Max Carter-Oberstone will lose today’s vote. He knows it. Here’s why.

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Going back to late 2024, Mayor-Elect Daniel Lurie’s surrogates made no secret of it: The first three department heads targeted for removal were MTA boss Jeffrey Tumlin, health department director Dr. Grant Colfax and police chief Bill Scott. 

Tumlin was the first under the bus. Despite multiple mayoral candidates’ blustery pledges that they would fire the transit boss, his contract actually lapsed in late December, weeks before the inauguration. Colfax pulled the plug next, announcing that Feb. 7 would be his last day. 

So, that leaves the police chief. Lurie’s people, again, had already telegraphed their intention to put Scott out to pasture. Earlier this month, the mayor went on a “listening tour” at police stations, and heard scads of cops telling him that Scott can’t leave soon enough. But that’s no surprise: Back in 2016, city officials on a prior “listening tour” were told that cops wanted the next chief to be a San Francisco Police Department lifer — and, failing that, absolutely not a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. They got LAPD lifer Bill Scott. The rank-and-file have never cottoned to him. The union has always despised him.  

Which brings us to today’s highly unusual Board of Supervisors “committee of the whole” to jettison police commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone at the behest of Mayor Lurie. While the proceedings don’t start until 3 p.m., and feature Carter-Oberstone making his case and, surely, many minutes’ worth of public comment, the outcome is not seriously in doubt. Leading up to today’s vote, only two of the 11 supervisors indicated they’re inclined to retain Carter-Oberstone. 

“The votes are not looking good,” admitted Carter-Oberstone. “I don’t think I’m going to survive it.” 

San Francisco’s mayor can, unilaterally, fire the chief of police. Lurie could do this today. London Breed could’ve done this at any time going back to 2018. 

But replacing a chief is trickier (as former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao discovered when she summarily dismissed former police chief LaRonne Armstrong): The mayor must choose among the names advanced to him or her by the police commission, or reject all candidates and restart the process. 

At most times, this is a formality; four of San Francisco’s seven police commissioners are appointed by the mayor and, barring unforeseen lunacy, will take dictation from the mayor’s office on matters far less vital than who the next chief should be. A mayor knows what names will be advanced his way in the same way a parent knows that there are a few coins “from the tooth fairy” under a child’s pillow: After all, he put them there. 

But Carter-Oberstone is different. And for Lurie to get his desired police chief without even the possibility of an impediment, Carter-Oberstone needs to go.

In 2022, Carter-Oberstone displeased his appointing authority, Mayor Breed, by voting for board appointee Cindy Elias to serve as president of the commission. He then publicized Breed’s practice of requiring undated letters of resignation from her appointees. In a spectacular political own-goal, Breed lost control of the police commission, and Carter-Oberstone has since operated as an independent. 

We now have a new mayor, one who never appointed Carter-Oberstone and had no part in alienating him. Lurie also had no part in the hiring of Scott or in the perpetuation of his career. You could make a convincing argument that Lurie, the guy we voted for, deserves to install the police chief of his choosing. But, the way the system works, that candidate must first be advanced his way by the Police Commission. 

Would Carter-Oberstone reflexively deny Lurie his preferred candidate? There’s no guarantee of that. But would he reflexively advance Lurie’s preferred candidate? No, there’s no guarantee of that, either. 

It seems clear that’s what today is about. Lurie, publicly, has given no reason why he’s moving to oust Carter-Oberstone. But he doesn’t need to. The rules state that Carter-Oberstone serves at the pleasure of the mayor and, with six votes from the Board of Supervisors, he can be dismissed for any reason. Or no reason.

Today, that will all but certainly happen. For any reason. But not for no reason. 

Privately, Lurie has given members of the Board of Supervisors and members of the general public a rationale for today’s action. And it isn’t that he simply wants to install the new chief of his choosing without having to negotiate things with an unelected volunteer that he didn’t appoint in the first place — which, to many elected officials and members of the general public, is a reasonable enough rationale. 

Instead, Lurie has wandered into supervisors’ offices (a highly unusual move that left them flattered and charmed) and told them that, wait for it, Max Carter-Oberstone is mean. 

“I saw [Lurie] at the NAACP gala Friday. I stopped him and asked: ‘C’mon, what did Max do?’” recalled community activist Paulette Brown. She recalls Lurie responding, “He talked rudely to my staff.” 

At the same NAACP gala, Cheryl Thornton asked the mayor the same question. She recalls him saying “that he doesn’t go around firing commissioners, but that Max treated his staff badly.” 

Both Brown and Thornton felt this was yet another example of a Black man being singled out for unduly harsh discipline. Both also recall being told that “you’re gonna like” the person nominated to succeed Carter-Oberstone.

This story also came back to us from several sitting supervisors: They say the mayor accused Carter-Oberstone, whom he has apparently never met, of disrespecting mayoral staffers. Specifically, Carter-Oberstone purportedly offended public safety czar and retired police commander Paul Yep with an ill-advised joke: He told Yep in a sit-down meeting that, “If I knew you were going to be doing the interview, I’d have brought my bullet-proof vest!” 

Carter-Oberstone doesn’t deny it. He and Yep have known each other for years in their commissioner-police commander roles, and Yep was never shy about “giving me constructive criticism and, sometimes, not constructive.” Carter-Oberstone says he had a smile on his face when he delivered this line, and put his arm around Yep “with great affection.” 

“I don’t claim to be the funniest person,” he continues, “but I don’t see how that’s disrespectful.” When asked if he was rude to the mayor’s staffers, Carter-Oberstone replies, “of course not.”

