San Francisco, the magical California city that locals cherished and visitors marveled at, has elected a new mayor. London Breed is out. Daniel Lurie is in.
It’s tough to oust an incumbent but even harder when that person is part of an insular, highly protective city “family.” Breed was one of Willie Brown’s protégés. The powerful, dapper former mayor was instrumental in her success. A San Francisco native, raised in the Western Addition housing projects, Breed went into local government after college. In 2012, she won election as district supervisor, eventually rising to become president of the city’s board of supervisors. In 2019, San Franciscans elected her as the city’s 45th mayor.
Since then, the City by the Bay has taken a nosedive. Instead of recovering after the pandemic, it became emptier and sadder. Neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin and South of Market have been gritty for decades, but as the drug crisis worsened, the blight and chaos spread elsewhere.
With an approximate $16 billion annual budget and only about 810,000 residents (down from a peak of about 890,000 in 2019), shouldn’t San Francisco have plenty of money on hand to ensure a safe and vibrant environment?
Apparently not. In 2024, WalletHub named San Francisco the worst-run American city. With an annual salary of $383,760, Breed became the nation’s highest-paid mayor. Ineffective city departments swelled with overcompensated staff. More than 34,000 people are on the payroll.
Breed’s pet project, the Dream Keeper Initiative (DKI), which cost $60 million annually prior to this year’s budget and siphoned $120 million from law enforcement, was supposed to boost the city’s black community. Instead, it became mired in scandal and cronyism. Sheryl Davis, executive director of the Human Rights Commission and a friend of the mayor, ran DKI. Davis resigned after reporters uncovered multiple financial improprieties, including her signing off on $1.5 million in contracts to a person she lived with, without disclosing their relationship.
While Breed’s friends did well for themselves, the San Francisco residents and business owners crying out for help were often ignored. Illegal vending in Chinatown crippled legitimate merchants; they got no help from authorities. When major retailers fled Union Square and the financial district hollowed out, city hall couldn’t stem the bleeding. Drug dealers turned the Civic Center area into a night market for all things noxious and unsafe. Though the mayor claimed that she would break it up, X documentarians such as FriscoLive415 proved that little had changed.
No one in city government seemed willing or able to do the hard work that residents and business owners expected. And no one in government seemed to pay a price for these failures. In the end, if you’re employed by the city, you’re family. You’re protected. Accountability is just a pretty word.
That’s where Daniel Lurie comes in. He appealed to voters largely because he’s not in the city family. The Levi Strauss heir, philanthropist, and founder of the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point has never been a city supervisor, department head, or commissioner, or held any other political office.
Lurie thus became the outsider candidate. Other mayoral hopefuls criticized his lack of direct experience in government, but this became one of his primary selling points for voters. In his first appearance as mayor-elect, Lurie promised to clean house and populate his administration with an entirely new team. This is welcome news to many, including Marie Hurabiell, founder of the community action group ConnectedSF.
“I wanted to see the corrupt city family broken apart and smashed to smithereens,” says Hurabiell. “They didn’t look out for constituents, only for themselves. They created a cabal and weren’t focused on what is best for the city. Daniel Lurie is their nightmare. He’s not controllable by insiders.”
Not everyone is so scathing in assessing the city government, but the welcoming tone for Lurie is encouraging. Marisa Rodriguez, executive director of the Union Square Alliance, appreciates the outgoing administration’s support but contends that Lurie campaigned on a strong message about helping the downtown finally recover. “I am feeling very optimistic for our future,” she says.
Though the city’s credibility may take years to mend, David Perry, a longtime San Francisco communications consultant and Breed supporter, is also bullish. “Mayor-elect Lurie understands the need to rebuild our international reputation and rejuvenate our downtown core, without which there can be no economic or tourism rebound,” says Perry. “I’m pragmatically hopeful, as I have always been about San Francisco.”
Whether Lurie can lead San Francisco into its next great revival is unknown. Plenty of skeptics remain. For now, most citizens are grateful that he’s not part of a city establishment that has turned incestuous and lazy. But San Franciscans’ patience has run thin: if Lurie fails to deliver visible results after his term begins in January, positive opinion will likely fade fast.
Photos: Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images (left) / Photo by Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images (right)