Howard Epstein

Epstein is vice chairman for communications, which is to say pitchman, for the San Francisco Republican Party. Since converting to the GOP in his late 30s, Epstein has cycled through a variety of unpaid leadership roles and played the occasional sacrificial lamb when Republicans needed someone, anyone, to stand for public office. (Personal best: 18% of the vote in a failed 2000 bid for state Assembly.) Still, it's a hobby of sorts. Epstein worked hard his whole life, he said (a paint distributorship, a janitorial supply company) and never found the time to marry and start a family. The Republican Party speaks to him with its philosophy of self-reliance and letting people keep more of what they earn, so they — not the government — can decide how to spend it. He's used to being politically outnumbered. His grandfather, who fled the persecution of Russian Jews at the turn of the 20th century, was a registered Socialist. His father was a staunch liberal: Discussing the haves and have-nots, he sounded "a lot like Obama," Epstein says, with a soft laugh.