San Francisco mayor-elect promises worried resident that he'll clean up city, address homelessness crisis
San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie promised a worried resident that he would clean up the streets ahead of his tenure, after a mayoral election centered around the city's homelessness, crime and drug overdose problems.
"Clean up the streets and the homeless, please," a woman told Lurie during a walking tour of the city, according to the Wall Street Journal. Lurie responded, "We're going to."
Lurie, a first-time candidate, Levi Strauss heir and founder of an anti-poverty nonprofit, said on the campaign trail that "it is time to end the perception that lawlessness is an acceptable part of life in San Francisco." Lurie beat incumbent Mayor London Breed in November.
"We are the greatest city in the world when we are at our best," Lurie said on the walk, according to the WSJ. "If I had to place my bet on a city that is going to come back stronger and better than ever, it is our city."
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The mayor-elect said he wanted to run for mayor because he had a hard time explaining San Francisco's decline to his children, according to the WSJ.
"I just couldn’t stand by… This is our city. I love it with all my being," he said.
Lurie plans to declare a state of emergency over the fentanyl crisis, replenish San Francisco's police force, and get his employees at City Hall to return to in-person work full-time, according to the WSJ.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was named as the chair of Lurie's transition team, and Lurie named Ned Segal, the former Chief Financial Officer of Twitter, to a newly created post, the chief of housing and economic development.
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After Lurie's 10-point victory over Breed, he told CNN that he wanted to get back to common-sense policies.
"I am a lifelong Democrat, but we don‘t think of ourselves as progressives or moderates or conservatives here in San Francisco," Lurie said. "We just want to get back to common sense. We have to deliver the basics, and that‘s my plan. That‘s the mandate that I was elected to fulfill."
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"We have to make sure that we have a fully staffed police department. We have to get our behavioral health and drug crisis under control in our city," he added. "We need to make sure our small businesses can thrive. Our big businesses need to be coming back to San Francisco. We need to be open for business again. I don‘t believe that that‘s a rightward swing. That‘s a common sense approach."