I first met citizen Daniel Lurie at Four Barrell Coffee in the Mission District on a rainy November Saturday in 2023. I arrived a few minutes early, and he arrived a few minutes late. Lurie apologized, explaining he fit our coffee date in between dropping his kids off for a school function and picking them up afterward, a perfectly normal thing to do. And that was in fact my first impression of Lurie — normal. He was dressed in a suit with a crisp white shirt, he drove himself to the meeting, he asked if I wanted something to drink. “A latte with soy and no sweetener would be lovely,” I said. He dashed to the counter and waited in the busy weekend line, unrecognized by other patrons.
As we chatted, I found Lurie incredibly refreshing. He asked more questions about me and my new project The Voice of San Francisco then I asked him about his run against incumbent mayor London Breed. Despite his considerable wealth as one of the heirs to the Levi Strauss fortune, Lurie was down to earth and earnest, bright-eyed about the possibility of turning the city he loved around after years of decay at the hands of a “progressive” board more concerned with the rights of drug users and drug dealers than the rights of their constituents. He made sense. That’s why I endorsed him, along with Mark Farrell, in the 2024 election (along with London Breed as a third choice in an “anyone but Peskin” ranked choice battle).
On Nov. 5, 2024, Lurie did indeed become San Francisco’s 46th mayor. Along with spending millions of his own money on advertising himself as a “City Hall outsider” and attacking his rivals incessantly, he also made big promises — like his signature “1,500 shelter beds for the homeless in his first six months in office.” As a reporter covering politics in this city for many years, I knew he couldn’t achieve it, and when he didn’t, he came to the podium and admitted it. Again, refreshing. There have been other political missteps along the way, but also some successes. Lurie taking Jennifer Friedenbach, head of the Coalition on Homelessness, off of Room 200’s speed dial was a bold move. She’s had access to the mayor’s office for decades; her pro-encampment, antiresident rhetoric has caused much of what we see in the streets today, and what Lurie is now tasked with cleaning up…