San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said that one of his primary role models is former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was first elected as a moderate Republican and styled himself a technocrat.
"Bloomberg for me is a big one," he said in an interview with Politico. "How we’re structuring our administration is very much in the vein of how Bloomberg led."
Lurie defeated then-incumbent Mayor London Breed in 2024 by running a more centrist-style political campaign in a city that has pioneered progressive drug and alcohol availability programs for homeless San Franciscans.
One of the heirs of the Levi Strauss fortune, Lurie has promised that he would help restore a San Francisco that has been struck by rising crime and homelessness.
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San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is one of the beneficiaries of the Levi Strauss fortune. ( (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images))
When asked by Politico to describe his politics, Lurie says he believes in "common sense."
"That’s it," he continued. "Whatever I can do to make San Francisco the greatest city in the world again, I’m going to do. I’ll talk to anybody."
Lurie has also chosen not to label himself as a progressive politician.
"I’m a San Franciscan," Lurie said. "People want to label, I don’t even know what that means anymore. It’s not progressive to see what we’re seeing down here, right, that’s not progressive."
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Lurie, who defeated his progressive incumbent opponent, London Breed, by running a more centrist-style political campaign. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Lurie said that the city does have serious obstacles to overcome, including in tourist areas.
"We have our problems, they’re concentrated in a few areas, which is where our tourists come," Lurie said. "We have to clean that up."
"San Francisco has long been known for its values of tolerance and inclusion," he said. "But nothing about those values instructs us to allow nearly 8,000 people to experience homelessness in our city."
Lurie has said in previous interviews that he wanted to run for mayor because he had a hard time explaining San Francisco's decline to his children, according to The Wall Street Journal.
After Lurie's 10-point victory over Breed, he told CNN that he wanted to get back to common-sense policies.
Fox News' Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.