SAN FRANCISCO – For decades, the Bay Area has been celebrated — and sometimes derided — as a progressive beacon, a proud throwback to the values of the hippie era with its embrace of love and tolerance.
But in the Nov. 5 election, voters across the state made it clear that their sympathies were limited.
Spurred by growing frustration over property crime and homelessness — and a sense that San Francisco and Oakland have lost control of the city’s streets — Bay Area voters went to the polls last week, ousting the mayors of both cities and rejecting a number of left-wing candidates. And in a stunning rebuke to the region’s once successful criminal justice reform movement, a majority of voters in all nine Bay Area counties voted in favor of Proposition 36, a statewide ballot measure that would impose tougher penalties for theft and repeat crimes. including fentanyl.
In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed lost his bid for re-election in a race against four top Democrats, two of whom are Democrats. Voters instead chose a political outsider, wealthy philanthropist and Levi heir Daniel Lurie, who has promised to shut down open drug markets and make San Francisco less welcoming to the streets.
In the East Bay, voters recalled Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County Dist. He said. Pamela Price, two progressive leaders elected in 2022.
Both Breed and Thao emphasized in their bids to retain office that crime rates have dropped in their cities in recent months, and asked for more time to make changes. But they couldn’t shake the widespread perception among store owners and residents that the current crop of city and county leaders lacked strong responses to the region’s ongoing struggles with homelessness, street crime and a sluggish economy that hasn’t yet recovered from COVID. -19 disease.
“People are tired of feeling like government can’t solve the most difficult problems,” said Keally McBride, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. “It’s really about the frustration of not doing well.”
The shift to the right was bankrolled on both sides of the Bay by technocrats and wealthy investors newly involved in local politics. In San Francisco, tech executives have poured millions of dollars into local multi-race campaigns, working systematically to elect centrist candidates against progressive incumbents.
Oakland’s recall against Thao, on the other hand, was largely funded by hedge fund executive Philip Dreyfuss, who lives in Piedmont, a beautiful city surrounded by Oakland’s borders.
The tech industry has become more involved in Bay Area politics as many executives and their employees put down roots. They see their vast wealth as a vehicle to infuse local governance — including the mayor’s office, county boards of supervisors, city councils and school boards — with greater leverage.
Their efforts began in earnest in 2022, when a crop of political parties funded by the tech industry supported a recall election for former San Francisco Dist. He said. Chesa Boudin and three school board members. Boudin was accused of focusing more on reforming the criminal justice system than prosecuting crimes; while school leaders were blasted for keeping classrooms closed during the COVID emergency for months longer than many other districts in the nation.
Breed, the first black woman elected mayor of San Francisco, took office in 2018 in a special election following the unexpected death of Mayor Ed Lee. He was hailed as a hero when he took bold steps to lock down the city in the early days of COVID.
But he lost political power as property and shoplifting increased and homeless and homeless camps sprang up beyond the city limits and in every corner of the city.
In the past year, Breed has taken positive action on those issues, successfully pushing two ballot measures that strengthened police surveillance powers and required drug testing and treatment for people receiving state welfare benefits suspected of using illegal drugs. Since August, he has overseen an aggressive campaign to remove the large tents.
But he failed to convince voters that he was the change the city needed to get back on track.
Breed won 24.3% of the first-choice vote in the city’s election process, which allows voters to choose multiple candidates of their choice, compared to Lurie’s 26.7%, as counted Monday evening. When the race was called on Thursday, Lurie had won the most votes with 56% of the electoral vote compared to Breed’s 44%.
“We will declare a fentanyl emergency on Day 1 of our administration,” Lurie promised during a Friday news conference. “We will strengthen our hand against those who sell drugs. And we will be compassionate, but tough, about our road conditions. ”
Lurie, 47, was born in San Francisco, the son of a rabbi. His parents separated when he was young. His mother, Miriam Haas, went on to marry billionaire businessman Peter Haas, grandson of Levi Strauss, and a longtime executive at the denim company Strauss founded. Peter Haas died in 2005, and Lurie and his mother are among the main heirs to the Strauss family fortune.
Philanthropist Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, has emphasized his status as an outsider to City Hall in his bid to become San Francisco’s next mayor.
(Stephen Lam / Associated Press)
Lurie is the founder of Tipping Point, a San Francisco nonprofit that funds efforts to lift people out of poverty. He has never taken the reins of an election, and his status as a political outsider resonated with voters tired of politics as usual.
Lurie said he believes the election results speak to a hunger for accountability. “They want change, just common sense,” he said.
Lurie may face less conflict than Breed in getting the county’s powerful Board of Supervisors to support his agenda. Tuesday’s election added at least two top Democrats to the 11-member board, which has long held a progressive majority.
In the East Bay, about 62% of Oakland voters supported recalling Thao, the city’s first Hmong Mayor, and 64% voted to recall Price, Alameda County’s first district attorney.
Thao won re-election two years ago by less than 700 votes against a more moderate Democrat. He took office amid a post-pandemic crime wave and recession that he said made his first two years difficult.
But his opponents had little patience for any missteps — and Thao made quite a few.
His critics criticized him for firing the newly appointed police chief, leaving a leadership vacancy in the Department for a year as the city has experienced violence. The impending budget deficit and departure of the Oakland A’s baseball team didn’t help.
In June, the FBI raided Thao’s home just in time for the election. The home of the head of a garbage disposal company that has contracts with the city and has campaigned for Thao and other elected officials was attacked on the same day. Thao said he was told he was not a target in the investigation, and the FBI has not said anything about what led to the raid.
The campaign to recall Thao accused him of “lacking the strength, judgment and ability to lead what was once America’s greatest city.”
Thao dismissed that criticism, particularly in an open letter to Dreyfuss, a hedge fund manager, accusing him of “trying to buy our city government.” In a statement Friday night conceding his defeat, Thao cited recent statistics showing that crime in Oakland is on the decline and his administration’s approval of 1,500 units of affordable housing.
A former civil rights attorney, Price was elected two years ago after vowing to bring criminal justice reform to the prosecutor’s office. He focused on alternatives to arrest and promised to prosecute police misconduct.
“Price’s recall should be viewed as part of a broader strategy by law enforcement in California and across the country to roll back criminal justice reforms aimed at disrupting the cycle of mass incarceration of Black and Brown people,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which opposed the recall, said Friday.
But Seneca Scott, spokeswoman for the recall campaign against Thao, said voter frustration sweeping the Bay Area should be blamed on local leaders who prioritize progressive politics over a functioning community.
“The developers in Oakland did the same thing they did in San Francisco. They ignore crime. They didn’t pay attention to the poverty,” said Scott. “They need to do some investigation.”
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