In politics, as in so many other parts of life, timing is crucially important. For example, in the recently completed New York City Democratic primary there is little doubt that the salience of the war in Gaza to the left helped catapult Zohran Mamdani, the most outspoken anti-Israel voice in the race, to becoming the leading progressive candidate, and ultimately the Democratic nominee and likely next mayor. Similarly, the presence of Donald Trump in the White House mobilized the progressive left in that election as well. 

It is not a stretch at all to think that if October 7th had not happened and Kamala Harris had won the presidential election last November, Mamdani might have run in a race that would have come down to Andrew Cuomo and somebody like Brad Lander.

A different dynamic occurred in San Francisco where a new mayor was elected on the same day as the presidential election, so voters went to the polls not knowing who the next president would be. Because of that, the question of who would be the strongest voice against Donald Trump and who would stand up to Trump and his ICE thugs simply was not part of the campaign.

That was very fortunate for Daniel Lurie whose moderation in both style and politics would not have served him well in an election where the central issue was opposition to Trump. Had San Francisco’s mayoral election occurred during a Trump presidency, as opposed to the waning days of Joe Biden’s presidency when many thought Kamala Harris would win, it is very possible that a feisty progressive candidate would have captured the political moment better.

At a time when the country is under siege from a regime in Washington seeking to destroy American democracy, and in many respects the American state as well, to look away, try to finesse the situation or otherwise fail to stand up for democracy and the people who are victims of this regime is to be complicit. To a great extent this is what Mayor Lurie has done. This is particularly galling given the significant presence of ICE, a government agency that has evolved into a secret police force, in San Francisco. 

In San Francisco, as in so many other parts of the country, people who are immigrants, or who look like they might be immigrants (whatever that means), are walking the streets in fear of being disappeared, sent to a concentration camp or not seeing their loved ones again. The only appropriate response to that from any mayor who claims to represent all San Franciscans is to speak out loudly and clearly against the abomination that is the Trump regime and to do everything possible to protect those vulnerable San Franciscans. 

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander got arrested for his efforts to protect New Yorkers from ICE. Lurie has not defended San Francisco, and San Franciscans with anything approaching that vigor.

Some might argue, and indeed have, notably in the pages of the San Francisco Standard, the house organ of the ascendant tech right in San Francisco, that by not actively and vociferously standing up to Trump, Lurie is actually helping San Francisco. According to this argument, Lurie’s meekness is keeping San Francisco out of Trump's sights and sparing San Francisco the worst of the Trump excesses. This is an attractive theory but is completely disconnected from reality. A better explanation for Lurie’s behavior is that he does not wish to alienate the oligarchs who surround him and Trump.

Lurie’s silence has not spared San Franciscans from harassment, arrests and worse from ICE agents. It has not spared, and will not spare, San Francisco from the impact of the big beautiful bill budget cuts with regards to Medicaid and other programs. Nor has it stopped the Trump regime from exploring the bizarrely foolish idea of reconstituting Alcatraz as a federal prison. In short, by failing to stand up to a bully, Lurie has simply empowered that bully more. Anybody who has been on a playground knows that bullies rarely change their behavior if people don't stand up to them.

Being mayor of San Francisco is a much easier job when there is a Democratic president. I am certain that Lurie, like most San Franciscans, wishes that there was a President Harris in the White House rather than Donald Trump. That certainly would have made his job much easier. However, unfortunately for all of us we now have President Trump, and that changes the tenor, nature and framing of Lurie's mayoralty. 

Lurie ran for office and succeeded largely by exaggerating a crime problem and presenting himself as a smart nice guy who was a political Rorschach test for most voters. That was a good election strategy, and absent a White House making war on immigrants and urban America, and to a great extent America generally, that largely non-ideological feel-good approach might have served Lurie a bit better. However, in today's America, and today’s San Francisco, that approach is at best tone deaf and at worst helps further empower the regime in Washington.