Despite San Francisco’s nightly portrayal on cable news as the burning dumpster fire of liberal misrule, crime fell slightly in 2023. Quips had been made decades ago — long before some dope coined the term “doom loop” — that you could skate from the Bay to the ocean on broken car glass. But reported property crime also dropped a full 10 percent last year.
Yet 2024 has started off with a bang. And a scream. And, frankly, a hilarious thud, with some politician-on-politician crime. To wit: Mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie announced last week that he will appropriate the mayor’s police-chase and surveillance ballot measure, Proposition E, funnel metric shitloads of money into backing it, and use the resultant blitz to burnish his image. He will also, either subtly or not, chastise the incumbent mayor — whose ballot measure, again, this is — for making us vote on crap like this, rather than mayor-ing it into existence during her six years in office.
The mayor’s reaction was fiery and apoplectic, like Smaug awakening from his complacent slumber to discover that Bilbo has filched his golden cup.
“Daniel Lurie, who is running against Mayor Breed in the November election, has stooped to shameless opportunism by launching a personal campaign to support one of Mayor Breed’s ballot measures, Proposition E, while simultaneously attacking her for it,” read an email from Breed’s campaign committee, which arrived with a nifty red siren emoji in its subject line.
(This is more fun if you read it in the voice of Ted Baxter from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”)
“Why, you ask? Because his Prop. E campaign will allow him to exploit a dark money loophole: with no contribution limits on ballot measure campaigns, trust-fund millionaires like Daniel are able to pour massive amounts of cash into promoting their own name and face while criticizing Mayor Breed.”
And this is where the hilarity comes in. Because raising gobs of cash for an opportunistic candidate to self-aggrandize herself and distract from her actual record is not only what Mayor Breed was already doing, but what ridiculous, vacuous, red meat election-year measures like Prop. E are for. This isn’t a “loophole,” this is a system.
So, for the mayor to claim the moral high ground here was, yes, hilarious. Both the mayor and Lurie resemble nothing so much as two thieves trying to rob the same bank.
In fact, there was just such a scene in Woody Allen’s 1969 film “Take the Money and Run.” In that movie, the competing bank robbers asked their hostages to vote on who they’d rather be robbed by.
A pretty on-the-nose analogy to the present, don’t you think?
If Prop. E was really about public safety, you’d think the mayor would welcome any and all support (and, regardless, professional and well-thought-through campaigns don’t respond in an angry, knee-jerk fashion).
But it isn’t, and never was. And Breed’s reaction was telling.
“For lack of a better term,” says longtime Bay Area campaign strategist Jim Ross, “they knew it was a horseshit proposal. And now they’re not even gonna get credit for it.”
In fact, megadonors helped pump some $375,000 into Daniel Lurie’s Prop. E committee in its first week of existence. This is big money, which Lurie’s people can now spend in ways that bolster Lurie — rather than the mayor’s people using the mayor’s ballot measure to help the mayor.
“While the measure itself is stupid, the political ploy is smart,” assesses veteran strategist Eric Jaye. “What did the Viet Cong say? They said they’d fight by grabbing their opponents’ belt buckles. Get close. Don’t let her outmaneuver you with public-safety voters. That’s what he is doing.”
When Breed announced a plan in October to subject people on welfare to dope screening, with the possibility that they would lose their General Assistance checks and/or housing, Lurie denounced it as unserious and unworkable. The city already lacks the resources to adequately test and treat drug users, and this measure could lead to scads more people being tested and treated. What’s more, addicts deprived of money and housing will, predictably, end up on the streets and desperate for drugs and cash — a recipe for human misery and ramped-up crime.
Well, nice argument, but you lose. Campaign pros tell me that this proposal, now called Proposition F, figures to pass handily in March. As does Prop. E, for that matter. More importantly, the universe of voters both Lurie and Breed need to win over to be our next mayor like this idea. They want dope fiends to be subjected to screening.
“Daniel was not wrong on the policy, but many, if not most, of his supporters support that idea,” sums up Jaye, referring to the drug-testing proposal. “So, saying the right thing wasn’t very good politics. He was out-maneuvered.”
Well, not again. Lurie isn’t ceding the right flank this time.
When Mayor Breed announced in October she was putting what would become Prop. E on the ballot, she chose to do so at Alamo Square.
This, as we wrote at the time, wasn’t just a troll of area resident Dean Preston, but a nod to a recent incident there, in which media and online commenters were outraged at what appeared to be a police car failing to give chase to a car burglar caught in the act.
“Many people wondered why the police could not pursue and make sure that person is brought to justice,” Breed told the crowd (as we noted at the time, for whatever reason, she adopted the Donald Trump “many people” framing). “Some of the changes to policies have limited our officers’ ability to be as effective as we know they can.”
And yet, as we also wrote in October, the “changes” to the cops’ vehicle pursuit policy date to 2013. More to the point: The police did give chase to the thief on the viral video. He fled and dropped the stuff he’d stolen, which police recovered.
So, the anecdote the mayor used to undergird her photo-op press conference — and, more seriously, to justify this ballot measure — never happened.
This, too, is amazingly on the nose.
But there’s more in here, of course: In addition to asking voters to unmake an 11-year-old vehicle pursuit policy — a jarring move akin to subjecting SFPD patrol car or weapon choice to the electorate — Prop. E also weakens requirements for police to document and report use of force on civilians; exempts police from city policy requiring transparency around surveillance technology; and also neatly sidesteps the city’s ban on facial-recognition technology.
