April 17, 2025
For the political outsider Mayor, he’s kinda crushing it.
On a recent Tuesday, my brother and I took a nighttime stroll around NOPA, our neighborhood where we live in San Francisco. It was a night that met three relatively rare conditions:
- Neither of us had evening plans
- Neither of us had decided to go to the gym
- It was actually… kind of warm out
While walking in the Panhandle, we got lost in conversation, not realizing we’d subconsciously extended our loop all the way to Cole Valley. As we passed by the warm glow of Cole Valley Tavern, bustling with patrons at 9pm (“on a Tuesday?!,” we both said to each other), I turned to him and exclaimed, “The city feels good.”
Likely a coincidence but possibly cosmic intervention, I’d find myself bringing this good feeling from my walk into a week where I spent a lot of time talking about Mayor Daniel Lurie’s first 100 days. An aside: to say that I’m grateful I’ve been able to focus on local politics through this disturbing national context is an understatement.San Francisco seems to be heading in the right direction. Because Daniel Lurie is kind of crushing it.
The Mayor has had several accomplishments of significance, including the Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance, the new Family Zoning Plan, and an otherwise highly functional relationship with the Board of Supervisors - something his predecessor largely failed to achieve. So far, things seem really good.
No doubt, it can’t be overstated how critically important - and impressive - the functional relationship with the Supervisors and their teams is for Lurie. I’ve heard from multiple Supervisors and staffers that it’s not uncommon for this Mayor to simply “pop by” the Supervisor’s offices, which has not been a norm for previous mayors. But Lurie doesn’t stop by to talk to the Supervisors: rather, he comes to talk to the staffers. This is seemingly in line with Daniel Lurie’s “good guy” persona he’s created. But it’s also a brilliant strategy move: the staffers write the legislation that Supervisors put forth. A functional relationship with a Supervisor’s office staff is almost as important for the Mayor as is the relationship with the Supervisor themself. And it also helps the Mayor see around corners, while also building influence he can use to privately spend what would otherwise be publicly spent political currency.
For a candidate who everyone knocked as being the “new guy with no experience,” that’s a pretty savvy way to do the job. Institutional knowledge can be transferred from one mayor or administration to the next; political acumen cannot.
Yet, part of the brilliance is also in how the Mayor has known which institutions to alter, and which to leave in place (for now). For example, the Mayor quietly reached an agreement with the union that represents city employees to delay the return-to-office mandate. Sure, a somewhat embarrassing political loss for a Mayor that talked tough on return-to-work mandates and has said they are part of his downtown recovery strategy. But negotiating behind closed doors is nowhere near as bruising as a public battle with a union, let alone the one that represents the very bureaucrats who he is asking to majorly tighten their belts in light of a structural budget deficit. The only thing worse than losing in public is doing so while spending exorbitant amounts of political capital - something the Mayor can’t afford to do right now. The Mayor must maintain control over the Departments if he wants to control the budget. And a fight with the union is a potentially losing, bruising, and costly political situation the Mayor needs to avoid.
But to anyone who asked, “Does Daniel Lurie know what he’s doing?,” so far, the answer seems to be an overwhelming, “yes, he does.”
The knife fights are on the horizon, though. The budget process is going to be brutal and politically expensive. The fallout from Prop K (creating the park at Ocean Beach) could destroy any sense of consensus on the Board of Supervisors, thus complicating the Mayor’s ability to govern. And, there are still some big campaign promises made that haven’t yet been addressed, like the 1,500 shelter beds the Mayor committed to bringing online in his first six months. But for a start, it’s been a strong one. And we should all be grateful that, in the face of a national circumstance emboldened, in part, by some of the past failures of our own city, for the first time in a while, things seem to be on the up and up in San Francisco.
Scotty Jacobs is the Director of Blueprint for a Better San Francisco, a project of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco. A fourth-generation resident of San Francisco, Scotty became involved in local politics after seeing how radical ideology was leading the city he loves down a damaging and dangerous path. As the leader of Blueprint, Scotty works with a community of nearly one-in-eight San Franciscans all focused on pragmatism and results in City Hall. A version of this article was first posted on Scotty’s Substack, Out of Left Field. For more from Scotty, follow him on Instagram at @scottyjacobs.
