San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie sounded off about the long-shuttered Castro Pottery Barn and the eponymous theater and the recent fire next door to it as he made his pitch to voters at an LGBTQ nightclub August 12.
Lurie also answered the Bay Area Reporter's questions about how he'd make appointments, his thoughts on ongoing homeless encampment sweeps, and his path to victory.
Lurie appeared for an LGBTQ meet-and-greet at the newly-renovated Beaux on Market Street, attended by about 60 people. Among the five major candidates, Lurie is currently running third in the race, according to a San Francisco Chronicle poll, at 17% in the first round of ranked-choice voting. An heir to the Levi's fortune who later became founder and CEO of the nonprofit Tipping Point Community, Lurie was running behind incumbent Mayor London Breed (28%) and former mayor Mark Farrell (20%) in the poll, conducted between July 31 and August 5, but ahead of Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin (12%) and District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí (5%). Eighteen percent of voters were undecided.
Lurie told the B.A.R. after the event that he's very much in the mix, saying "our favorable ratings are higher than everybody else's. We do well on ranked-choice voting in every poll, and people like our message all across the city. I'm running against people that have picked very narrow lanes. We can hit people in every lane."
Darrin Martin, a Castro resident, asked Lurie during the event "what can you do about the Pottery Barn?" in a question about empty storefronts. The old Pottery Barn, shuttered since 2017 at Castro and Market streets, has become emblematic of the neighborhood's commercial vacancy crisis despite recent openings and reopenings elsewhere in the LGBTQ neighborhood. The space has been considered for a welcome center, an LGBTQ history museum — and Lurie's campaign headquarters, he revealed.
"I tried to rent that as our headquarters. ... We've tried to tax empty storefronts. That doesn't seem to be doing the trick," he said, referring to city tax policies. "I'll go back to a vibrant economy and tourism. We need the Castro to be thriving. I'm happy the fire was limited; that could have been a catastrophe." (Lurie said the Pottery Barn landlord wanted too much money.)
He was referring to the August 10 fire next door to the theater. The B.A.R. reported that the blaze occurred at the US Bank branch next door at 443 Castro Street; initial rumors in the neighborhood were that the Castro Theatre — in the midst of a renovation and restoration project by Another Planet Entertainment — was the site of the blaze. The theater was not damaged and there were no injuries.
"The Castro Theatre is going to be a huge help for this corridor," Lurie added, referring to the site's reopening tentatively scheduled for next year.
Lurie added that "going back to making sure streets are clean and safe" will help with the vacancy problem.
"Making sure we have a safe nightlife, a safe culture," he added. "People go home early because of safety reasons. The more corridors are safe and clean, these landlords will want to get in on the action and want to be a part of it."
Martin blamed landlords for the problem, saying "they're greedy and want more money."
Responded Lurie, "We need to call them out for that but there's not a lot we can do as a mayor."
Added Martin, "I know what has been done and it's not working."
Responded Lurie, "If I don't have the answer, I'm going to phone a lot of friends and see what's worked in other cities. We could get to the bottom of it. ... Let's find the reach of our power."
Lurie, gay supporters tout outsider status
Lurie's pitch is that he'd be effective as mayor because he's not what his campaign has phrased a "City Hall insider." He has never held elective office. All of his major opponents have been city supervisors, and two have served as mayor.
Lurie said that gave him the private sector's eye for efficiency — referencing a time he said he built 143 units of affordable housing at 833 Bryant Street in three years at a cost of $377,000 per unit, instead of a citywide average of seven years at $1.2 million per unit.
Despite skepticism from some unions, the project lease and sublease agreement passed the Board of Supervisors 11-0 in 2020.
"They [his opponents] say he [Lurie] doesn't have City Hall experience?" Lurie asked. "Thank goodness."
Lurie added his opponents have a combined 70 years of elected experience.
It was this clarion call for a change that led Adam H. Sandel, a gay San Francisco resident, to invite Lurie to Beaux for the meet-and-greet in the first place. Sandel, a freelance contributor to the B.A.R.'s arts section, said he's lived here for 23 years and was proud of the city under the mayoralty of Gavin Newsom, now California's governor.
"This is a beacon of equality and freedom," he said of San Francisco. "Since [Newsom] moved on, the leadership has not been so good in this city."
Sandel mentioned crime, homelessness, addiction, and vacant storefronts as evidence of that.
"Now, when I tell people I'm from San Francisco, they say, 'Are you OK? Are you guys OK?'" Sandel said. "I started saying, 'we just had some really bad leadership but we're going to change that.' Then I heard Daniel Lurie speak, and when he was done speaking, I have not felt that much hope for the future of San Francisco since Newsom was in there."
After the event, another gay Lurie supporter, Jason Minix, told the B.A.R. that he trusts the former nonprofit CEO because he was trying to help the city already as a private citizen.
"Daniel has been working for San Francisco by choice," Minix said, referring to Lurie's time at Tipping Point. "He's so engaged with the city — something I haven't seen in other candidates."
But the outsider language only went so far; when the B.A.R. asked Lurie — who blamed what he feels is an overbearing bureaucracy on his opponents and electeds — how he'd appoint the right people to the right positions and avoid being taken advantage of as mayor, he said he's done plenty of work with city leaders and has more than apt advisers.
"I have 30-year commanders in the police department," Lurie began. "I have John Rahaim, [former] planning [director] endorsing me. I've had [former] mayor Frank Jordan endorse me. I know who works inside City Hall now; I've worked with a lot of them. I have a lot of experience with a lot of people in that building. I won't be taken advantage of. I've worked with them on Super Bowl [50], I've worked with them to get housing built, I've worked with this mayor and I know there's a lot of good people in there and a lot of people we need to change out."
