SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The San Francisco Chronicle announced it has endorsed Daniel Lurie for Mayor, noting the sole endorsement comes 21 days before the election as voters complete their ballots.
The Chronicle added that the “endorsement of a non-incumbent candidate without decades of experience at City Hall is a first in our recent history” for the city’s flagship daily publication.
The Chronicle noted, “Lurie offers a welcome balance of compassion and toughness,” arguing, on homelessness, “Lurie is the only candidate to have fully identified the correct model to pursue,” and that his promise to take responsibility and accountability when things go wrong “isn’t something we heard from other candidates.”
The Chronicle also made it clear why they won’t endorse 10 years of Mayor London Breed, stating, “there’s no doubt the small things suffered under (Breed’s) watch — perhaps most noticeably our empirically filthy streets, quantified as such by a Controller’s Office report last year.
“COVID can only be blamed so much here. When Breed’s attention is focused, things get done — as she demonstrated by cleaning the city up for last year’s APEC convention. When it’s not, they don’t.
“These lapses happen with Breed on big things, too — most damningly her waffling approach to fentanyl overdoses and getting caught flat footed on the demolition of the city’s tax base with the advent of work-from-home and the collapse of the downtown commercial real estate market.”
The Chronicle noted that during his endorsement interview, Lurie was both passionate and stated the right things on key issues. Lurie promised to be aggressive on housing as well as cutting red tape on development and small business.
According to the Chronicle, Lurie also pledged to stay on top of his department’s heads over quality-of-life issues in the city.
According to the Chronicle, it won’t endorse another term for the incumbent, concluding “when news recently broke about outrageous mismanagement within her signature Dream Keeper initiative — a $120 million effort to revive San Francisco’s Black community — it solidified our concerns for the next four years under a mayor whose attention and eye for detail isn’t what she promised it would be.”
The Chronicle editorial reads, “S.F. needs change Lurie can bring,” and adds “if residents of this city want better than fine, they’ll have to take a leap of faith … if you genuinely think San Francisco would benefit from a change, as we do, then Lurie is a risk worth taking.”
The Chronicle also noted, regarding mayoral candidate and venture capitalist Mark Farrell, that he “can’t seem to go a week without a new scandal over his questionable campaign finances, including ‘forgetting’ to disclose he owes $675,000 to a prominent San Francisco family.”
The newspaper added, “If Breed suffers from inattention to detail, it’s difficult to envision any improvement under an experienced politician who has struggled throughout his career to run a clean campaign. Moreover, put Farrell’s biggest ideas to the test and few hold water.”
