by Randy Shaw on March 30, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)
San Francisco Already Has A Strong Mayor
Willie Brown brought great times to San Francisco during his 1996-2003 stint as mayor. Nobody suggested Brown lacked sufficient power. Yet many of San Francisco’s current political leaders and major campaign donors claim the city’s mayor is too weak. Their narrative says solving the city’s top problems requires charter reform to strengthen the mayor.
Willie Brown’s legacy says otherwise. As Brown celebrated his 92nd birthday last week, city leaders should understand how he powerfully flexed mayoral power. The charter was not an obstacle.
Promoting the Weak Mayor Myth
Mayor London Breed and the city’s moderates promoted a fiction that a nonexistent progressive Board majority blocked effective city governance. Some of her worst decisions, like spending $22 million on the “Linkage Center,” are still blamed on progressives. Facts have not gotten in the way of this argument.
In November 2024 voters elected Daniel Lurie, another moderate. Lurie soon renewed Breed’s focus on expanding mayoral power. The mayor has pursued this despite the Board largely accepting his agenda.
For example, Lurie wants commissioners to serve at will. This means that a commissioner who votes differently from what the mayor wants can be immediately removed. This “reform” reduces the once powerful role of Planning Commissioner to a mere rubber stamp for the mayor.
Lurie is also trying to make it harder for activists and supervisors to qualify ballot measures. While this “reform” also limits the mayor’s power to unilaterally put measures on the ballot, mayors have no trouble raising the funds to qualify via signature gathering (which Lurie is doing).
Ballot initiatives empower forces outside the mayor’s control. They have also been the leading force for preventing tenant displacement and keeping low-income and working class residents in San Francisco.
Brown Flexed Ample Power
I never heard anyone claim that Willie Brown was hamstrung by the city charter. In fact, anyone arguing that Mayor Brown needed more power would have been laughed out of the room.
Brown knew how to use power. I was conversing with Brown in the notorious New Yorker story where he stated that supervisors were like “mistresses that you have to service.” Here’s our exchange from the October 14, 1996 The New Yorker:
“But a little later Shaw plaintively insisted that one supervisor ‘has told us she’ll vote for this whenever it comes up.’”
Brown responded, again in almost a sigh, “Randy, come to the real world. It’s been a long time, I’m sure, since you’ve had anybody of my ilk stand before you and say, ‘Let’s get the results. Let’s cut out the posturing.’”
But Shaw persisted: “’There’s been a dramatic increase of move-in evictions, landlords wanting to get in under the wire. A lot of seniors have lost their homes. And, the longer you delay, the more human suffering has occurred. Now, you can say you know the big picture, you’re on top of it. . . . But we don’t know how the votes after the election—”
“I’m tellin’ you,” Brown fairly bawled, “I can produce six votes on that board any day of the week. For anything. . . . But I have to do it when I think it’s wise to do it!” He had begun whacking the edge of his hand on the table. “I have to do it when I can do it a second time. This is not a gas station in the desert! This is not Dick Morris dealing with a two-hundred-dollar hooker! These are long-term relationships. These are mistresses that you have to service.”
Despite the above, by the end of his first term Brown secured the most far-reaching tenant protection legislation the Board ever passed. After a difficult start I became a big fan of Brown’s. I sometimes disagreed with him but no mayor got things done like Willie Brown.
Brown operated under the same rules as his predecessors and successors.
Willie Brown understood that building power requires building relationships. His thirty plus years in politics prior to becoming mayor taught him that taking care of constituents and stakeholders led them to take care of you. He didn’t need a charter amendment to implement his agenda.
Mayor Ed Lee, who saw Brown as a model, also understood how to get things done. He also accomplished big things under the current city charter. Mayor London Breed was more interested in combating the Board than on working together for results.
Daniel Lurie is new to politics. He doesn’t need charter reform to adopt Willie Brown’s getting things done playbook.
San Francisco’s Unusually Strong Mayor
San Francisco likely has the strongest mayor of any major city. New York City and Boston’s mayors are limited by state preemption. Los Angeles’s mayor has to compete with the county Board of Supervisors. Chicago, home of the original Mayor Daley, is the only major city whose mayoral power comes close to San Francisco. But Chicago’s mayor does not represent surrounding Cook County. And Mayor Richard J. Daley’s machine politics is hardly a model for good government
So let’s stop making believe that San Francisco has a 33% downtown vacancy rate because the charter prevents the mayor from reducing it. Or that banks aren’t financing new housing because our mayor is too weak. Or that a too fragile mayor prevents closing open air drug markets.
Reforming the charter solves none of San Francisco’s chief problems. This focus instead diverts attention from available solutions and strategies and becomes an excuse for inaction.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.
