Matt Haney

Matthew Craig Haney (born April 17, 1982) is an American politician from San Francisco currently serving as a member of the California State Assembly from the 17th district, covering the eastern portion of the city.

He has a Bachelor of Arts in 2005 from the University of California, Berkeley, and an LL.M in human rights from the National University of Ireland, where he was a Senator George Mitchell Scholar.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2005, Haney was a legislative aide for long-time California State Senator Joe Simitian.

He was the Executive Director of the UC Student Association.

Haney is the former National Policy Director for The Dream Corps.

Haney was previously a volunteer for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign but had not sought out the endorsement.

He has a Master of Arts in 2010 from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a JD in 2010 from Stanford Law School.

Haney worked at both the Stanford Design School and at the JFK School of Law, and Sociology at Palo Alto University, where he taught education law.

Haney taught Education Law at the JFK School of Law in addition to teaching Sociology at Palo Alto University and served as a Fellow and Adjunct Faculty at the Stanford Design School.

In April 2012, Haney announced his candidacy for the San Francisco Board of Education election for one of four open seats.

He was elected in the November 2012 San Francisco general election, placing fourth behind three incumbents.

Haney replaced Norman Yee, who forwent re-election to run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Upon his election, Haney was the youngest member of the commission and one of the only members of an urban school board in California under the age of 35.

Prior to his election, he served two years on San Francisco Unified School District’s Public Education Enrichment Fund Community Advisory Committee and Restorative Justice Committee.

Haney, Sandra Lee Fewer, and Shamann Walton authored a resolution that required the district's food vendor to disclose the origin of their food products.

In 2015, he co-founded #cut50, an Oakland-based national nonprofit designed to end mass incarceration, with Van Jones and Jessica Jackson.

It passed with a unanimous vote in May 2016.

While serving as president of the school board, Haney proposed on Twitter that George Washington High School should be renamed to honor poet Maya Angelou, an alumna of the school.

He cited objections to George Washington's role as a slaveowner.

He also proposed removing but not painting over the Life of Washington mural by Victor Arnautoff inside of the school.

He cited his objection to its depiction of slavery and dead Native Americans.

President Barack Obama endorsed Haney during his re-election campaign in 2016.

It was one of the 150 endorsements he made the weekend prior to the 2016 United States elections.

In September 2017, Haney filed to run in the 2018 San Francisco Board of Supervisors election to represent District 6.

Haney and Commissioner Stevon Cook co-authored a resolution in 2018 to establish a panel to examine which schools to rename.

Haney introduced a resolution calling for the end of the current all-choice-based student-assignment system.

Haney was elected Supervisor for District 6 on November 6, 2018, receiving 14,249 first preference votes (56.24 percent of all valid votes).

(San Francisco has ranked choice voting.) After allocation of preferences from eliminated candidates in San Francisco's ranked-choice voting system, Haney received 63.12 percent of final-round votes, compared to 36.88 percent for runner-up Christine Johnson, a former planning commissioner.

During the 2018 campaign for Supervisor, Haney ran against a leader of the YIMBY movement and questioned the need for every neighborhood to build housing, stating "I'm not going to pick fights on the other side of the city."

A progressive member of the Democratic Party, Haney had represented District 6 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2019 to 2022 and previously served as a commissioner on the San Francisco Board of Education from 2013 to 2019.

In 2022, Haney won a special election to the California State Assembly to succeed David Chiu, who became City Attorney of San Francisco.

He placed first in the primary election and defeated former supervisor David Campos, a fellow Democrat, in a runoff.

He was sworn in on May 3, 2022.

Haney was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended public schools in Albany, California.

His mother, Kris Calvin, served on the South Pasadena School Board.

Haney was sworn in at the Board of Supervisors' January 8, 2019, meeting, replacing Jane Kim, who was ineligible to run for re-election after two four-year terms.

A "progressive" majority was created upon his and Gordon Mar's election to the board.

Per the law, Haney resigned as supervisor before being sworn into the Legislature for the state Assembly's 17th district on May 3, 2022.

Mayor London Breed appointed Matt Dorsey to fill Haney's spot as supervisor.

Haney's views in housing shifted during his time on the Board of Supervisors, becoming increasingly supportive of additional housing and regulatory streamlining for housing construction.