Can Daniel (Lurie) Be Like Mike (Bloomberg)?
Editor-at-large
The San Francisco Standard
Published Nov. 18, 2024 • 6:00am
https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2024/11/18/could-daniel-lurie-be-sfs-michael-bloomberg/
The last time there was a political earthquake of the magnitude we just witnessed within San Francisco’s City Hall, Daniel Lurie was an 18-year-old recent graduate of University High School. That was way back in 1995, when Willie Brown beat the incumbent Mayor Frank Jordan, ushering in a bold new regime to run the city. The next three elected mayors — Gavin Newsom, Ed Lee, and London Breed — were all appointees or protégés of Brown, effectively representing an uninterrupted run of Willie’s World.
This nearly 30-year political epoch has left the so-called City Family unprepared for the election of Lurie, who ran explicitly against several of its own. Most current department heads and staffers have neither the playbook nor muscle memory of how to function outside of the patronage army that Brown built.
To put it another way: This is the first administration in a generation that owes Brown and the rest of San Francisco’s political firmament precisely nothing. (A while back, I heard that when Lurie asked Brown for campaign advice, the wily politician dismissively responded that the philanthropist should “get a job.”)
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