Barak Gila, twitter@pinkskywriting
October 28, 2023
Daniel Lurie, who’s running for San Francisco Mayor, participated in his first public event yesterday, an interview by Joe Eskenazi of Mission Local held at Manny’s. The nonprofit executive and an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune focused on themes of public safety, policing, and government accountability while trying to strike an optimistic note of civic pride in the hour-long interview. Inside the venue, the mood of the packed audience was mostly respectful, with occasional interjections challenging Lurie (For instance, a few people shouted ”Who?” and “Name names!” when Lurie discussed firing some city department heads, but declined to specify which).
Lurie repeatedly returned to the theme of disorder on city streets. On the topics of fentanyl, homelessness, and petty crime, he was heavy on evocative anecdote. Eskenazi’s first question was why Lurie chose to run, and he answered with a long-winded story about a morning in June:
“My kids go to school two blocks from here. Walking my kids across Valencia Street, I saw a naked, screaming man at 8:05 in the morning. My 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son didn’t say anything, but I could tell [they were disturbed by the disorder]. I realized that despite having started a nonprofit that worked on homelessness, I have to do more. There are currently six people doing drugs 25 yards from here, and it’s all of our faults. As your next Mayor, I will own it and be responsible.”
Similarly, Lurie lamented that middle school students are afraid during their morning bus ride on Muni, and suggested extending San Francisco’s Community Ambassadors Program to Muni buses. Lurie also described a recent incident of shoplifting at a Walgreens, and elderly Chinatown residents who are scared to leave their homes. He said more cops should be walking the beat in every neighborhood.
Lurie’s stepfather was Peter Haas, who was a descendant of Levi Strauss and also served as CEO of Levi’s for 29 years until his death in 2005. (Incidentally, Berkeley’s business school is named after Peter’s father following a gift from the Haas family.) Lurie founded a nonprofit, Tipping Point Community, in 2005, which raises and donates money ($31M in 2022) towards housing, homelessness, education, and other charitable causes in the Bay Area.
In his questions, Eskenazi contrasted this privileged upbringing with incumbent Mayor London Breed’s roots growing up in public housing. Lurie responded that he was proud of his stepfather and Levi Strauss, but that he’s made choices throughout his life to serve people and provide others opportunities, and that he’s proud to run on that record.
Lurie was particularly proud of one project by Tipping Point: a $377,000/unit, 146-unit Supportive Housing project at 833 Bryant St, which was completed in around 3 years (The land was acquired in 10/2018 and opened its doors in 12/2021). Lurie was proud that the project was completed much faster than average and for half the per-unit budget of similar projects, data that are confirmed by this Berkeley Terner Center study.
The 833 Bryant project was built with modular housing, manufactured in a Vallejo factory, rather than on-site. In a 2021 S.F. Chronicle article, Heather Knight wrote about the project, with a revealing suite of quotes from elected officials. “Supervisor Ahsha Safaí [who is also currently running for Mayor] said he wouldn’t support another modular project unless it includes jobs for San Francisco unions,” the article writes, and other supervisors were similarly critical. Mayor Breed was “open to more modular projects.”
Lurie was sometimes clumsy in responding to veteran reporter Joe Eskenazi’s sharp questioning. When Lurie criticized the Mayor for defunding the police, cutting $120M from the budget, Eskenazi interjected that police funding had since been restored and was now higher than ever. Lurie criticized ineffective government departments, and alluded to replacing some department heads, and Eskenazi pressed him several times on who exactly he intended to fire. After a bit of awkwardness, Lurie said “we’ll start with the mayor, and uhh, that’s how I’m going to answer that question.”
In demeanor, Lurie was neither particularly charismatic nor delightfully wonky: there would often be a palpable shift when the tracks of a rehearsed line or talking point ended and the rest of the response stumbled.
Lurie promised to hire a transition team of 5-10 people, announced before the election, that will join him in interviews of every department head and “hold people accountable” to improve the functioning of the bureaucracy. Lurie had some high-level prescriptions to improve government effectiveness: appoint a “downtown czar” and “small business czar,” reduce the number of commissions, and ensure each working group has an accountable leader. Lurie announced his campaign one month ago on September 26, so it’s fair to expect more details as the campaign continues, but for now, Lurie was mostly light on policy specifics. His campaign website, similarly, only includes a high-level description of his platform.
So far, only Mayor Breed, Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, and Lurie, all moderates, have declared their candidacy; with the election still more than a year away, more candidates may enter the race. Prediction markets for the race are not heavily-traded (reliability generally increases with number of traders), but it’s reasonable to consider Breed, the incumbent, the front runner.