Even moderate campaign operatives, whose hearts do not bleed, summed up Prop. E as “a shallow vessel to raise money” that would “make a difference around the margins, at best.” It remains to be seen if voters’ vehement attitudes toward crime, which never correlate with actual city crime trends, will be softened by crime trends positing things are getting better.
Vamos a ver. For what it’s worth, in “Take the Money and Run,” the hostages voted to be held up by the insurgent bank robbers. Not the incumbents.
6 years into London Breed’s mayoral regime and San Francisco is more fiercely divided and hobbled than ever. Breed was for the “cops-will-save-us” doomsplain before she was against it…….. it fueled the torch and pitchfork rabids who called for Chesa Boudin’s ouster. What did that expensive recall accomplish exactly? Remember too: London Breed has declared not one BUT TWO states of emergency downtown and what do San Franciscans have to show for it? Then FOX took the rancid doomsplain baton and ran with it….and then law & order facists like Trump and De Santis piled on. Breed and her bloated communications staff of 8 and counting spawned this Frankenstein and now she seeks to win by promoting “safe, clean streets” and a halt to oversight and accountability of SF’s police force. We can only hope that cooler (and more informed thanks to Mission Local) heads will prevail and that voters reject this garbage. Does she think voters don’t know our local history? One of Breed’s only skills is sowing division and blaming others for her incompetence and transactional behavior. She is toxic.
I mean, sure, you can hope, but the smart money is on Prop E passing comfortably. It would amount to a seismic shock if it didn’t, but I’d love to see how she’d spin that.
Illuminaut,
Here’s one pitch against E …
‘Do you really want a drone flying over your house that has pictures of you and your Family in its memory just scanning and scanning ?’
Agnos and Ammiano and Gonzalez and Hennessey should run.
h.
Lol! London Breed, the queen of shameless opportunism, is upset with Lurie over this? I remember in the very early days of COVID when Breed, along with several Bay Area mayors and health officers developed a joint plan and message about the pandemic and agreed that they would collectively issue a press release. Of course, Breed ignored that agreement and quickly held her own press conference, basking in the glory that was the really the work of others.
I am bucking this system, going against the mayor and the billionaires who are supporting prop E by voting against it. Enough is enough.
You can lead a voter to data but you can’t make them think. Data from SFPD. Would be nice to know how much chief decision maker and purse strings holder London Breed and her administration have spent on SFPD day to day and overtime hours and how that compares to other years and mayors. Results? Costs? Effectiveness? Or grandstanding and optics?
A delightful, insightful article, and I got to rewatch the Bullitt car chase scene. Thanks for making my morning.
I’m still trying to find the amazing shortcut they took to get from Twin Peaks to North Beach.
Yep. The Bullitt scene was a needed bit of fun-
Campers,
Getting crowded in that Right Wing Corner.
Line forms at Right to kick the stoned homeless guy.
This old onlooker thinks nothing will change if any of these guys are elected.
Revenge/Reform/Revenge/Reform/Revenge/Reform
All of these candidates are supporting Revenge which does not work.
But, they are oblivious to Stanford and other studies that show this.
Give us another choice please.
How about Max Carter-Obertone ?
Go Niners !!
Breed has her own ‘inheritance and trust fund’ .. Ron Conway. He is her ‘godfather’. Follow her and you will see his money.
Prop F, if it passes, will be found unconstitutional based on 4th amendment grounds just like every other law just like it that has been passed in the country.
Crime is down, right. What always seems to be missing in this kind of messaging is consideration for the sentiment that crime rates are down from sky high to merely stratospheric. Not that prop E would change much, if anything.
Daniel,
I don’t believe the Cops numbers.
You seem to have a cabin on the ‘Ship of Fools’.
h.
Oh, you are free to take the liberty of ignoring “the cops numbers” altogether. Just walk the city with open ears and open eyes, then compare to, say 15 years ago. What with:
– open drug use and subsequent ODing on our sidewalks
– merch in our grocery stores locked away in cabinets
– merch cleared out that hasn’t been locked away (yet)
– above merch sold on our sidewalks
– glass shards piling up on JFK drive and elsewhere
– cat converter theft
But hey, I guess let’s discount all this cr.p as misdemeanors. /s
Daniel,
Sorry for the insult.
I’m not denying the crime here.
I’m saying that the cops are not fighting it effectively because they are poorly led and that we should elect our Police Chief.
I’m more worried about thug ‘Laterals’ being ushered in the side door.
Who vets the hiring of Laterals ?
h.
OMFG we are still not past that Chesa Boudin era of ignoring local residents’ concerns and instead insisting “reported crime is down.”
“Reported” is the key word there. Nobody reports shoplifting anymore. A lot of people don’t bother reporting their car being broken into.
It does not matter if crime is better or worse than in 2022, or 1992. What matters is that it’s still a major problem for the city — perception more so than reality. But perception of crime is killing our businesses.
Shizuka,
Tragedy here is that we have no option.
They’re all doubling down on Revenge.
Giving the ‘Gang that can’t shoot straight’ an Air Corps ?
What’s next, arming the drones ?
Peskin actually approved arming a rolling drone until the NYT backed him down.
h.