A new mayor and new Board of Supervisors took office, and struggled with the same issues
If San Francisco politics in 2024 can be summarized by the cliche “a knife fight in a phone booth,” 2025 was sure to be relatively civil, right?Despite not having an election — or, ahem, a scheduled election — in 2025, San Francisco politics remained frenetic and fierce, vacillating between “Let’s go, San Francisco!” and “What’s going on, San Francisco?” In many ways, 2025 turned out to be the year in which San Francisco reestablished its footing after it was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mayor Daniel Lurie took office, promising to return San Francisco to its status as the foggy envy of the world. Political moderates regained control of the Board of Supervisors and promised to bring practicality back to politics and government. The artificial-intelligence industry boomed, the economy grew and San Francisco rents resumed their longstanding tradition of being too damn high.The war over the future of Great Highway, thought to be settled with the passage of Proposition K in November 2024, waged on. After a now-closed portion of Great Highway reopened as Sunset Dunes park in April, furious Sunset-district residents waged a passionate recall campaign that successfully ousted park champion and first-term Supervisor Joel Engardio. Lurie waited weeks to appoint Engardio’s successor, district native Beya Alcaraz, only to see her resign in scandal after a week on the job.In many ways, the fundamental problems underlying The City’s challenges barely budged at all, even as the general vibes surged to record highs. Despite pressure to build thousands of new homes in San Francisco, the pace of new housing development stayed slower than eastbound Bay Bridge traffic at 5 p.m. on a summer Friday. The fentanyl crisis rages on — fatal drug overdoses were on track to roughly match their 2024 level, a rate that continues to vastly outpace the number of deaths The City experienced from COVID-19 during the pandemic. Public-transit ridership continued to inch back toward pre-pandemic norms, but both BART and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency remain mired in a pandemic-induced fiscal crisis that will require them to head to the ballot in 2026 for financial support from voters. And the 2-mile stretch of highway next to the ocean continued to suck up more than its fair share of The City’s political oxygen — so much so, in fact, that it might just be headed back to the ballot for a repeat in 2026.The chief criticism against Lurie in the 2024 election was that he had never before held public office . But Lurie quickly dispensed with any lingering belief that San Francisco would unravel after his swearing into office. Lurie, who pitched himself as an antidote to City Hall insiders throughout the 2024 campaign, didn’t exactly commence a purge when he took office, but has slowly molded it to be a bit less “city family” and a bit more McKinsey. Many of his key department heads come from within, including his recent appointment of SFPD veteran Derrick Lew to serve as the next police chief. But he also tapped people without experience in city politics or office to serve in key roles, such as former McKinsey consultant Kunal Modi, who is serving as his chief of health and human services. Within weeks of taking office, Lurie had won legislative support for his signature piece of legislation — the fentanyl emergency ordinance, which wrested power from the Board of Supervisors and gave his office greater control over how The City responds to the fentanyl and homelessness crises. The emergency ordinance wasn’t exactly the declaration of emergency he had long promised on the campaign trail in 2024 — there’s a legal distinction — nor has it solved all of San Francisco’s problems in the subsequent months. But its passage was an early and significant political victory for the new mayor, showing that he could work hand in hand with the Board of Supervisors. That ability would prove critical later in the year when, in December, Lurie won the board’s support for his Family Zoning ordinance. The City has been given relatively little flexibility by its state overseers, who are demanding that San Francisco make way for some 36,000 new homes by loosening the rules that govern housing density. Ex // Top Stories 2025 brought big ups and downs on downtown's road to recovery The fortunes of The City’s business core were a study in contrasts — growing vibrancy and investment beside evidence of continuing economic malaise Noe Valley shop a sweet destination for SF chocolate lovers Chocolate Covered boutique on 24th Street has satisfied residents’ cravings for more than 30 years Homelessness, opioids crises continued in 2025 In Mayor Daniel Lurie’s first year, The City adopted new strategies to address its two most persistent failures — with mixed results The state’s order didn’t make the idea any less locally controversial. Tourists think San Francisco is defined by chowder-soaked bread bowls and the Golden Gate Bridge, but locals know that fighting over development is as San Franciscan as anything. Despite the high stakes — God help the supervisor who has to face constituents furious at a new eight-story highrise casting a long shadow on their home, or the beloved mom-and-pop shop displaced by new development — Lurie and the Board of Supervisors agreed to a plan that allows for increased housing density and development The City’s northern and western neighborhoods. If nothing else, the upzoning plan proved a relatively in-step mayor and Board of Supervisors can get something over the finish line. The same could be said about The City’s annual budget, which this year rose to $15.9 billion in spending. Lurie and lawmakers were forced to close a massive $800 million two-year budget deficit and attempt to brace the inscrutability of President Donald Trump’s administration. Speaking of the 45th and 47th president, the same day Lurie won his first term in office, Trump won his second. Trump’s victory cast an immediate shadow over local politics. In a city so blindingly blue — home to some of his favorite enemies — how would local leaders navigate the unknowns and all-too-knowns of a Trump administration? Lurie chose from the jump to avoid direct confrontation with Trump at all costs and has never deviated from that strategy. It’s unclear whether he has ever publicly spoken Trump’s name, even when referring to the president directly. Instead, The City’s pushback against Trump has largely been led by City Attorney David Chiu, who has filed several lawsuits against the administration, including a bid to block Trump from ending birthright citizenship. That’s not to say Lurie isn’t aware of who’s in the Oval Office and how it might affect San Francisco. In budget negotiations this year, Lurie and the Board of Supervisors set aside $400 million in reserves to offset potential funding losses that could result from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans’ budget cuts. Lurie was also forced to react when it appeared San Francisco would be next on the growing list of cities chosen by the Trump administration for a widespread and intense immigration-enforcement operation in October. As federal agents gathered at an U.S. Coast Guard base in Alameda, Lurie once again avoided a tit-for-tat with Trump and instead focused on preparing for the worst — asking San Franciscans to walk their neighbors’ kids to school if need be — and making the case for why an immigration-enforcement surge in San Francisco would do nothing to lower already low crime rates. San Francisco was ultimately spared from the scenes of violent ICE and Border Patrol arrests — and the subsequent protests seen in other cities — as Trump called off the operation at the last moment. That decision was openly credited to wealthy San Francisco business leaders, though Lurie still received widespread acclaim for having navigated the situation without inflaming Trump’s temper.Lurie appointed a fellow City Hall outsider to the Board of Supervisors to replace Engardio in Alcaraz, whose political experience matched that of Lurie’s prior to the latter’s election — zilch. Though a person curiously close to Alcaraz’s description had polled well in the Outer Sunset and Outer Parkside prior to the appointment, Lurie’s team evidently failed to do enough digging into Alcaraz’s past. Within days, media reports uncovered that the new owner of Alcaraz’s former Sunset-district pet store was distraught when she took the reins and found it dirty and disheveled. Further troubling matters, it came to light that city inspectors had visited Alcaraz’s store multiple times, and she appeared to admit in text messages to the shop’s new owner that she had violated tax laws by paying employees under the table. It didn’t take long for Alcaraz to resign. In her wake, Lurie appointed Alan Wong, a former Board of Supervisors legislative aide and current City College board member. Wong has already lasted longer in the job than Alcaraz, but whether he makes it a full year depends on whether he can win election in June 2026.
Joel Engardio Great Highway Family Zoning Plan Beya Alcaraz Alan Wong
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