After years of negative headlines and post-pandemic economic struggle, San Francisco has picked a wealthy Democratic outsider with no government experience to serve as the city’s new mayor.
Daniel Lurie, 47, is one of the heirs to the Levi Strauss jeans company fortune, and previously spent 15 years as the executive of a San Francisco non-profit he founded. He defeated several Democratic challengers, including the current mayor, London Breed, in an election that was expected to break local campaign spending records.
“with no government experience “
That could prove to be a good thing, or they may simply wear him out with red tape. Anyone taking bets?
Julia
I suspect he’ll hire someone to do the red tape rubbish. But he’ll find that in actual fact he can do nothing. The ‘system’ will just run on regardless.
Perhaps he’ll then display the good sense to just dump the job.
“spent 15 years as the executive of a San Francisco non-profit he founded.” That would be Tipping Point Community. In 2017, Tipping Point committed $100 million to cut chronic homelessness in San Francisco in half by 2022.
So how has that gone? As an indicator of his likely performance as mayor.
The SF Chronicle ran an article yesterday about which districts in the city had the largest portions of votes for Trump. It was largely the poorer parts, though the support never got much above a third of the district’s vote.
“Daniel Lurie … promised to stand up 1,500 emergency shelter beds in his first six months in office.”
To mis-quote Kipling: Once you have built the homeless shelter, you’ll never get rid of the homeless.
Depends where he builds the shelters. he could build them in Seattle.
I once met a British chap who lives in San Francisco for work.
Me, knowing nothing about the place except for Dirty Harry movies and Alcatraz: “that must be nice”
He gave me a thousand yard stare.