San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced Thursday that he's running for re-election. Four days later, his campaign already hit its first setback. Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the Chronicle that she's not ready to endorse him for a second term, citing concerns with local Airbnb laws. Maybe she's looking at the alternatives?

For much of Ed Lee's first term as Mayor of San Francisco, he enjoyed both the popular support of the public and the financial backing of tech tycoons. Last March, a stunning 65 percent of local voters approved of Lee's handling of the job. Then the Google Bus protests happened, the cost of living kept rising, and evictions hit crisis levels. Within 13 months, Lee's approval rating sunk by 20 points.

Like many other cities across America, San Francisco is attempting to raise its minimum wage and fill a gap caused by federal and state incompetence. The city's voters in the upcoming election will decide whether to up the local minimum wage from $10.74 to $15 an hour, boosting incomes of the most vulnerable workers in the hyper-gentrifying city.

Just two weeks before San Francisco's 2011 mayoral election, billionaire angel investor Ron Conway pushed out a viral campaign ad for Mayor Ed Lee that featured cameos from local sports stars and Silicon Valley tech celebs. Now, 13 months before Lee's next election, Conway's techie advocacy group has released another ad including all the hallmarks from the original "2 Legit 2 Quit" video.

Silicon Valley's loudest mouths love little more than demanding free market solutions to every public ill—the Bay Area's housing crisis being no exception. Their pitch is simple: just build more housing and prices will plummet. But that's not happening.

Star venture capitalist Ron Conway absolutely lost his shit today at the Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit after fellow VC Chamath Palihapitiya suggested Mayor Ed Lee was doing a poor job addressing San Francisco's gentrification crisis.

Ron Conway, the pioneering angel investor behind the "spray and pray" technique, has put his $9.5 million "Louis XV style" abode up for sale, reports Business Insider. According to Trulia, the price for this full floor apartment in one of "San Francisco's most desirable co-op buildings" has recently dropped half a million.

Every year, a chosen cadre of investors, high profile tech luminaries, and startup folk get together at the SV Angel Summit. A tipster tells us this year's confidential confab is happening today, with an off-the-record cocktail party and mayoral meet-and-greet this evening. Such fun! Let's look at the guest list.

Ed Lee is the mayor of San Francisco by the grace of that city's deep-pocketed technologists. He continues to return the favor in both deeds and rhetoric: a new interview with Time has Lee explaining that his city's middle class isn't like yours:

The only thing more laughable than protestors demanding that tech corporations pay San Francisco $1 billion/year for illegally using public bus stops is Mayor Ed Lee's proposed solution. His plan calls for companies like Google to pay a pitiful $1 per bus stop squat.

Twitter, quite literally, bought and paid for San Francisco's City Hall, which bled blue last night for the company's holiday party. Looks like Ron Conway's investment in Ed Lee was a real home run! Images via @Stop

A month before San Francisco's last mayoral election, when Ed Lee's rivals struggled to raise funds, Lee was helped along by independent committees like San Franciscans for Jobs and Good Government, a group funded by Ron Conway and Sean Parker. In one quarter alone, they raised $364,000, half from Conway and $100,000 from Parker.

That squeezed out feeling San Francisco residents have been complaining about isn't just psychosomatic. A new study shows that evictions—especially ones where units are taken off the rental market—have "skyrocketed," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.