SAN FRANCISCO — When Daniel Lurie gained election in November as San Francisco’s new mayor, he knew there have been daunting challenges forward: the dual epidemics of homelessness and dependancy; a deflated downtown economic system; the final sense amongst locals {that a} malaise had clouded their colourful metropolis.
5 months later — 100 days into Lurie’s tenure — it’s not as if any of these issues have gone away. And but, “I really like my job,” stated Lurie, 48, throughout a current interview in his stately Metropolis Corridor workplace.
“Folks say, ‘What are the surprises?’ I feel I’m shocked by simply how a lot I really like this job.”
As an inheritor to the Levi Strauss household fortune, Lurie comes from one of many metropolis’s most distinguished households, with roots relationship to the Gold Rush. So, it’s no shock he feels a deep connection to his metropolis. However his choice to make use of the mayoral publish to not solely set coverage but additionally boldly hype San Francisco is a part of a broader technique. He needs the nation to see a metropolis on the rise. And perhaps much more essential: for San Franciscans to embrace the picture.
“The vibe shift is, I imagine, actual in our metropolis,” he stated. “There’s a way of hope and optimism that individuals haven’t seen for a very long time. I’ve lots of people saying, ‘I’m proud to be a San Franciscan for the primary time shortly.’ Now, I’ve at all times been proud. That’s why I ran.”
Lurie, a average Democrat, bested incumbent London Breed and three different Metropolis Corridor veterans by interesting to voters disillusioned with sprawling homelessness and town’s stalled post-COVID restoration. He got here to the job with no expertise as an elected official. His work life centered on Tipping Level, a Bay Space nonprofit he based in 2005 that has raised greater than $400 million for initiatives targeted on job coaching, housing and early childhood training for low-income households.
Even a lot of his supporters anticipated Lurie, together with his starched shirts and monotone voice, to strategy the brand new job as extra of a public coverage nerd than a cheerleader-in-chief. However, for now, he’s successfully embraced each roles. At some point he’s unveiling plans to get powerful on public drug use; the following, he’s throughout city throwing the primary pitch on the Giants’ opening day at Oracle Park. He usually makes use of his Instagram to focus on each the intense and extra enjoyable elements of his job.
Lurie is aware of he’s obtained an extended highway forward so far as making the modifications he promised voters: dismantling the tent cities; increasing shelter choices; reinvigorating the enterprise sector; making town decidedly unfriendly to drug sellers. However what rankles him just isn’t a lot the scope of the agenda. It’s the paperwork he sees as standing in his means.
“Within the first few weeks, I’d be strolling on the streets and be like, why is there trash at a bus shelter?,” Lurie stated, recounting one such instance. “Effectively, we don’t do trash pickup on Saturdays and Sundays. And I used to be like, individuals nonetheless take the bus on Saturdays and Sundays, and we now have vacationers from all around the world coming right here.”
“Now we have to be a 24/7 metropolis, and sometimes we’re a metropolis that’s 9 to five, Monday by Friday,” he stated.
Lurie, dad to 2 school-aged youngsters, can be studying the best way to mesh being a 24/7 mayor with a wealthy and supportive household life. He usually references as a task mannequin the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who served as San Francisco’s mayor from 1978-88. Like Feinstein, Lurie needs to be a hands-on mayor, strolling metropolis streets by day, whereas at the very least from time to time making it house early sufficient to sit down down together with his household for dinner.
He posits, with a smile, that he may very well have the lightest schedule within the household. His spouse, Becca Prowda, is a high-ranking aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom, serving as Newsom’s chief of protocol. His son, 11-year-old Sawyer, performs baseball, soccer and flag soccer. Lurie’s daughter, 14-year-old Taya, just lately carried out within the San Francisco Ballet’s rendition of “Frankenstein.”
“She was the primary particular person onstage,” Lurie stated with the smile of a really proud dad. “She has a second the place she is dancing onstage with and standing subsequent to Sasha (DeSola),” a principal dancer with the corporate.
