Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie is now in office, and the political jean machine is cranking into high gear.
He took his oath Wednesday in front of a sea of supporters hopeful to see him bring his bevy of campaign promises to reality: a revived downtown, city services that work, an end to the fentanyl crisis.
One promise is already baked into his administration.
On the campaign trail, Lurie repeatedly, fervently described a new mayor’s office in which “insiders” would lose their toehold under City Hall’s gold-trimmed dome.
“Cast thee out!” he essentially said. And lo, San Francisco will see a symbolic end to one insider’s reign over City Hall.
For the first time since Willie Brown left office, San Francisco has a mayor whose political lineage does not descend from him — not as a protégé, an appointee, or even a distant cousin.
Before Lurie, every mayor since Brown left office in 2004 could trace his or her political career back to Da Mayor (or, to his friends, the Ayatollah of the Assembly). Brown first appointed Gavin Newsom to the Parking and Traffic Commission, then to the Board of Supervisors; he also promoted the late Ed Lee in city government roles twice and later helped the late community organizer Rose Pak drum Lee into office. Mayor London Breed, early in her career, worked as an intern for Brown before joining his reelection campaign.
Lurie is a new breed.
Brown did not appoint Lurie to any government body. He did not promote him within the halls of city government. Lurie didn’t even show up for Brown’s famous Election Day luncheon at John’s Grill.
No insider speaking to The Standard imagines that Brown, perhaps California’s most cunning and powerful living politician, will ever lack access to City Hall. Lurie during his campaign sat down for a meeting with Brown at least once; the new mayor has appeared publicly alongside Brown multiple times and even gave him special recognition on inauguration day.
As someone close to Brown said: “If you think he’s going to be on the outside, you’re wrong.”
Instead, the exodus of Brown’s political progeny is better viewed as the end of a certain style of political thought. To Brown, downtown was king, and the neighborhood-focused Board of Supervisors were “mistresses you have to service” through political acts, and favors always begat favors.
In the Assembly, Brown was credited with aiding the Chinese community by expanding who could perform acupuncture in California and for passing a bill to reform a state anti-gay law, aiding two oft-overlooked communities among his myriad accomplishments.
But when he came to San Francisco, Brown sought to aid a whole different set of interests: those of downtown. To turbocharge the area’s economic engine, Brown needed political juice — and money.
Enter the patronage system.
A San Francisco Chronicle investigation during his second term titled “Willie Inc.” offered a comprehensive look at how Brown achieved his goals. He hired roughly 350 people, including former campaign allies, for “special assistant” jobs concocted largely out of thin air; all “owe their jobs” to Brown. This allegedly helped business interests close to the mayor net hundreds of millions of dollars in development deals and city contracts.
Some of Brown’s hires allegedly repaid political debts. Former Assemblymembers Paul Horcher and Brian Setencich stuck their necks out for Brown politically, and Brown later hired the pair for City Hall gigs.
Brown has long taken care of the staffers who serve him well, former Supervisor Aaron Peskin said.
“Willie Brown not only demanded loyalty, he gave loyalty in return,” Peskin said.
That extends to former staffers who had brushes with the law, like Zula Jones, a Human Rights Commission staffer who twice faced charges for ethical breaches: in 2000 and again in 2016. The first charges were dropped after an error in her arrest emerged; the second ended in a plea deal.
Now out of government work, Jones was in the VIP section at Brown’s 2024 Election Day luncheon — the one Lurie skipped as he campaigned against corruption.
Brown creatively navigated the law, exploiting its loopholes and oversights, like a political Claude Monet brushing an impressionist painting of city bureaucracy, shading the light toward his own purposes. Lincoln Mitchell, a teacher with the School of International Public Affairs at Columbia University, noted that Brown learned from Congressman Phil Burton, leveraging money, voting blocs, and political patrons to pull the levers of power.
“Willie Brown would use the political tools to stay one, two, three, steps ahead of everybody else in San Francisco and, ultimately, in California,” Mitchell said.
Brown never hid this. He’s proud of it.
During his first administration, Brown kicked contractors’ permits to the front of the line for approvals if they donated funds to paint City Hall’s dome a glittering gold.
“I got it done overnight,” Brown wrote in his Chronicle column a decade ago.
Perhaps that’s why Brown’s landmark achievements, ones he either started or played a key role in, could be measured by how they changed the city’s tangible assets: the development of Mission Bay and Treasure Island and the construction of the Central Subway and the Giant’s most recent ballpark.
No one could argue that those assets don’t benefit some communities. But the Central Subway’s construction was a prime opportunity for Brown political donor Ron Tutor, CEO of Tutor Perini, which saw its contract for the subway balloon to more than $1 billion.
And what was San Francisco’s end of the bargain?
While the subway arrived, it was four years late and at least $375 million over budget, pushed to the edge by bills for changes, water leaks, and a subcontractor who was later federally indicted for bid-rigging.
Giving Brown credit, Peskin said he firmly believes the former mayor wants what’s best for San Francisco. Peskin’s caveat is that Brown’s version of “best” sometimes coincides with what’s best for the well-heeled clients in his latest chapter, as an attorney and sometime-lobbyist.
The mayor’s office was steeped in that thinking for decades.
“Willie Brown did a lot of business with big business. And every successive mayor didn’t part from that. They were all very beholden to corporate interests,” Peskin said.
Newsom, Lee, and Breed all drew criticism during their mayoral careers over political patronage. Breed bore the brunt of it in her final days as mayor, when she appointed a supervisor who has ties to one of her political backers, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Former Supervisor Angela Alioto, a Lurie supporter and friend of Brown, believes an administration freed of Brown’s way of thinking may help revive San Francisco.
“For the city I love, it means a huge breath of fresh air,” Alioto said. “I believe [Lurie] is going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I absolutely believe that.”
Lurie has yet to write his chapter in city history, but one of his inauguration promises didn’t stray too far from Brown’s ideology: The new mayor intends to make it easier to solicit private money for government purposes. If he’s successful, Lurie could, for example, empower transit planners to beg billionaires to fund public bus lines.
On the surface, the plan smacks of the method Brown employed to gild City Hall’s dome using private funds. But it’s unclear if Lurie will also grant wealthy donors any public perks, cut red tape on their behalf, or otherwise give them a back scratch in exchange for one.
That might be the dividing line.
And as for Da Mayor? He’s not going anywhere.
The Standard asked Brown if the end of his dynasty in the mayor’s office showed his influence waning — perhaps a final chapter to the Chronicle’s investigation “Willie Inc.”
Brown answered in his characteristically flamboyant style.
“As long as I continue to breathe, there never will be a final chapter,” he said.