And yet, even elected officials are repeating back to us that this is relevant regarding today’s ouster; not all the stuff you’ve just read about how appointing a police chief works, and the fact that Lurie doesn’t even need a justification to do this, and showing Carter-Oberstone the door does away with even the possibility of a struggle naming a chief, while simultaneously delighting law-and-order figures and belligerent keyboard warriors.

Of note: Yes, the real reason that Capt. Renault shut down Rick’s Cafe was because there was gambling going on in there. I mean, that’s what the man said. 

It’s disappointing for our public officials to shine us on like this. Especially when, as Lurie did, they ran for office on the basis of being transparent and forthcoming. It strains credulity that, if not for some ill-conceived joke, Carter-Oberstone would be headed to tomorrow’s Police Commission meeting, and the next one on the Wednesday after that. Lurie’s people, again, made it clear Scott didn’t fit into their plans all the way back in 2024, and Carter-Oberstone had been hearing that he was a marked man weeks before his sit-down meeting with Yep and mayoral chief of staff Staci Slaughter. 

At that meeting, Carter-Oberstone tells us that he queried Slaughter about rumors of his pending demise. He says she asked him if he would resign if Mayor Lurie wished it. Carter-Oberstone, by his own recollection, replied that he would not be inclined to, and they would have to get six votes at the Board of Supervisors. 

Now, this was the correct answer. But it was not right. In essence, Carter-Oberstone told Lurie’s people to come back with a warrant. And they did. 

A more politic response to your boss’ right-hand woman asking you if you’d resign might have been, “Why would you want me to resign?” Members of the Board of Supervisors saw Carter-Oberstone’s response as, essentially, bringing them into his fight and forcing them to spend their political capital on his behalf; Carter-Oberstone, they argue, flew too close to the sun, and they are not inclined to scoop him out of the water. 

Heading into today’s vote, only District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder and District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar said they’d vote to retain Carter-Oberstone. Fielder represents what may be the last progressive stronghold in San Francisco, and Carter-Oberstone’s ethos of independence and police reform play here in the Mission. Melgar, like Carter-Oberstone, is viewed as unpredictable, perhaps the most deleterious label one can pick up in City Hall. 

“I don’t think Max is unpredictable,” counters Melgar. “When people say that, it means he doesn’t have blind loyalties.” 

Okay. Same same. 

It was clear, once this matter came before the board, that the numbers weren’t there for Carter-Oberstone. Even supervisors sympathetic to the reformist commissioner did not see the logic in bucking the newly elected mayor in a Quixotic battle. And that goes doubly for those not sympathetic to Carter-Oberstone. 

“We have a lot of battles to fight. I’m not going to fight the mayor on his appointee,” says Supervisor Shamann Walton. “The real fight should’ve happened with the fentanyl legislation. So the people saying ‘let’s not rubber-stamp the mayor’ already did.” 

“This has nothing to do with Max,” continues Walton. “The mayor, for whatever reason, doesn’t want Max to be his commissioner. He didn’t have to give me a reason. I’m going to have major fights with this administration, I’m pretty sure. This is not one that’s worth it to me.” 

In the past several months, San Francisco voters have been bombarded with a lot of half-baked arguments about the strength and proliferation of San Francisco commissions and their power related to San Francisco’s strong mayor. Some of this was spurred by Breed’s generational mishap of losing control of a mayorally controlled commission. 

At the same time, Carter-Oberstone and the Police Commission became shorthand signifiers of woke liberalism and failed progressive policies. The commissioner and his commission were frequent targets of rancor by critics who plainly did not understand what the Police Commission does, and who were reductive and intellectually unserious enough to claim Carter-Oberstone et al. are “pro-crime.” 

But there are serious discussions to be had about the role of commissions in San Francisco based upon today’s events. Because it’s not a wild notion that the popularly elected new mayor should not have to negotiate who he wants his police chief to be with an unelected holdover from his predecessor. In prior eras, commissioners would customarily offer their resignations when a new mayor assumed office. There is some merit to this. 

On the other hand, mayoral commissioners taking mayoral orders on any and all matters of importance makes a mockery of the notion of independent oversight. It may actually be the worst of all scenarios, because it provides the veneer of independent oversight when there is none, and allows mayors to alter public policy from behind the scenes through cipher commissioners. 

That’s a sticky problem for the city to work out. But not for Carter-Oberstone. He’ll be out of public life. And it’s a good bet that we won’t see any mayoral appointees like him again. 

Breed brought him in during the brief period when actively pushing for police reform was seen as politically beneficial. When the pendulum swung back the other way, however, Carter-Oberstone did not, leading to his break with Mayor Breed and, eventually, today’s pending ouster. 

In the same way that modern vetting ensures we’ll never have another David Souter on the Supreme Court, no mayor will ever again make the mistake of bringing in a subject-matter expert driven by a social justice bent who is not politically ambitious, meaning they cannot be leveraged by the mayor to do as the appointing authority demands. 

Some of the supervisors voting on Carter-Oberstone’s fate today speculated that he may parlay his status as a progressive martyr into future elective office. Well, perhaps: But there are easier roads to political success than political irradiation leading to a political beheading.  

This kind of talk seems to reveal more about our elected officials, who can only process things through the lens, and limitations, of their own worldviews. A person with no interest in the hamster wheel of political advancement and nothing, politically, to lose is an anathema to City Hall. 

And now, for good or ill, he’s no longer there.