Mayor Daniel Lurieโs District 4 appointee, Beya Alcaraz, was the only San Francisco supervisor appointee in at least 30 years to enter the job with zero experience in either politics or government, a Mission Local analysis found.
Alcaraz abruptly resigned from her post on Thursday night after controversy. Hours earlier, Mission Local published text messages in which Alcaraz said she paid her former pet store workers “under the table,” skimped on taxes, and underreported income.
Three days ago, the San Francisco Standard revealed her store was left in disarray for the new owner, with dead mice, a rodent infestation, filth, and feces.
Alcaraz was out seven days after Lurie tapped her. It was the shortest reign of any city supervisor.
The appointment and sudden ouster raised questions about the mayor’s vetting for a prospective city supervisor: The mayor told reporters she had “absolutely” been vetted, but the damaging information obtained by Mission Local and the Standard came from the owner of Alcaraz’s former pet store, who was just a phone call away.
Lurie pointed to the potential misstep, writing in a statement announcing her resignation: “I regret that I didnโt do more to make sure she could succeed.”
But, even before the controversy, Alcaraz’s lack of political experience stood out.
Since San Francisco voted to reinstate district supervisor elections in 1996 and returned to the practice in 2000, 16 supervisors have been appointed to their positions by the mayor.
All had some manner of political experience. Thirteen of them were already in city government before joining the board, including from sitting on a city commission and working as staff for the mayor.
Carmen Chu (appointed to District 4 by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom) had previously worked as the mayorโs deputy budget director, for example. Sean Elsbernd (appointed to District 7 by Newsom) worked as a legislative aide to former District 7 Supervisor Tony Hall and was Newsom’s first liaison to the board.
Vallie Brown, who was appointed to the District 5 seat by former Mayor London Breed, spent a decade working as a legislative aide in the same office.
Out of 16 appointed supervisors, all had government or political experience
MAYOR WILLIE BROWN (1996 – 2004)
Alicia Becceril
Mark Leno
Leslie Katz
Amos Brown
Gavin Newsom
Michael Yaki
MAYOR ED LEE (2011 – 2017)
Not elected
Christine
Olague
Julie
Christensen
Jeff Sheehy
Katy Tang
MAYOR GAVIN NEWSOM (2004 – 2011)
Carmen Chu
Sean Elsbernd
Michela
Alioto-Pier
MAYOR LONDON BREED (2018 – 2025)
Matt Dorsey
Stephen Sherrill
Vallie Brown
MAYOR WILLIE BROWN (1996 – 2004)
Amos Brown
Gavin Newsom
Leslie Katz
Michael Yaki
Not elected
Alicia Becceril
Mark Leno
MAYOR GAVIN NEWSOM (2004 – 2011)
Carmen Chu
Sean Elsbernd
Michela
Alioto-Pier
MAYOR ED LEE (2011 – 2017)
Christine
Olague
Julie
Christensen
Jeff Sheehy
Katy Tang
MAYOR LONDON BREED (2018 – 2025)
Vallie Brown
Matt Dorsey
Stephen Sherrill
Note: Former supervisors are not marked as “not elected” provided they won at least one election after their appointment. Stephen Sherrill is the only appointee who has not yet run for election. Graphic by Xueer Lu & Kelly Waldron.
Alcaraz, meanwhile, has no such experience, and does not appear to be particularly politically active.
The 29-year-old was unknown to both residents and City Hall insiders until her appointment last week, and previously she worked as an art and music teacher, and a pet store owner.
She did not vote in last yearโs Democratic primary, or the February 2022 school board recall, or the November 2019 vote for mayor, district attorney, school board, and five ballot measures.
Her six-year run as the owner of the Animal Connection, a local pet store, formed a significant chunk of her resume. But recent reporting by Mission Local and the San Francisco Standard called her business acumen into question.
Alcaraz wrote in texts that she would counted personal expenses, like “dinner and drinks with my friends,” as business expenses to pay less in taxes, and that she paid workers under the table, reducing her taxable income and underreporting her revenue.
The woman who took over the shop from Alcaraz filmed conditions of โsqualorโ when she got the keys, including โhundreds of dead miceโ and a refrigerator filled with animal corpses.
โSan Francisco is a $16 billion business, and youโre choosing someone who couldnโt successfully run a small business,โ said Eric Jaye, a political consultant, before news of Alcaraz’s resignation dropped.
