John Shelley

Who was John Shelley?

John Francis "Jack" Shelley was a U.S. politician. He served as the 35th mayor of San Francisco, from 1964 to 1968, the first Democrat elected to the office in 50 years, and the first in an unbroken line of Democratic mayors that lasts to the present.

Shelley earned a law degree from the University of San Francisco in 1932. He served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II and was a member of the California State Senate from 1938 to 1946. He ran an unsuccessful race for the Lieutenant Governor's office against Goodwin Knight in 1946. Shelley would then make his mark as a leader of the California delegation to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, when he would help marshal his state's votes to support a strong civil rights plank. Shelley entered the United States House of Representatives in 1949 and served until 1964, when he ran for mayor of San Francisco and won by a 12-point margin against his opponent, Harold Dobbs.