Lurie nonetheless takes his children to highschool each morning, he stated, and goals to get house by 9 p.m. most nights, whereas reserving Friday and Sunday evenings for household. He spent Passover weekend together with his household in Southern California.
On the marketing campaign path, Lurie stated his children’ expertise of San Francisco impressed him to run for mayor, recounting a narrative about strolling with them by the Mission District and encountering a person within the midst of a psychological well being disaster. Lurie pledged to prioritize public security and enhance pathways to therapy for psychological sickness and dependancy.
Quickly after his Jan. 8 inauguration, Lurie launched an ordinance that enables town to extra rapidly open new shelter and therapy applications whereas giving his workplace leeway to pursue personal funding for these efforts. This month, he introduced a brand new public well being coverage that prohibits metropolis employees and nonprofits that obtain metropolis funding from handing out sterile syringes and different clear drug provides until they actively work to attach individuals with providers.
Lurie has tapped a handful of elite tech and enterprise executives to behave as advisors and assist form insurance policies that can revitalize a downtown hit arduous by the COVID-era shutdowns and the exodus of tech staff who embraced distant work. Among the many individuals he’s recruited: Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist and widow of Steve Jobs; Ruth Porat, president and chief funding officer of Alphabet and Google; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; Larry Baer of the San Francisco Giants; enterprise capitalist Ron Conway; and the executives of DoorDash, Hole, Ripple, Salesforce and Visa.
Their mind energy — and cash — shall be a robust device in serving to jolt San Francisco’s downtown again to life, Lurie stated.
“I’m going to work with anyone that wishes to assist San Francisco get again to its rightful place as the best metropolis on the planet,” he stated.
Lurie’s efficiency has drawn accolades from sudden political corners.
“I feel Mayor Lurie is doing incredible,” stated state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), a Breed ally who expressed pleasure at Lurie’s housing insurance policies and assist for public transit.
“I get pleasure from him personally. I get pleasure from his strategy,” stated Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, the brand new president of the Board of Supervisors, town’s highly effective legislative arm, which for years was dominated by ultra-liberals who usually clashed with earlier mayors. The November elections introduced extra centrist members to the 11-member physique who could also be extra inclined to assist Lurie’s centrist agenda.
“He’s keen to actually be taught, and he’s keen to hear,” stated Supervisor Connie Chan, a progressive. “And it’s not simply symbolic listening. He’s actively listening.”
Even former longtime Supervisor Aaron Peskin, an old-school liberal who misplaced to Lurie in final 12 months’s mayoral race, stated he accepted a current invitation from Lurie to take a stroll and discuss store. Peskin stated he appreciates that the brand new mayor is keen to take heed to totally different opinions.
“San Francisco wanted to have a change, each for nationwide notion and for native notion,” Peskin stated.
Loads of unpopular selections loom. Chief amongst them is a gaping funds deficit nearing $1 billion, a quantity that can virtually actually require sweeping cuts and hard negotiations with the Board of Supervisors and town’s public labor unions.
Lurie has already gotten pushback from some distinguished neighborhood teams involved that his new insurance policies will ignite a repeat of the nation’s failed warfare on medication, in addition to these skeptical of his tight connections with tech leaders.
“We’ve had a pay-to-play environment at Metropolis Corridor,” stated Julie Pitta, president of the Phoenix Challenge, a progressive group that tracks tech cash in San Francisco politics. “Does Mayor Lurie suppose these individuals won’t need one thing in return for the assistance they’re giving him?”
For now at the very least, Lurie is taking each the accolades and criticism in stride. He’s already alluded to a reelection marketing campaign, saying it’d take extra time to reestablish his hometown as a metropolis the place each vacationer needs to go to and each enterprise needs to open store.
“I feel we’re off to a robust begin,” Lurie stated. “However my expectations are sky-high.”
