Live: Mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie with Joe Eskenazi at Manny’s

Eskenazi recounts the final audience question: Lurie’s life background is very different than most, being a millionaire heir. “How can you assure us you’re in touch with what everyday San Franciscan’s care about?”

Lurie: He is going to be out in the city, as he has been while campaigning. “I’m going to walk the streets, I’m going to walk with our police officers, with our nonprofit leaders, with those people in charge of picking up the trash. I’m going to be on the ground every single day.”

He says he will not sit in his office. “I will be on the ground every single day, and that’s my promise.”

One audience question: How will we make the streets safe for cyclists and pedestrians?

Lurie: I like the idea of trying different things but we need a citywide plan. We need Muni to work. “I believe that mobility equals freedom.”

One audience question: What is your favorite Muni line?

Lurie: He largely drives, sometimes bikes, but the kids use Muni — though he doesn’t give a favorite line.

One audience question: What would you do about the situation of the 24th Street BART plaza?

Lurie: Of both 16th Street and 24th Street BART plazas, he says he thinks for the sake of the small businesses on our corridors, we need to stop the street vending.

“We need to close those.”

To end his questions before turning to the audience, Eskenazi asks for Lurie’s vision for San Francisco.

“Without the leadership this city desperately needs, we risk losing it,” Lurie says, but calls San Francisco a diverse and cultural mecca, pointing to the jazz playing outside.

He says of those who have moved to Miami or Austin: “They have to realize they’re living in Florida and they’re living in Texas. We’re living in the greatest state of the country. We’re suffering right now, but we’ll come back.”

Eskenazi asks if Lurie hasn’t fallen into a trap by running against Breed and forcing her to the right.

Lurie says journalists are always trying to put him on a political spectrum: “Every reporter wants to put me in a bucket, they want to put me in the left or the right. Everyone in this room is tired of that. Just clean the streets…they don’t care about progressives or moderates.”

Eskenazi: “When have we ever had control of our streets?”

Lurie: There’s a level of disorder that we have not seen in San Francisco. Open air drug use is spreading out into neighborhoods where there previously hasn’t been that kind of activity. He points to examples nearby in the Mission, that are close to schools. We need to sort that out first, he says.

There is a loud jazz band playing outside, drowning out some of Lurie and Eskenazi’s words. Attendees ask both to speak up.

“Hows’ the music back there?” Lurie asks, to some laughs.

On drug users, Lurie says: “Sometimes you need to force people into treatment,” saying fentanyl is fundamentally different than other drugs. “I understand the civil rights issues and the civil liberties issues, but we have to try a different approach.”

“Not safe consumption sites?” asks Eskenazi.

Right now, Lurie says, he wants a “continuum of care” including more treatment beds and harm reduction, while shutting down drug markets. But is open to having a conversation on safe injection sites after street dealing is handled.

“You’re open to it?” asks Eskenazi.

“Yes, but not right now. I want to get control of our streets,” Lurie says.

People say “You don’t have the insight or the knowledge,” says Lurie. But he points out that the current mayor has all the insight and knowledge — having previously sat at the head of the Board of Supervisors. “Where did that get us?” he says.

Eskenazi: “Do you buy into the thesis circulating now that the mayor isn’t strong enough now?”

Lurie: “No.” He points to the fact that the mayor has appointed the DA, commissioners, and controls a multi-billion dollar budget.

Mayors “always complain,” he says, but “they don’t make their whole political being about ‘Get me a new Board of Supervisors.'”

Lurie says he has spoken to elders in the Sunset who are scared of leaving their homes and others who are scared of Muni. He says community ambassadors on Muni may be necessary.

“We have three patrol cars in the Richmond,” says Lurie, an area where there are some 100,000 residents. He says we need more police presence, especially in neighborhoods like the Richmond and Sunset. “But to be clear, not every situation calls for someone with a badge and a gun.”

“Right now, criminals don’t think they’re going to get caught,” says Lurie.

Lurie repeats a criticism from DA Brooke Jenkins and Mayor Breed blaming judges for releasing accused drug dealers and others. “Our judges are not holding them accountable.”

Eskenazi asks if Lurie wants high-speed chases for petty thefts.

Lurie says not necessarily, but that a “visible police presence” would deter crime.

“We need a carrot and a stick.”

“Right now we have a mayor that’s politics not policy,” Lurie says, while adding that he wants expanded police staffing and foot patrols across neighborhoods.

“Everyone wants that!” an attendee shouts.

Eskenazi recounts Lurie’s criticisms of two ballot propositions from Breed — the first expanding police powers, the second drug testing welfare recipients. He asks: Why are these two bad policies?

