Stakes are High for Daniel Lurie, San Francisco’s Next Mayor

Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie faced off with two fellow native San Franciscans (among other candidates) to lead the city for at least the next four years. Though polls consistently showed him in 3^rd place during the campaign, behind frontrunner Mark Farrell and incumbent mayor London Breed, voting result maps paint the picture of a candidate with an actual broad swath of city-wide support. This likely due to Lurie’s campaign throwing nearly $10 million to secure victory.

San Francisco has, for many years, been the poster child for failed city governance. You know this. Network television, radio, podcasts and print papers chronicle our crime, homelessness, unresponsive city hall, and the cries, sometimes literally, of hard working taxpayers plight- whether to stay in their town spiraling in a doom-loop, or pack it all up and seek a better place elsewhere. Studies showed San Francisco in the top of towns exhibiting an outmigration, and not just due to Covid.

Daniel Lurie has made big promises on the debate stage as well as in statements in the literal pounds and pounds of campaign mailers sent to voters’ homes these last few months. Tying any chance to reverse the demise of San Francisco to the removal of the current mayor, his messaging was both effective yet vague on many aspects. But similar to how Kamala Harris was defeated on the national stage, with Trump highlighting myriad failures of Harris as our nation’s Vice President for 4 years, incumbent Breed was forced to take ownership for our city’s woes. She, similarly to Harris, had no new plans. Repeated messaging from her campaign touted, weakly, that she (allegedly) had a proven track record of leading our city during its hardest times. Voters disagreed. Breed is now packing up her office. Good riddance.

Now comes the hard work, with the discerning spotlight on Lurie. The city’s operating budget is an absolutely insane $16 Billion annually. We cannot afford this. Lurie promised to review the operations of departments and commissions to trim, consolidate and increase efficiency. That’s a great place to target, as city coffers cannot sustain unnecessary and duplicative annual spending, nor should we.

Bringing in the heavy guns to arrest drug dealers while increasing the number of shelter beds and drying out addicts on an emergency basis will help clear our streets dramatically. Even while London Breed campaigned on her alleged success to clean up San Francisco’s fentanyl and meth addicts still roam our downtown unabated.

Arguably, the haphazard doling out of funds to the many agencies and nonprofits lacking accountability enables rampant corruption, at the expense of taxpayers. Observers and advocates have been screaming for years how necessary funding for education, infrastructure, transportation, health care have been siphoned off to grifting nonprofits enriching their leaders, while making San Francisco’s overall quality of life worse. Under outgoing mayor Breed, homelessness, tents, drug addicts, shackled police and sheriff’s departments were the status quo. Tax revenues flowing into city coffers didn’t flow to where responsibly needed. Recent FBI investigations confirmed our suspicions that programs Breed set up were massive failures; investigations will certainly continue.

Lurie needs to put an immediate stop to the mega-grift, rapidly taking hold and shutting the faucet. His touted business experience would come into play, with audits and accountability measures put in place. This needs to be among his greatest priorities.