(Rahaim, a gay man, oversaw the planning department from 2008 to 2019. In a July email sent out by Lurie's campaign about his housing plan, Rahaim wrote, "It's clear to me that Daniel's strategy presents the best opportunity to address our affordability crisis in San Francisco.")
Lurie said current officeholders don't take accountability.
"We've got a lot to be proud of but our elected leaders have led us down a road where everything is a blood sport," he said, adding later that "the buck stops with me" if something goes wrong in the city.
"You're not going to hear me blame the Board of Supervisors or the police chief," he said. "It's going to be on me right away."
City not doing enough on homelessness, Lurie says
Lurie is running on a platform of expanded treatment, recovery, and shelter for the homeless; a crackdown on fentanyl dealing; addressing public safety and the decline of downtown; reforming permitting; building housing; and tackling corruption.
He characterized the Breed administration launching sweeps of homeless encampments after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson — which held in June that it is not illegal for cities to enforce bans against public camping targeted at the homeless — as a politicized decision meant to give her an edge in a difficult election year.
"You're going to get clean streets every four years under this mayor. The other three and a half, nothing gets done," Lurie said. "This mayor used the injunction [against enforcing public camping laws] as an excuse for inaction, and every day there's tents and an encampment is another sign of failure and we've seen that for two years and this is what we got? Ripping people's tents away? We need more shelter beds, we need to give people bus tickets home.
"This mayor is saying a lot of those things but they haven't added enough shelter beds, they weren't doing bus tickets home in the way that they should have; now she's ramping that up, and we need to have the mental health and drug treatment beds, like you heard me say in there," he added. "And then we have the tool of citing and removing people's things, which is absolutely a tool we'll have to use. But, this is a city that has failed to deliver on the promise of treatment on demand."
Lurie said he supports mandated treatment but only after alternatives have been tried.
"You can mandate treatment now, and we should, we should use CARE courts to get into treatment," he said. "But we're not doing it. [The Department of Public Health] is not doing it."
Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment, or CARE, courts were established by Newsom last year. The goal of the program is to get people in crisis off the streets. According to a fact sheet from Newsom's office, CARE court connects a person struggling with untreated mental illness — and often also substance use challenges — with a court-ordered Care Plan for up to 24 months. The first CARE Court in San Francisco County was launched last October 1.
Lurie invited people interested in volunteering with his campaign to table at the Castro Farmers Market held on Wednesdays.
"We're going to outwork, outhustle every other campaign," he said. "Nobody's going to outwork me. I'm going to be like [late mayor] Dianne Feinstein — I'll walk the street every day."
Boston Blake, who when asked by the B.A.R. identified as "gay as a tree full of fairies on nitrous oxide," said he likes what he heard but wants to hear more.
"His heart is in the right place. He has the confidence, competence and know-how to navigate our weird San Francisco political system," Blake said. "I still want more details."
Rivals respond
The B.A.R. — which has conducted interviews at Castro campaign stops with the Breed, Peskin, and Farrell campaigns — reached out to all four of Lurie's major opponents to request their response.
Breed campaign spokesperson Joe Arellano replied that "Daniel Lurie has zero credibility on homelessness. His nonprofit pledged $100 million to cut homelessness in half in five years, and instead it went up 25% over that time frame.
"His nonprofit also funded the Coalition on Homelessness so they could hand out more tents to people on the streets," Arellano continued. "On the issue of homelessness, Daniel Lurie has lied about his resume more than George Santos."
Santos is the gay Republican former congressman from New York, expelled from the House of Representatives after being exposed as a fabulist.
Arellano continued the Breed campaign's critique, turning his attention to law and order.
"Daniel Lurie thinks binge watching 'Law and Order' from his $16 million Malibu vacation home qualifies him to make public safety decisions," he stated. "The reality is that crime in San Francisco has dropped to historic lows. Out of desperation, Lurie is peddling the same anti-San Francisco narrative as Trump and Fox News, to convince voters that things are bad in our city."
Reported crime — both property crime and violent crime — is down to pre-COVID levels according to police statistics, but critics charge it's possible more crime has gone unreported as San Franciscans have lost faith.
"In contrast, Mayor Breed continues to serve as San Francisco's biggest champion, promoting her vision for the next four years: more housing, lower crime, fewer tents, more parks and open space, and a city that is affordable for residents, families, and the people working hard to make our city great," Arellano concluded.
Peskin agreed with Lurie about the current sweeps but questioned his experience.
"Sweeps are both cruel and ineffective. They are a sign of the mayor's failure to seriously address homelessness in her six years of office," Peskin stated. "Many of the homeless youth on our streets are LGBTQ kids fleeing terrible situations, and they deserve better. On day one, I will convene the heads of the nine departments and 248 service providers addressing homelessness, force departments to improve their coordination, untangle the web of overlapping bureaucracies and nonprofit service departments, and bring order out of chaos. That's not a job for an outsider with no management experience."
Lurie served as CEO of Tipping Point from 2005 to 2019.
Safaí campaign adviser Derek Jansen had a similar statement to Peskin's. "Anyone with a sense of right and wrong can tell you that encampment sweeps without solutions are inhumane and just a political gimmick," he stated. "The only reason to say 'no experience needed' is if you don't have any real experience bringing people together to solve real problems."
The Farrell campaign didn't return a request for comment for this report.
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