Appointing someone with Alcarazโs track record, Jaye said, โdemonstrates an unfortunate disregard and lack of recognition of just how hard it is to run a city as complicated as San Francisco.โ
In his four decades of watching mayors pick appointees, Jaye said, they typically look for experience in public service, or community engagement โ often both. โLurie did neither,โ Jaye said.
Even in cases where past appointees had less experience, they had significant backgrounds in community organizing or work with political associations and campaigns.
Jeff Sheehy, who was appointed to the board by then-Mayor Ed Lee to replace Scott Wiener as District 8 Supervisor, had what the San Francisco Chronicleโs editorial board described as a โdisdain for politics,โ for example.
But Sheehy had previously worked as an advisor on HIV/AIDS to then-Mayor Newsom and served as the president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, one of the cityโs most established political clubs. Despite this, Sheehyโs time as a supervisor was short-lived. He lost his run to maintain his position to the current District 8 Supervisor, Rafael Mandelman.
When contacted by Mission Local before Alcaraz’s resignation, Charles Lutvak, Lurie’s press secretary, pointed to her roots in the community and underlined Alcaraz’s understanding of the city’s affordability issue.
In the resignation statement, Lurie wrote that District 4 should “have a supervisor who can be fully dedicated to representing them, advocating for their families, and bringing people together. My team and I will get back to work finding that person right away.โ
“Itโs true that I was a political outsider with no connections to the Mayor when I approached him about the appointment at Sunset After Dark,” Alcaraz said in a statement following her resignation.
“I wanted to be the person that would finally listen to this amazing community. Iโm sorry for breaking the trust that was placed in me. I promise to keep working hard and fighting for change on behalf of my neighbors, and I wish the next Supervisor well.”
For Lurie’s future pick, being appointed to the board is often a route to getting elected. Ten of the 16 appointees in the last 30 years went on to keep their seats as supervisors, and two are still current members. Matt Dorsey (District 6) and Stephen Sherrill (District 2) are up for election in 2026.
But others have tossed their names in. Natalie Gee, chief of staff to District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, has jumped into the June 2026 special election, and Albert Chow, a prominent organizer of the Engardio recall, has said he will run for the seat too.
David Lee, who lost to Catherine Stefani in an assembly race last year, is also expected to declare within days.
San Francisco political consultant David Ho, speaking before Alcaraz resigned, said for his part that Lurieโs support and influence will only go so far.
โMayors have no coattails in terms of political appointments,โ Ho said. โThey may be popular โ whether Willie Brown or Gavin Newsom or [Ed] Lee or London [Breed] โ but when it comes to political appointments, it simply doesn’t translate to your coalition or partners or allies.โ
Mission Local excluded four appointees from its count: Fiona Ma (District 4), Bevan Dufty (District 8), Ed Jew (District 4) and David Campos (District 9). All four were elected and subsequently appointed before being sworn in because their predecessors had left for state-level jobs.
Everyone should have someone who looks at them the way Daniel Lurie looks at Beya Alcaraz.
As an unknown and unremarkable means to a sought political end?
The San Francisco Chronicle emphasized that Alcaraz would be โthe first Filipina Supervisorโ. The Mission Local reported that many Filipino-American community leaders would campaign for her to be regularly elected, apparently solely based on her ethnicity (โNone of the Filipino community leaders contacted. . . had known of Alcaraz before, but many have already pledged to rally behind her bid to win the job in her own right when she must run for her seat in June 2026.โ)
Mayor Laurieโs appointment of Alcaraz represents the worst example of identity politics as practiced in San Francisco: selecting a person primarily because they check a box as โthe firstโ of any particular category rather than because of their judgement or abilities. Whoever Lurie selects as the next replacement District 4 Supervisor no doubt will encounter the same result in being elected to the job as Supervisors Annemarie Conroy, Alicia Becerrill, Jeff Sheehy and Vallie Brown had been in their efforts in getting elected in their own right after their being appointed.
This is not untrue. The focus of electing “people of a certain race” is not focused on diverse or actual representation but on local control by the appointing bloc. This is not Democratic idealism, this is crony Democracy deliberately using race as a divisor and political consideration.
There’s a happy medium. Certainly there are more qualified and vetted candidates in the Filipino community than Lurie’s outrageous (and suspect) selection on a whim. It’s really an unforgivable slight to them all that they’d all be overlooked (if he looked at all?) only for Lurie to tout the “first” Filipina as a feather in his cap – the only feather in this instance, in a nest of incompetence.
โFilthโ literally means feces, I think? Itโs kind of like saying โfeces and poop?โ I could be wrong.
The YIMBY focus never ceases to amaze.