Does Kara Swisher have your vote?

Kara Swisher has always struck me as the business journalist whom others should model themselves on. She knows the stories to tell, asks (and keeps asking) the tough questions, develops well-placed sources (is there anyone at Yahoo who hasn’t leaked to her?) and infuses her distinctive voice into every article, podcast and live interview she's involved with. “Access journalism” is an insidery dig at reporters who trade positive pieces for unfettered access to people in power. Swisher is that rare reporter who both gets the access and refuses to hold back.

Soon, though, Swisher could be flexing her power not as an outsider asking the tough questions but an insider swatting away reporters’ calls. Earlier this year, she started talking seriously about making a run for public office. In her sights: Mayor of San Francisco, the city where she lives, where she raises two boys and where she sees serious problems.

A few weeks ago, she stopped by LinkedIn’s NYC offices to talk about the relaunch of Recode, the site she and Walt Mossberg founded in 2014 and sold to Vox in May 2015. While Dan Frommer, Recode’s new editor-in-chief, listened on, Swisher explained why the public service talk wasn’t just a lark:

"There is something in the Trump and Sanders candidacies that has struck something in me... It's important for citizens to get involved instead of sitting around bellyaching about how bad it is."

As the Code Conference kicks off today — the 14th anniversary of the live event she and Mossberg started at the Wall Street Journal — Swisher and her team will once again take to the stage and probe for ways to get Jeff Bezos, Nick Denton, Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg and others to reveal things they hadn’t intended to say. It’s hard to imagine a Mayor Swisher — "the liberal, lesbian Donald Trump of San Francisco," as she described herself to me — sitting in the now-iconic Recode red chairs getting grilled. 

But, then again, weirder things have happened in politics.

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Here are some edited excerpts from the interview:

Dan Roth: Are you going to run for mayor? 
Kara Swisher: Yes, I am.

DR: You're definitely doing this?
KS: Yes, hopefully.

DR: What's your platform?
KS: I am very interested in politics, and I think that I will start at the top. Recently I've been reading a lot about the founding fathers for some reason. I saw Hamilton. I kept reading all the books, and the sacrifices they made were enormous. I think we have abrogated our responsibilities as citizens. I really do. There is something in the Trump and Sanders candidacies that has struck something in me, a chord that I've always had, which is service to our government. It's important for citizens to get involved instead of sitting around bellyaching about how bad it is.

DR:  It's pretty different than being the outsider looking in and critiquing.
KS: You can still be an outsider and an insider. I'm not going to do this everybody sucks who has come before me thing, which I hate. Politicians always have to come in and say, "That person did this wrong." Look, it's hard to run anything. We've been running Recode for a while. Before that, All Things D. I have a sense of what it's like to run things, and it's really difficult. I think we don't acknowledge how hard it is. Government needs to be disrupted drastically and the citizens have to take responsibility for their government instead of complaining. I complained a lot about government. I thought, "Let me do something about it."

Especially in San Francisco. There's income equality issues that are just ridiculous for one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. There's the tech divide that is also ridiculous. It's just insane with all this wealth that we can't think of solutions. San Francisco should be a city of… not a “shining city on the hill,” because no city's going to be that. Every city's going to have their issues. San Francisco should be able to solve things, and show the way of how modern cities should operate — around commuting, around dense building.

I really am interested in real estate, and how people live. The way we live in San Francisco, what's going on, the arguments about density. There's a solution, and there's a good solution. It's not going to be a solution everybody likes.

The same thing around income equality, about homelessness. There's all kinds of solutions, and San Francisco should be the place for that. Or one of the cities where it happens. I would not run for mayor of New York ever. I was just walking around today thinking, "This would be a hard city to be mayor of."

DR: When do you make the switch — cut it off as a journalist?
KS: I don't know.
Dan Frommer:  [Laughing] Not this year.
KS: Not this year. Again who knows what's going to happen, but it's something I think is important. I also want to inspire people to think about public service. We sit around, and complain a lot — journalists especially. Big 'ol whiners, right? When we were complaining about the business of journalism 15 years ago Walt and I did something about it: “We're going to do a different thing. We're going to be entrepreneurial. We're going to think beyond the box. We're going to learn about business. Some things we're going to fail at, some things we're going to be good at, but why not?”

I think I'd be a good mayor. I'm colorful enough for sure.

DR: You would be a memorable mayor. There's no question.
KS: Yes. I'm the liberal, lesbian Donald Trump of San Francisco. (laughs) I hate to say that. Oh, my God. Why am I affiliating myself with that?