by JOE ESKENAZI NOVEMBER 7, 2024 (MissionLocal.org)
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When the next round of ballots are processed at 4 p.m. today, it is widely expected that Daniel Lurie’s path to mayor will move from probable to something more closely resembling a mathematical certainty. Expect his challengers to gracefully acknowledge this.
Lurie’s plan to win the race appears to have worked out as devised: Copious amounts of ready money — more than $16 million — drowning out less-blessed candidates and highly competent behind-the-scenes hired lieutenants directing a deeply disciplined candidate who never once succumbed to the temptation to go off-message. The old Yiddish proverb is that a wise man knows what he says, and a fool says what he knows. Lurie has proven wise, by this measure.
So, that was the plan to get elected. But, come January, he’ll need a new plan: A plan to govern.
At this point, perhaps the most relevant input comes from former heavyweight champion, videogame protagonist, convicted rapist and notable Donald Trump supporter Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the mouth.”
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For any would-be San Francisco mayor, Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency was a punch in the mouth. Being mayor of San Francisco is difficult even in the best of times (if you’re doing it right). These are not the best of times — and, with an erratic, malevolent adversary in the White House, the mayor of San Francisco will be facing vast new challenges.
Trump, as so many Americans have either forgotten or resigned themselves to, is exhausting. And that’s all the more so when you’re living in (or leading) a deep blue city that stands in as the avatar of liberal misrule.
Do you remember President Trump threatening to sic the Environmental Protection Agency on San Francisco in 2019 after a nonsensical off-the-cuff remark that homeless people’s dung and drug detritus were befouling the water? Well, he did that.
In the end, the EPA obliged our commander-in-chief, and the city was sent a memo — which, essentially, was flushed down the toilet and disgorged into the bay along with all the rest of the worthless crap. Don’t get me wrong: This is all disturbing. The EPA isn’t supposed to spring into action like a trained Dobermann after the president makes an offhand remark or sends out a petulant tweet. But, by and large, this was a minor, passing story.
But, for the mayor of this city it sows an ecosystem of chaos — again, on top of an already challenging job with terrible burdens in store for 2025. The challenge for any mayor is addressing these outbursts, which must be addressed, and never knowing how far they may escalate. Normal judgments about logic and typical government or human behavior do not apply; Trump behaves less like a president serving the people than a warlord who must be appeased.
Make no mistake: It’s in Trump’s interest to play to his base via performative cruelty to cities like San Francisco. If the cruelty goes beyond mere words and actually harms government and results in pain and suffering, all the better. All the more examples of “Democrat-run cities” devolving into chaos.
So, that’s the new baseline. But, like a malevolent Cat in the Hat, that is not all.
Oh no, that is not all.
“It’s pretty clear that the city is in the bullseye for Trump,” Stanford University political science professor Bruce Cain told Mission Local’s Xueer Lu on Wednesday. The long arm of the federal government could come proactively — federal agents roaming courtrooms and arresting undocumented people, National Guard troops dispatched to deal with dope fiends in the Tenderloin.
Or, it could come via a curtailment of federal dollars, tied to any number of real or perceived grievances: Sanctuary city, drug policies, a sad lack of venues selling Diet Mountain Dew, etc.
If Trump decides he wants to crater San Francisco’s budget, then that’s going to happen. The city could be left in the lurch on pending (promised) reimbursements for Covid-19 hotels. Federal money makes up a vast portion of our hospital and healthcare budgets.
Remember the crisis at Laguna Honda Hospital in 2022? It required serious intervention from San Francisco officials, working in concert with our federal elected representatives, to reverse the nightmare scenario of the city’s most vulnerable residents being shunted off to parts unknown or put onto the street (among residents who were sent elsewhere, the fatality rate was significant; this was a life-or-death issue).
It’s hard to conceive of this sort of effort being successful under a Trump presidency. The well-being of San Francisco institutions does not appear to be a concern. Quite the opposite: Any induced hardship can only reinforce the right-wing talking point of misrule and misery in deep blue cities. And not just San Francisco: Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass is up for re-election next year, and the backdrop of filth and crime and squalor will surely be in heavy rotation for Rick Caruso or any other right-wing challenger.
Handling this manner of belligerence would be a challenge even for a seasoned politician. Cain, the Stanford political scientist, says that our next mayor will “have to have back channels and seek out influential people.” It remains to be seen if Lurie’s heavy MAGA donors and influential friends and colleagues may be able to put in a good word for us. It was hard to miss Marc Benioff, San Francisco’s largest private employer, kissing Trump’s ring via a sycophantic congratulatory tweet (complete with a misplaced capital letter a la Trump).
Trump has made no bones about threatening to withhold emergency funds from states that did not vote for him, or attaching ideological asks to non-ideological funding. Tribute is necessary for what should be a baseline obligation of the job, and nobody ever said there isn’t good money in running a kleptocracy. So it’s unclear if gestures like Benioff’s are strategic or, rather, a mask-off moment. Functionally, it may be a difference without a distinction. But it’s presumptive mayor-elect Lurie’s new reality, and it’s a depressing and challenging one.
Just who will form Lurie’s inner circle is not yet clear, though we are assured it will be the best and the brightest. This was also a term David Halberstam deployed, sardonically, to describe the gifted leaders who led us into disaster in Vietnam. San Francisco’s problems are not on the level of an international quagmire, but let us hope this iteration of the best and the brightest have better luck.
They’ll need it: Our next mayor must deal with the ongoing evaporation of the city’s downtown office tax base, a massive public transit fiscal cliff, a troubling city budget deficit and a state-mandated rezoning effort due to hit in January. Also: The public school system’s budget will go public next week, and it won’t be pretty. That’s a full plate, without the specter of Trump tweeting out malefactions and obeisant government hands following up on them.
Coping with Trump will be a burden for our next mayor. And it also puts presumptive mayor-elect Lurie in a delicate situation: Any perceptions that he’s too accommodating to the feds — or handling their threats ineffectively — opens him up to agitation and challenges from put-upon communities within the city. There is, undoubtedly, the opportunity for ambitious politicians or political figures here to gain power and relevance by aligning themselves against both the mayor and the federal government.
The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation; that Lurie is a nice man and a decent person seems inarguable. He is very clear that he’ll sit down with anybody and talk out this city’s problems. He listens. He is smart and he works hard. That’s good: But what happens when it’s time to stop talking?
What is his plan after he’s been punched in the mouth?
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JOE ESKENAZI
Managing Editor/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.
“Your humble narrator” was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.
He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.
The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi
