The Daly Show

To his supporters, he's a white knight, taking on causes with little resonance outside the realm of the poor and dispossessed. For instance, he pushed a law to make fire sprinklers mandatory in single room occupancy hotels, and to bar SRO desk clerks from charging residents fees to have visitors in their rooms. Last year, he sponsored an eviction disclosure ordinance to require real estate agents to reveal to prospective buyers whether a tenant has been evicted from a property they're interested in buying.

He's repeatedly rankled business interests and property owners while pushing for hikes in the sales tax and the gross receipts tax to help bolster such things as affordable housing and health services for the poor. He riled restaurateurs for pushing — unsuccessfully — for a law (à la Los Angeles County) to have health inspections posted as a letter grade in restaurant windows. And he's angered developers and businesses alike by seeking to limit parking spaces at new downtown developments.

"To me, he's a perpetuator of negativity and confrontation who brings out the worst side of politics," says Nathan Nayman, executive director of the Committee on Jobs, which represents powerful downtown business interests.

Daly's relationship with the downtown community got off to a rocky start. Early in his tenure he stunned a breakfast group of CEOs, including financier Warren Hellman, the Gap's Don Fisher, and real estate magnate Doug Shorenstein, when, after being invited to speak, he delivered what an observer says amounted to "a lecture on the evils of the capitalist system. It was like listening to Fidel."

Daly shrugs off the criticism.

"I'm basically a socialist," he says, unabashedly. "I've read Marx and have an analysis of power and I understand that when you're as openly confrontational to entrenched power as I am, you're going to be demonized."

He's also had the last laugh, politically, handily winning re-election in 2002 and 2006. Much to their chagrin, the dynamics of district elections have made Daly practically impervious to his political enemies. Although widely viewed as unelectable to citywide office, he remains a potent force at City Hall by ruling the roost in his district. In 2006, that translated to his garnering fewer than 9,000 votes.

His victory last year over challenger Rob Black was especially frustrating to his detractors, who saw Daly as potentially vulnerable for having cut deals with Rincon Hill high-rise developers. His foes hammered him for what they saw as his contradictory stance in accepting campaign cash from big developers he once railed against, while extracting concessions to transfer millions of dollars in so-called "community impact fees" to the coffers of Daly-approved charities in his district. Those same charities, his critics allege, supply the foot soldiers for Daly's political causes. Daly's argument: The high-rises were inevitable and it was better to capture benefits for the public good.

His foes ended up frustrated. Despite Black's being well-financed and enjoying the endorsement of the mayor, Daly still won by 10 percentage points.

Attired in gray sweats with "Tenderloin" emblazoned on the chest, Daly is rough-housing with son Jack, 3, in the living room of his condo while chatting on the cellphone wedged between his ear and shoulder.

His brother, John, a South Carolina radiologist — and his polar opposite, politically, as a card-carrying Republican defender of George W. Bush — has called to wish him a happy birthday, Daly's 35th. (The brothers remain close, thanks to a mutual pact not to discuss politics, friends say.)

The unpretentious condo, purchased with the help of a loan from his parents, is up three flights of stairs in a nondescript security building that opens onto an alley-wide street in the Mission. The downstairs consists of a kitchen and combination living/dining area which, if not for scattered toys, would appear more Spartan than it is. A well-worn sofa and loveseat sit in front of an oversized cabinet that hides a television.

The supervisor shares the home with his wife, Sarah Low Daly, 29, who is seven months pregnant with the couple's second child. By all accounts, she's a prominent force behind her husband's political persona.

"Chris and Sarah are kindred spirits; he doesn't do anything without her approval," says a Daly confidant, who didn't want to be identified. A Daly colleague at City Hall recalls how Sarah Daly has been known to even call her husband to egg him on during legislative debates while watching the supervisors' proceedings on TV from home.

She's certainly no shrinking violet.

At a victory celebration after Daly's re-election last November, she took to the stage at DNA Lounge to lambaste her husband's political tormentors, including the police union and a local plumbers union. But her choicest words (captured on a video that turned up on YouTube but was later removed) were reserved for restaurateurs who've sued to block the city's universal health care, which Chris Daly has long favored. "To the mother-fuckers who don't want to pay people a living wage at the Golden Gate Restaurant Association," she shouted, "fuck you!"