San Francisco’s mayor ditched woke and cashed in

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It may come as a surprise that common sense has finally arrived in San Francisco. But … we’ll take it.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash last week, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie admitted that the city had run adrift under the progressive ideology that took over after the 2020 “summer of love.” 

“We were focused on the wrong things and today we’re focused on common sense,” Lurie said. “I mean, we got so entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that we weren’t taking stock of what was happening on our streets.”

It’s a stunning self-reflection from a Democratic leader about the failures of “woke” approaches to civic leadership. Such policies have led to rampant crime, from petty shoplifting to violent assaults, as well as permissive attitudes toward illegal drug use within homeless encampments.

“We had 810 people die of overdose in San Francisco three years ago. There’s nothing progressive about that,” Lurie said. “There’s nothing progressive about 30,000 car break-ins.”

Lurie is absolutely right: Cities need to put public and practical governing over adhering to radical ideology unmoored from reality.

Since taking office in 2025, Mayor Lurie has prioritized policing, rejecting the “Defund the Police” movement that took off after George Floyd’s murder. He’s also focused on getting homeless addicts into drug treatment, including involuntary treatment centers. 

Finally, he’s trying to make San Francisco friendly to businesses — which will be a lot easier without encampments and shoplifting hindering the success of brick-and-mortar stores in San Francisco.

The results have already been promising. Lurie cited a 90% decrease in car break-ins since he took office.

LA and other cities across the Golden State can and should take notice: We don’t need to have encampments under every freeway bridge, with needles and other paraphernalia supplied by nonprofits which are themselves sponsored by taxpayer dollars.

We don’t need to allow our great civic monuments to fall into ruin, like LA’s Sixth Street Bridge, which lost its beautiful bright lights by tolerating the looting of copper thieves. 

We don’t need to waste billions on housing addicted homeless people in hotels without mandating proper drug or mental health treatment. After all, addiction and mental illness are often the actual problems which have put individuals in such dire straits.

We can take policy approaches that drive at solutions, rather than exacerbating and managing problems — and fueling a homeless-industrial complex that eats taxpayer dollars like Pac-Man without the possibility of ever winning the game.

The left’s ongoing flirtation with socialist candidates like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan takes the exact wrong approach, ignoring the facts on the ground — that Lurie’s common-sense policies are working.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and her socialist challenger Nithya Raman, should be taking notes from their fellow Democrat, Lurie. He’s got it figured out. 

The trick is to reject the radical left dogma and get to the actual work of making decisions to craft a fully functioning city.

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