San Francisco's new mayor is starting to unite the fractured city

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Democrats nationally may be in turmoil, but liberals in San Francisco are hopeful the new mayor's collaborative approach will help solve entrenched problems in a city recently known for its bitter infighting and chaotic streets.

Daniel Lurie, an heir to the the Levi Strauss fortune and anti-poverty nonprofit founder with no elected experience, beat out incumbent London Breed in November after spending nearly $10 million of his own money. Voters embraced his promise to make government work again after years of San Francisco attracting national attention for its empty downtown, open-air drug use and sprawling tent encampments.

Earnest and affable, Lurie is often outside City Hall, talking to merchants and residents, both housed and unhoused. He's reached out to supervisors, including those who feuded with Breed, asking questions and inviting input on thorny topics.

In an interview marking 100 days in office, Lurie said San Francisco is cleaning up its act with safer streets. He brushed off concerns over the involvement of corporate executives in his administration and declined to talk about Republican President Donald Trump's potential impact on San Francisco.

“I was elected to turn this city around,” Lurie said. “And I want everybody in San Francisco to know that their mayor is focused on getting results for San Franciscans.”

Some elected officials feel hopeful about working together again after years of gridlock. Connie Chan, a progressive supervisor, says she’s already had more discussions with Lurie than she ever had with Breed.

“We feel cautiously optimistic despite a lot of attacks that we’ve seen from the federal government on San Francisco as a city and, of course, California as a state,” Chan said.

Frustrations over car break-ins and retail theft have simmered for years, with voters ousting progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in June 2022, and approving measures last year to expand police powers.

Lurie has inherited a city where reported crime and the number of visible tents are down, thanks in part to inroads made under Breed for more housing.

Lurie's policy goals are similar to his predecessor — more police and more shelter and treatment options. But he also has the advantage of being a new face with no stated aspirations for higher office, someone who can recruit business executives and fellow philanthropists for their time and money.

His board-approved fentanyl legislation expedites hiring and contracting for new behavioral health initiatives and expanded shelter capacity. He wants to add 1,500 new shelter beds and has streamlined outreach programs.

And he's proposed rezoning to build more housing.

Lurie has taken to stopping the car to jump out and talk to people who appear to be in distress. He asks if they want help — even though it’s not always available. And he wants to drive home the message that San Francisco will no longer let people do what they want in public at the expense of others.

“That behavior just can’t be tolerated any longer because families are scared,” Lurie said.

Some leaders on the left have given him the benefit of the doubt, granting him powers they likely would not have given his predecessor. Chan, for instance, endorsed legislation ceding board oversight to Lurie to battle the fentanyl crisis, after seeing how committed he was to listening to and compromising with her office on the proposed legislation.

Lurie has announced new rules around distributing free drug use paraphernalia, going against the city’s decades-old practice of promoting harm reduction. City-funded nonprofits will have to offer treatment or counseling options before giving out supplies; they will no longer be allowed to distribute smoking supplies, like tin foil and pipes, in parks and sidewalks.

The changes will make it more difficult to engage drug users for whom abstinence is not an immediate option, advocates said.

Tyler TerMeer of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which provides assistance to people dealing with substance abuse, said he's disappointed in the policy shift but hopeful that Lurie will listen to experts who've been doing this work for decades.

While overdose deaths were down last year from 2023, there were still roughly 630 that were recorded in the city. Preliminary data shows 65 overdose deaths in March, down slightly from the month before but higher than the two previous months.

Lurie founded the nonprofit Tipping Point Community in 2005, which has raised more than $400 million to house, employ and educate people living in poverty. Its work has won Lurie fans among advocates working to keep people off the city's streets.

At the same time, he comes from a family that is deeply embedded in San Francisco's history and identity: He is an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune through his mother, Mimi Haas.

He's turned to that circle for two new boards stacked with Silicon Valley leaders and other business executives to address downtown's battered image and bring back tourists and tech workers. The boards include executives from Google and Gap as well as philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Lurie's recruiting of rich CEOs has raised concerns among some who say the wealthy already have plenty of influence.

"I'm not one to trust billionaires all that much with the direction that they'll take our city, or our country as we're seeing right now,” said Anand Singh, president of Unite Here Local 2, which represents hotel workers.

But, he added, “the mayor has demonstrated that he does want to listen to working people.”

Lurie said criticism over the influence of tech and money in city politics “divided San Francisco in the past" and that this is a new San Francisco.

"I want business to be here. I want those jobs here. I want that tax revenue here," he said. “And I want them to be part of rebuilding San Francisco.”

Lurie's political honeymoon may soon end — he must figure out how to solve what is at least an $800 million gap in the city's budget over the next two years.

He didn’t say what might be cut but said he is ready to make tough decisions.

Supervisor Jackie Fielder, a progressive Democrat, said she appreciates Lurie’s candidness and has been impressed with how he engages with constituents and supervisors.

But Fielder introduced a proposal this week that could test the collaborative spirit. Her measure would grant children the right to shelter, which would upend Lurie's current policy of limiting homeless families to 90 days at a shelter.

She hopes Lurie remembers that tech companies may come and go but neighborhood businesses and communities will remain.

“He has done a good job of shaking as many hands as possible but when it comes to policy decisions, we will see in his budget what are his actual priorities,” she said.

