According to a July poll commissioned by the San Francisco Chronicle, Lurie enjoys a 73 percent approval rating among city residents, a stark contrast to the 28 percent approval rating his predecessor scored in July 2024. If Lurie’s popularity lasts beyond the honeymoon phase, could he be a model for other Democrats across the country?
Gone from Lurie’s politics is “defund the police” progressivism that became so popular in 2020. On the campaign trail, Lurie stressed that a “fully staffed police department” is “my number one priority,” and advocated for organizing new police districts. He vocalized the need to clear up the city’s homeless encampments, but his call for action extended beyond just an expanded police presence, balancing a tougher-on-crime approach with proposals for more emergency shelter beds, mental illness and drug rehabilitation treatment plans, and making public transportation more accessible.
Lurie’s most concrete accomplishment yet might be his ability to make San Franciscans feel hopeful about their city again. Part of this is simple shoe-leather mayoring. “London Breed was my [regionally elected] supervisor and then my mayor, and I never saw her in my neighborhood,” Ben Fleischmann, a longtime resident of the city’s Western Addition neighborhood, told TMD. “Daniel Lurie’s been mayor for six months and I’ve seen him four times.”
Clad in a tailored suit and tie—which stands out in a city where tech CEOs show up to work in jeans and hoodies—Lurie is a relentless cheerleader for San Francisco’s businesses, especially the struggling downtown. “So, you got rid of the liquor license, don’t sell tobacco, and now just sell amazing sandwiches,” Lurie, in a video posted on Instagram, said to a local business owner who purchased a corner store to turn into a deli. “Thank you for what you do for the community.”
Even one of the top aides of Lurie’s predecessor is praising his efforts. “A mayor’s job is not just being right on policy,” Sean Elsbernd, the CEO of SPUR, a Bay Area think tank and Breed’s former chief of staff, told TMD. “More than half of a mayor’s job is messaging on the policy, and Mayor Lurie is doing an excellent job on all things messaging” he said. Last week, Visa committed to returning its annual Payments Forum conference from Dallas to San Francisco’s convention hub—the Moscone Center—beginning in 2026. So far this year, the Moscone Center has seen average daily hotel room bookings jump 64 percent from 2024, according to the nonprofit San Francisco Travel Association, which also noted that overall tourism is expected to “rise modestly” from last year.
The other factor here is the new AI boom, with San Francisco—and Lurie—benefiting from another gold rush. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was even on Lurie’s transition team. According to the global real estate services company Jones Lang LaSelle (JLL), 42 percent of U.S.-based AI companies reside in the San Francisco Bay area, with the collective value of the region’s AI companies worth about $70 billion, comprising about 52 percent of global AI capital.
On the campaign trail, Lurie also called for permitting reform, citing tedious yet extensive paperwork and mystifying fees that have left many would-be entrepreneurs unable to operate. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in April 2021, proprietor Jason Yu worked relentlessly to open up an ice cream shop in the city, and yet, after nearly two years of navigating a bureaucratic maze and draining $200,000 in the effort, strict permitting requirements prevented the business from ever opening. On Tuesday, the mayor unveiled a permitting reform legislative package that, if passed, would “allow San Franciscans to park in their own driveways,” “ease restrictions for how historic buildings can be used,” “reduce permitting fees,” “make it easier to add accessory dwelling units,” and no longer require “that all excavation permits include a parking plan,” Lurie’s office said.
Crime and homelessness have been the city’s most significant issues, and though it’s too early to grade his efforts, Lurie has not shied away from the topic.
Lurie said in his inaugural speech that he would hold accountable those who “come to San Francisco to deal drugs or do drugs on our streets.” On August 28, Lurie announced that the city had signed a partnership deal with the California Department of Transportation to address homeless encampments. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has also ramped up enforcement, directing state workers to physically clear out encampment sites. A little more than a year since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local government prohibitions against camping or settling on public property did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishment,” Newsom urged California municipalities to pass laws making it illegal to camp in one space for more than three consecutive nights, which he said he wants to see implemented “across the state.”
There is anecdotal evidence showing improvement on this front. The Tenderloin, a San Francisco neighborhood known for its many theaters and lively nightlife scene, has for years faced troubling trends of open drug use and violence. Such crime is still quite rough—although some evidence suggests the number of tents has gone down—but TMD noticed last July that the notorious subway station entrance at 16th and Mission Street was remarkably clean and quiet. Indeed, the number of homeless tents and makeshift shelters that city officials counted in the Tenderloin dropped to 23, a decline of about 23.3 percent from 2024.
The most important test will come in a year, with the release of the 2026 San Francisco Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, a tally of the homeless population of San Francisco released every two years.
San Francisco’s police force remains understaffed. As Lurie’s office noted in May, it is 25 percent short of the state’s minimum recommended number of total law enforcement workers. But some analysts say part of San Francisco’s problem is that, though Californian crime was noticeable during the COVID years, the perception was simpler and more negative than the reality. “Although there was a big narrative around crime, San Francisco actually has always had pretty incredibly low violent crime rates,” David Harrison, director of public policy at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, told TMD. “If you look at data from January 2024 through January 2025, violent crime in San Francisco fell by 14 percent compared to 6 percent in other major cities across the country,” based on reported crime data, he said.
Despite the positive changes, San Francisco faces a severe housing shortage (city officials want to build roughly 82,000 new homes by 2031), a projected $272 million budget shortfall over the next year, and organized labor has a substantial influence in city politics. However, Lurie commands a moderate majority on the Board of Supervisors—a significant shift in San Francisco’s traditional progressive-versus-moderate political divide—and has the backing of well-funded advocacy organisations like Blueprint and GrowSF, many supported by tech industry money, that have emerged as a new force in local politics.
