Community Organizer
San Francisco, CA
My first name, Honest, was given to me at birth. Honest was my great-grandfatherʼs nickname—he started a business named Honest Charleyʼs Speed Shop, which was the first national catalog to sell hot rod and race car parts. Most of my friends and colleagues call me Charley, but I also go by my first name.
I started my career at the Los Angeles Times, where I worked doing data journalism and product engineering for their realtime news desk, which enabled the Times to win a Breaking News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 2015. I then co-founded and served as CTO for a tech startup named Yellow Brim that sold services to clients like the Los Angeles Times, Vox Media, CalMatters, and Lookout Local to help them more efficiently send daily newsletters to readers. I am an experienced senior software engineer and manager, with a heavy focus on user experience and graphic design.
I ran for Mayor of San Francisco in 2024, before suspending my campaign and joining forces with a fellow candidate, Dylan Hirsch-Shell. I helped manage his campaign, and promote his platform consisting of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Universal Social Housing as a registered political consultant.
Following the election, we co-founded San Franciscans for Social Housing which is a grassroots activist organization dedicated to promoting Social Housing in San Francisco. In 2025, we led a petition that called on the city government to fund social housing through the allocation of Prop I funds.
In April of 2026, San Franciscans for Social Housing announced its support for the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act ballot measure campaign, and began working in coalition with DSA SF, former Supervisor Dean Preston, and SF Propel to qualify and pass the measure. On July 1, 2026, the campaign along with Supervisor Jackie Fielder, coalition partners and other endorsers turned in over 20,000 signatures to successfully qualify the measure for the ballot.
In 2025, I also founded the District 5 Democratic Club, and was elected its president for the 2026-2027 term. I worked on the ballot measure qualification campaigns for the California Billionaire Tax, the California Children's Education and Health Care Protection Act, Connect Bay Area Transit Measure, Stronger Muni For All Measure, and the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition.
In everything I do, I am committed to building a more equitable society that centers working people. I've personally, and through my family, been affected by issues of cancer, substance abuse, homelessness, and mental health issues. I've recovered from substance addiction, and am active in the recovery community here in San Francisco.
I walk the streets of San Francisco and talk to all walks of life, and I've seen how the issues impacting our community are often interconnected. San Francisco in many ways is an extreme and highly visible microcosm of the issues facing the nation and the world—from wealth inequality to systemic racism to the affordability crisis to the impact of climate change on our communities. I am committed to doing my part to solving these challenges, and I believe in the power of community to effect change locally that will ripple out to the rest of the world.
Please send me an email at hcbodkin@gmail.com to connect with me.
Thank you for your interest,
Honest Charley Bodkin