Thursday's Da Mayors of San Francisco: Part II

Willie L. Brown (from whom the “Da Mayor” moniker originated) moved to San Francisco from Mineola, Texas. He became a civil rights lawyer and somehow found himself elected to office, and eventually the Speaker of the California State Assembly for 15 years. One Republican governors’ administration after another tried to dismantle his influence, but he bested them every time. The one thing he could not beat was term limits. Once he was termed out, he set his sights on city hall and served as the city’s CEO from 1996 to 2004.

His predecessors wore suits and ties, because that is what you do as a politician, but Willie Brown was into his style and fashion like no mayor since Sunny Jim Rolf. He is a regular at the San Francisco clothier, Wilkes Bashford, and was never seen without his fedora from Mrs. Dewson's Hats.

Under his watch San Francisco opened the door to the Dot Com Boom in the late 1990s. What it also opened the door to was a mass migration of entrepreneurs and those looking for a quick buck. Unlike the hippies and activists who wanted to change the world and found their way to the city a generation earlier, these new migrants with names like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, either had money or came to make more – that’s it.

Rents shot up from regular expensive, to cartoon villainy expensive in less than a year. a local columnist once remarked, “This is the first time in our city that millionaires are being evicted by billionaires.”

His perceived indifference to the plight of those at the losing end of the Dot Com Boom resulted in political payback. In the election of 2000, San Francisco returned to district elections for supervisor, replacing the at-large system usually found in small towns but unusual in big cities. Now your representative had to live in your neighborhood, not just be one of 11 names on a ballot you must choose from. Of the 11 hopefuls running, only two of “Da Mayor’s” candidates won, the rest won on an anti-Willie Brown platform.

By the way, one of those two supervisors that won was a little-known local business owner whom Willie Brown appointed to the Entertainment Commission, by the name of Gavin Newsom. Da Mayor is in his 90s now, and still a fixture on San Francisco streets. As far as I know he still eats lunch regularly at Le Central, at a table by their only window of course.

Me and Former Mayor Gavin Newsom

I’m sure he would disagree, but Gavin Newsom’s movie star looks helped his ascendance to higher office. After winning a close race in a runoff with a green party candidate mayor Newsom soon became famous (or infamous) for the first same-sex marriage policy.

Known more for being a finger-in-the-wind politician, he nevertheless staked (gambled, really) his political career for his convictions, or maybe a forward thinking though risky strategy. With George W. Bush in office now, 9/11 and Middle East invasion-paranoia spread across the United States. Anti-gay marriage bills were also winning across the country.

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Bucking his own party’s official position on this controversial subject, Mayor Gavin Newsom legalized this now nationally common practice in San Francisco and began to issue marriage licenses. In fact, he personally officiated the first one in 2004. Only a decade later, President Obama and the supreme court affirmed what Gavin Newsom tossed his political dice with, and same-sex marriage became the law of the land. That victory helped propel him to lieutenant governor, and eventually the head of the fifth largest economy in the world.

San Francisco’s current mayor, Daniel Lurie, is a political neophyte, as he had never been elected to any office before. He was the head of a nonprofit which advocates for the homeless. Quite a fete for someone facing an onslaught of tech money. And just how does the head of a nonprofit become the mayor in a city laden with tech billionaires who have tier own agenda? It helped that he just happened to be the heir to the Levi’s Jeans fortune, also his mommy gave him a million dollars for his mayoral campaign.

Me and Mayor Danial Lurie

San Francisco invented blue jeans, sourdough bread and the modern income inequality crisis. While learning on the job, he has been given a generous honeymoon period, which is rapidly closing. Mayor Lurie has been given high marks for throwing a lot of ideas at the wall and hoping some of them stick. However his inability thus far to deal with the affordability crisis may be his downfall. He has been mayor for only a year, so that chapter has not been written yet.

And just for fun...

Me and Former Mayor Art Agnos

Me and Former Mayor Frank Jordan

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