FILE - Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, right, greets a young student while walking through the Tenderloin neighborhood Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

FILE - The crowd watches as Mayor Daniel Lurie, center, delivers his inaugural address outside City Hall, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

FILE - San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie speaks at a rally of city leaders opposing President Trump's immigration crackdown on the steps of City Hall Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025 in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Terry Chea, File)

Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, center, speaks with people in the Tenderloin neighborhood Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

FILE - Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, left, speaks to San Francisco Police Chief William Scott while walking through the Tenderloin neighborhood Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

FILE - Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, right, takes a photograph of his family while riding a cable car, before being inaugurated into office Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

FILE - Mayor Daniel Lurie, left, takes the oath of office during his inauguration Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

FILE - San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie, left, poses for a photo with Martin Damyan, who says he voted for Lurie, in San Francisco, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

FILE - San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie, middle, tours businesses as he walks through Chinatown in San Francisco, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

FILE - San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie, middle, walks with his daughter Taya Lurie, foreground left, and his wife, Becca Prowda, foreground right, while campaigning in San Francisco, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

FILE - San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie smiles while campaigning in San Francisco, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

FILE - Daniel Lurie, middle, speaks at a news conference next to his wife, Becca Prowda, middle left, in San Francisco, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wildlife crews are no longer actively searching for two juvenile gray wolves who were part of a pack that killed dozens of cows and calves last summer in Northern California’s Sierra Valley, an official said Tuesday.

The two wolves were members of the Beyem Seyo pack that in 2025 killed or injured at least 92 calves and cows in a seven-month period, according to a report released last week by two researchers with the University of California, Davis.

Wolves in the state are protected under California law and the federal Endangered Species Act. Under former President Joe Biden, officials said they planned a first-ever national recovery plan for wolves, but President Donald Trump’s administration ended that initiative in November.

In October, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it had euthanized four gray wolves — three adults and a juvenile — from the Beyem Seyo pack after “an unprecedented level of livestock attacks across the Sierra Valley” by a single wolf pack since the canids returned to the state. It also said it planned to capture and relocate the remaining two wolves to wildlife facilities to prevent their behavior from spreading to other wolves in California.

Gray wolves primarily prey on wild animals like deer and elk, not livestock, but the pack became used to killing cows and calves, the department said.

“These wolves had become habituated to preying on cattle, a feeding pattern that persisted and was being taught to their offspring which would leave to form their own packs and could teach them the same cattle-preying behavior,” the department said at the time.

But following weeks of searching for the remaining two wolves, officials have “reduced efforts to capture” them, Katie Talbot, CDFW Deputy Director of Public Affairs, said in a statement.

“Despite best efforts from CDFW’s expert wolf biologists and law enforcement officers, we have not been able to find or get close enough to these young wolves to safely capture them,” Talbot said.

“We remain hopeful our continued remote monitoring will allow for sightings that will lead to safe capture of these juveniles,” she added.

Talbot said that CDFW crews will be working this week on capturing wolves and collaring them throughout the state, including in the Sierra Valley.

Wildlife officials tried for months to prevent the pack from attacking farm animals by using drones, nonlethal bean bags, installing flags or rope to deter them and having officers in the field 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but their efforts failed.

“The efforts that the (CDFW) made were tremendous and heroic but it was too late,” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.

She said that cattle ranchers in the area should have been taking proactive prevention measures for years, including increased human presence around the cattle, keeping the livestock bunched up instead of letting them loose on large grazing pastures, and calving at the same time of year that deer and elk are birthing so wolves have a source of wild prey.

“Ranchers in California have been on notice that wolves were coming since late December 2011, when we got our first wolf. They have been on notice they would establish packs since 2015,” when the first pack was confirmed in Siskiyou County, Weiss said.

Gray wolves were eradicated in California early in the last century because of their perceived threat to livestock, with the last known native wolf killed in 1924 in Lassen County. Since their reintroduction in Idaho and at Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, they’ve proliferated throughout the West. The recovering population has meant increasing conflict with ranchers.

“It was a horrible summer here for everybody and the emotional strain was probably worse than the financial strain for most people. They did the right thing. We couldn’t go on living the way we were living,” said Rick Roberti, a cattle rancher in Plumas County and president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, who lost several animals.

Economist Tina Saitone and researcher Tracy Schohr said in UC Davis’ quarterly agricultural economics update released Friday that the Beyem Seyo pack killed more livestock than the entire wolf population of Montana killed in 2024 and the killings of farm animals by the wolves in Wyoming in 2023.

In Montana, the state’s 1,100 wolves killed 54 domestic animals in 2024, and Wyoming’s 352 wolves killed 49 livestock in 2023, the scientists said.

In California, about 70 gray wolves were responsible for 175 livestock kills between January and October of last year, with the Beyem Seyo pack responsible for half the killings, according to CDFW data.

Roberti said the attacks on livestock in Plumas and Sierra counties left many ranchers angry. He said he would like to see certain areas in the state declared “special zones” where people are allowed to hunt wolves that attack livestock.

“We’re pretty much in unison about thinking that it would help if we started taking out the ones that are just killing cattle and are too habituated to man or they’re not afraid of us,” he said.

The predators are a long way from recovery, Weiss said, adding that killing them is not a long-term solution.

“The scientific literature is pretty conclusory that killing wolves to resolve conflicts with livestock is not a solution. It can actually be counterproductive. It can result in there being more conflicts with livestock,” she said.

FILE - This remote camera image provided by the U.S. Forest Service shows a female gray wolf and two of the three pups born in 2017 in the wilds of Lassen National Forest in northern California on June 29, 2017. (U.S. Forest Service via AP, File)