In seven weeks, Daniel Lurie will be sworn in as San Francisco’s 46th mayor. He won by relying on the now all-too-familiar playbook of blaming insider politics for the city’s persistent problems of crime, drug abuse and homelessness. In the final months of the campaign, after spending $9 million of his own money, Lurie hammered home an anti-corruption message, portraying himself as the agent of change who could bring accountability to the entrenched bureaucracy.
He sold himself as a man on “the side of San Franciscans over insiders,” according to a memo written by his PR team after the election, titled “How We Won.” His campaign “took on the full weight of the City Hall machine,” the memo said, winning without the support of the Democratic Party, Democratic clubs, organized labor, or many elected officials.
Now that he’s headed to City Hall, much has been made of political outsiders on Lurie’s transition team (who can ever get enough about OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman?). But a closer look shows that the group is primarily made up of longtime members of San Francisco’s political class — hardly the mavericks one might expect from a politician who won with ‘drain the swamp’-style messaging. It’s an indication that, as Lurie moves from election to inauguration, he believes he needs the experience of people who know how to pull City Hall’s political levers.
Some disagree entirely with the ‘outsider’ claims.
“He actually is an insider! Albeit an inexperienced one,” Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin wrote in a text to Gazetteer SF.
Peskin, who ran against Lurie for mayor and placed third behind London Breed, wrote that the mayor-elect spent much of the campaign talking about how he’d worked with several mayors and government agencies through his nonprofit, Tipping Point Community, which funds programs to address homelessness and poverty. Lurie’s wife, Peskin pointed out, was an aide to former Mayor Gavin Newsom — a "consummate political insider," as the San Francisco Chronicle put it.
Ned Segal, co-chair of Lurie’s campaign, and a former chief financial officer at Twitter, might be considered another political outsider on the transition team. But there are several clear political insiders on the team, including Joanne Hayes-White, who was chief of the San Francisco Fire Department for fifteen years; Mission Asset Fund’s founding Chief Executive Office José A. Quiñonez, whose organization works in the neighborhood it’s named after to help low-income residents open bank accounts, build credit and get zero percent loans; and former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs.
Also on the list: Nancy Tung, former employee of the District Attorney’s office and current chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, one of the groups Lurie’s political memo says the campaign proudly sidestepped. Lurie’s naming her to his transition team is a nod to the Chinese-American vote critical to his win, according to Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. The same is true of Paul Yep, a former San Francisco Police Department commander, he said.
Lurie, in an emailed statement, told Gazetteer he’s “building a team rooted in accountability, service and change to tackle the city's historic challenges, and to do that I'm drawing on top talent both inside and outside city hall.”
McDaniel said that, through his transition team, Lurie “is signaling to people that he’s not going to be a major disrupter.” While San Franciscans voted for change, and for someone not ingrained in the political firmament, voters will still insist on proven, competent governance, McDaniel said.
“He ran a campaign that said, ‘Look, I have relationships, I’ve done things like the Super Bowl and the nonprofits, but I’m also an outsider,’” McDaniel said. “I think he’s signaling a lot with these hires, trying to walk that line.”
McDaniel is still analyzing the election, but said it’s clear that Lurie carved out a significant number of Chinese-American voters who have traditionally supported what he calls the “Willie Brown coalition,” a voting bloc of liberals, many of them homeowners, who supported mayors Brown, Newsom, and Ed Lee, as well as Breed’s first term, according to McDaniel.
“Geographically, looking at where the votes were coming from, and knowing what I know about the voting patterns in the city, it’s very clear that he did very well with Chinese voters, probably better than any candidate,” McDaniel said.
Ben Rosenfield, who is advising Lurie’s transition team, served as the city’s budget director for five years and as controller for 16 years. Picking Rosenfield is “a very big signal” that Lurie isn’t going to spurn political insiders, McDaniel said. To the contrary, he said, the pick shows Lurie places a lot of faith in technocratic experience, especially when it comes to what may be the hardest part of his new job — managing the budget.
Lurie may have pitched himself as an outsider, but in the aftermath of the election, “it doesn’t really matter what the spin is, or what I believe,” Peskin said in his text. “It worked, and now we’ll see how he does…I sincerely wish him the best, and am happy to give him my best (free) advice whenever he needs it.”
