Pirate Wires - How To Save San Francisco | Mayoral Candidate Mark Farrell

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

San Francisco should be the greatest city in the world, and that’s the goal. One where crime is illegal, NGO grifters are removed, public transportation is solvent, and the budget is balanced. Things, in other words, should just be normal. Pirate Wires recently endorsed Mark Farrell to become the next mayor of San Francisco. In this interview, Mark joins us to give his vision for the future of San Francisco and why he will bring the city back to it’s glory. With the election only a few days away, the path forward is clear (for people who aren’t insane.) Featuring Mike Solana, Kartik Sathappan, Mark Farrell Sign Up For The Pirate Wires Daily!  https://get.piratewires.com/pw/daily Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/endorsements-for-human-civilization-november-2024?f=home Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Mark Farrell To Pirate Wires! 2:00 - Vibe Shift On Crime 5:30 - Police Budgets 9:00 - Corruption In Government Agencies 12:30 - Homelessness 15:40 - Open Air Drug Markets 19:30 - Housing Crises 23:30 - Mark’s KPIs 25:30 - Prop D 28:15 - What Can The Mayor Actually Do? 33:30 - Tech Industry 37:00  - Rank Choice Voting 40:55 - What Does SF Look Like In 4 Years?  #podcast #politics #technology #culture #election #sanfrancisco

We need someone in the weeds, and this mayor has just been very kind of absentee, governing by press release, and we're seeing, unfortunately, the results on our streets. Our city population has decreased 7%. At the same time, our city government headcount has increased 8%. Cut out the corruption, make our spending much more efficient, much more effective. I will be a mayor that is incredibly proactive with our technology community. What can we do to make your life better? And we want to get out of the way. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod. We uh a special guest today mayor mark farrell soon to be uh in the chat with us in san francisco i'm super excited about this one obviously we were

taking a break this week from the regular pod as we mentioned last week we're all at hereticon but we were recording this one and try to get out as soon as we can because we are voting in just a few days. We at PirateWire has endorsed Mark for the mayor, just a full disclosure. So you guys know where our bias is. I think that you are the right man for the job. Cardick thinks you're the right man for the job. Cardick actually worked with me on our voter guide and also connected us together for this podcast today so i wanted to bring him on and have him do this with us thank you very much for being here today sir mike thanks for having me uh cardick thanks uh thanks for uh suggesting this and uh look forward

to our conversation today and very much appreciate the endorsement for sure you got it um i think the where i want to start is this really interesting Guardian piece that talked about sort of breathlessly the uniformity of the anti-crime position now in the mayor's race. So everyone is now anti-crime. Crime has been something that I focused on at Pirate Wires in the context of San Francisco from the very beginning. The idea that crime felt sort of de facto legal is scandalous and crazy to me. It felt surreal in 2020, especially as I think when I first started crystallizing all this stuff into writing and becoming more focused on it.

I would like to know from you, first of all, if you agree with the characterization that there is a uniformity of now opinion on this issue. And then what do you think shifted? What brought you guys all, not just you, what brought the city together on this issue of just agreement that crime should be illegal? Well, first of all, crime should be illegal. That's always been the case here in our country and everywhere if we want to have a law and order and a civil society. I think it's simply because the last few years have been so bad in San Francisco under this

mayor. When I was in office before as a supervisor and during my short time as mayor before, we grew our police department to record staffing levels. Crime always exists in urban environments like San Francisco, but it wasn't a main issue. And when our current mayor defunded the police department, allowed our police staffing levels to decline over 25%, All of a sudden, crime started happening in every single neighborhood, and it is happening every single day in our city. Literally yesterday, I went to pick up a prescription at the local Walgreens, and the

woman said, Mr. Farrell, good luck in the campaign. We're rooting for you. Do you have a plan for shoplifting? I said, yeah, of course. And I said, let me ask you, though, is this happening as much as I continue to hear? She said, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Mark. It is happening every single day, all day. And that has to stop because it affects how we live in our neighborhoods as human beings, as individuals. It affects our small business community and whether stores, restaurants are open later at night or just closing early because they don't have customers. And then think about our reputational effects as a city when we had the Louis Vuitton videos the other year,

