last week, she returned home Friday - and is scheduled to be among those on hand to greet the president at the Fox on Monday, according to her aides.

On the money: Suspended San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi still hasn't paid any of the $125,000 he owes to the pair of lawyers who handled his domestic violence case, as well as the attorney first hired to represent his wife, Eliana Lopez, according to knowledgeable sources.

As for the legal team handling Mirkarimi's official-misconduct hearing before the Ethics Commission?

"I don't discuss my fee agreements with clients," said Shepard Kopp, one of Mirkarimi's two lawyers.

San Francisco attorney Lidia Stiglich, who took over Mirkarimi's legal defense after the sheriff had a falling-out with his first lawyer, Bob Waggener, reportedly charged him a flat up-front fee of about $50,000.

While she declined to discuss her financial arrangement with Mirkarimi, Stiglich did tell us, "For anyone owed money, hope springs eternal that - if Ross is reinstated as sheriff - they'll get paid."

Incidentally, Lopez's current attorney, Paula Canny, hasn't been paid either - but then, she says she wouldn't have missed the ride for anything.

Given the mounting legal bills, we wondered how Lopez could afford to show up with Canny for Thursday's Ethics Commission hearing in a $200-an-hour limousine.

"Every good criminal defense lawyer has one good limo driver as a client - so I called my friend who owes me money, and that's how I got it," Canny said.

And finally: That was an awkward moment the other day when state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg accidentally introduced Ed Lee as "the mayor of the great city of Sacramento" at the signing of the high-speed rail legislation in downtown San Francisco.

Lee took to the microphone and deadpanned, "At least he didn't call me Jeremy Lin."

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com.

Mary Hayashi - A brain tumor made me swipe the $2,450 in clothes from Neiman Marcus

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Exclusive: Mary Hayashi discusses shoplifting conviction, run for Board of Supervisors

By Josh Richman

jrichman@bayareanewsgroup.com

Posted: 07/21/2012 04:21:30 PM PDT

HAYWARD -- Hoping that voters will forgive her for shoplifting $2,450 worth of clothes from San Francisco's Neiman Marcus, Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi isn't taking a break from politics: She plans to run for disgraced former Supervisor Nadia Lockyer's seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

"My opponents may use the issue to try to smear me, but I trust the voters to be smarter than that," she told this newspaper in her first interview since her October arrest for walking out of the store with black leather pants, a black leather skirt and a white blouse in her bag. She pleaded no contest in January to misdemeanor grand theft and was sentenced to three years of probation and a $180 fine.

Now, Hayashi, D-Hayward, has filed papers disclosing her intent to run for supervisor. "I'm not coming into this blind," she said. "I think the research shows I can win this race."

In the interview, the 45-year-old Hayashi insisted that the shoplifting was inadvertent and denied, as her lawyer and she herself had said in a previous statement, that a small brain tumor might have affected her judgment.

Hayashi said she had been distracted by a phone call when she left with the unpaid items. "Of course, I intended to pay for them," she said. "But I accept responsibility and offer apologies, not excuses."

She said it's "too bad" her lawyer had mentioned the tumor to reporters because "my health was certainly not a factor in anything that happened." Her tumor is benign, common and easily treated with medicine, she added: "My health is just fine."

Her San Francisco attorney, Doug Rappaport, said he couldn't comment without reviewing the case file, which can't be retrieved from storage until Monday.

But a Jan. 8 statement from Hayashi after she entered her no contest plea had said "my medical condition may have complicated the situation."

Veteran Democratic political consultant Dan Newman said it's "not impossible at all" that Hayashi could win another office: "Certainly plenty of elected officials have weathered worse. It depends on a number of things, including her health, the quality of the opposition, and if there are additional revelations."

Hayashi had built a name for herself at the Capitol after becoming the first Korean-American woman to serve in the Legislature. She became part of the inner circles of two Assembly speakers. And a magazine named her one of the 100 most influential Asian-Americans of the past decade.

In April, she reportedly gauged county supervisors' interest in appointing her to replace Lockyer, the wife of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer who resigned to grapple with fallout from an adulterous affair and drug addiction. Hayashi's spokesman later said she wasn't interested in the appointment, and former Union City Councilman Richard Valle was named in June to fill the vacancy.

But that appointment lasts only until November, when voters will pick someone to serve the final two years of Lockyer's four-year term. Valle also has filed to run in November, as has Union City Mayor Mark Green.

Because it's a special election, the winner only has to garner a plurality of votes, not a majority.

Hayashi has been rumored to be eyeing the state Senate seat of Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, who will be term-limited out of office in 2014. But in the interview, Hayashi rejected the idea that the supervisor's seat might serve as a political way station. "I don't have plans to run for the Senate," she said.

She said her Assembly experience will translate well into county government, which she called "the front lines of public service" now that state government "realignment" has passed down more responsibilities for health care, public safety and economic development.

"That's my strength: I've been part of the state shifting lots of responsibility to county government," Hayashi said. "I would know what the counties are supposed to do and how to get the money."

She denies having laid low since the shoplifting incident, rattling off events she has attended, such as a December food-bank drive, an April job fair and last weekend's pet health fair. Her annual senior health fair is scheduled for Friday.

"The world doesn't end when you make a personal mistake," she said. People still need help ... and I haven't missed a single day of work."

She doesn't seem to be seen as political poison: She hosted a fundraising reception in June at her home for Assembly Speaker John Perez and Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino. The co-hosts included Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco; Warren Furutani, D-Gardena; and Nora Campos, D-San Jose; and Rob Bonta, an Alameda vice mayor and Assembly candidate.

Lockyer's scandal supplanted Hayashi's in the headlines this year.

"She's a good person," said Hayashi, who supported Lockyer's 2010 campaign. "But everyone goes through personal struggles."