Lurie doesn’t think the expanded police powers measure is necessarily bad policy, but he questioned her announcement as a campaign play. “If there are common sense ideas, I’m a supporter of common sense ideas…but I question the timing of that police bill.”

Lurie calls the second drug-testing measure also headline-chasing. “We need more recovery beds and treatment beds,” he says, saying that Breed’s own department heads have said they don’t have enough beds. “We don’t have the infrastructure.”

Eskenazi: “How many of San Francisco’s problems are new? Many of the things we’re seeing now are not new.”

Lurie: “The level of petty crime, the level of dysfunction, the level of smash and grabs, I do think it’s new,” he says, recounting an anecdote from a friend of a security guard throwing his hands up after a theft in a Walgreens.

“Have we gone through tough times before? Absolutely,” he says, adding that “we will get through this. San Francisco’s best days are ahead of it.”

Eskenazi: “Have you criticized the corruption of San Francisco government before the present day, in a public forum?”

Lurie: Working for a non-profit, we had to work closely with the city government. Any critiques and concerns we had were always quietly voiced, not in a public manner.

Eskenazi: “When was the last time we had a good mayor? And whom would you emulate?”

Lurie: He says mayors who “got stuff done” are his models, pointing to Willie Brown. “Whatever you think of him, he got stuff done.”

And then to Gavin Newsom for his early support of gay marriage.

“I know that they’re going after me, you just have to look out the window,” says Lurie, referencing the protesters outside.

Eskenazi asks: Are you prepared for this job?

Lurie: “My skin is getting thicker” being interviewed tonight, he says, to laughs.

Lurie says he is seeing larger crowds interested in his events even a year before the election: “People are hungry for change. They want leadership from the outside. I’ve never seen San Francisco more engaged, more fired up…that strengthens my resolve.”

Eskenazi says: In 2017 you pledged to cut san Francisco homelessness in half through Tipping Point. That didn’t happen. How are you going to do it this time?

Lurie: “I ask everybody to judge me based on the choices I have made.”

Lurie says: he has dedicated his career to public service: To providing opportunities for others.

At Tipping Point, we pledged to cut chronic homelessness over five years with a pledge of millions of dollars, says Lurie. He discusses several housing projects that were part of this.

A couple of protesters are holding signs outside Manny’s, one reading “Malibu Dan.” It is unclear who they are associated with.

But Lurie does make a side reference to Max Carter-Oberstone, saying there’s a “police commissioner” who the mayor appointed who is now going against her.

(Carter-Oberstone was appointed by the mayor but has frequently sparred with her.)

Carter-Oberstone stays unnamed, but Lurie uses him as an example of someone who wouldn’t “snow” him if he were mayor.

Eskenazi asks: Do you worry about being snowed by government officials, having never been in government before?

Lurie says he’s not worried about being snowed. He says he’s going to bring in a whole team of people, “who also have a track record of getting things done.” And everyone will know about who they are before election day.

Lurie says he will start by taking a hard look at the bureaucracy and governance, including taking a hard look at the department heads.

“Who are you gonna fire? Who are you gonna fire?” Eskenazi asks.

Lurie says he won’t say yet.

“There’s nobody you think who has been in government too long and has worn out their welcome?”

“I think there’s a number of people,” Lurie says, while audience members shout “Say it!” but Lurie declines.

Eskenazi asks: “What does systemic change even begin to look like?”

It looks like having someone in charge of overseeing small businesses, a “small business czar.”

“And a downtown czar,” looking to revitalize the area, said Lurie.

Lurie: “I believe we need change at all levels.”

Eskenazi asks: Why are you the one to bring change? “This is not an intuitive choice,” alluding to Lurie’s status as the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Lurie: “To you it’s not intuitive,” he says, to laughs, pointing to his resume as the founder of homelessness nonprofit Tipping Point and his accomplishments bringing the Super Bowl to San Francisco.

Eskenazi asks: Why now? Homelessness has been a perennial issue in the city. What is it that makes Lurie want to run today?

Lurie says he has never seen this city as tarnished, in real terms and by reputation, as it is today. He says the reaction he gets from others when talking about San Francisco is: “Are you OK? Are you safe?”

Joe Eskenazi starts off the evening by posing that lots of people have thoughts and feelings about San Francisco.

To Daniel Lurie: “Why for you is it necessary to address those thoughts and feelings by running for mayor?”

Lurie: “Seeing a man in a state of real illness, screaming and naked, at 8:05 in the morning. My two kids…looked at me and I could tell they were like, ‘What is going on? Here we have someone in front of us who is not well, and we are not going to do anything about it, and we are going to keep walking to school.'”

Lurie says, “It’s on all of us, it’s all of our fault…but I’m going to take ownership and responsibility.”