the 49er shooting the other week. Those have real effects on our city's reputation and tourism. And that has to stop. What do you think it is that, I mean, you're alluding to the Walgreens. It's clearly, I mean, we've all seen the videos and lived there and been in the stores. First of all, everything's boarded up now. You have to call for assistance to open up things for toothpaste and things like this. But also, I mean, that begins

with people coming into the store, ransacking it and walking out. That is like a crazy kind of just, again, scandalous degree of crime that is open and normalized that I don't understand. And I think a lot of other people don't understand, like, how is it this bad? How are you going to fix that? First of all, maybe how is it this bad? And then what is your plan to stop that? Well, again, look, it's this current mayor, you know, in the summer, three years ago, defunded the police department, $120 million that year. That was 20% of the operating budget of our police department, has allowed staffing levels to decline over 25%, which means that in all of our neighborhood stations,

police staffing is down about 40% in our neighborhoods. And so we just don't have enough officers to respond to calls for service, let alone actually, I think what we think about policing where I want to get to is there's enough officers there to be a deterrent effect, so crime doesn't happen to begin with. Is it true that people, the cops are reluctant to police because the crime isn't prosecuted as much? Or was that true? Is it no longer true? I think it's different when we had our prior district attorney with Chesa Boudin and when he was not prosecuting crimes, but actually going after officers themselves, doing their jobs.

On our current district attorney, who I'm a big supporter of and a fan of, Brooke Jenkins, I think that tide has stemmed quite a bit. So it's no longer that, but it's really about police staffing and having enough officers, again, to have a deterrent effect in our neighborhoods, to arrest people as they need to, but then to prevent crime from happening in the first place. And what do we do about it? Look, we need a new police chief. I've been very clear about that to inspire the rank and file in our police department on an everyday basis. We need to refund and fully fund our police department once again. Since I left office as mayor in 2018,

our overall budget in City Hall has grown over 40%. And our police department budget's grown about 15%. Yeah. Where is that money going, by the way? I mean, that's, I've covered this a bit. I think you're at like $13 billion a year now, I believe. 15.8 billion. Okay.

So that is more than, when I moved to San Francisco in, it was 2011, it was like 6 billion or so. That's an insane increase for what seems like a deteriorated level of service in almost every aspect. Literally, where did it go? Where is that money? Well, I'll give you a more pointed example. So I left office as mayor in 2018. And the budget that I put together was an $11 billion budget for the city of San Francisco. It has grown close to $5 billion over the last six years. Ask any single San Francisco. It has grown close to $5 billion over the last six years. Ask any single San Francisco resident, and by the way, this is annual spend. So ask any single San Francisco resident over the last 12 months, have you seen

$5 billion of additional spend on our streets in our city government compared to six years ago? Most people would articulate it's completely worse as a city. So we have a lot of justification for the residents of San Francisco, how we're spending the money. And as I say always, we do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem inside of City Hall. And that's what needs to get fixed. And why, when I talk about having a finance background and coming from the business and finance sector, coming from the tech sector, having that background to lead on the budget in City Hall over the next four years, I think it's going to be more important than any other time in our city's

history, given the state of our budget and given the fact that under this current mayor, now we're projected to have a billion and a half dollar deficit in five years. Well, do you have a sense of, I mean, again, do you have a sense of where they blew it or is it just, I mean, should there be an investigation or something? It seems crazy to me that you just, it seems like people don't know where it is. Yeah, I mean, I'll give you two buckets to think about. Because I get asked often, you know, okay, you want to fund more police officers. You want to actually get people off the streets, the homeless and the drug crisis. You want to invest tax incentives for our economy.

How are you going to pay for that? Number one, since COVID, our city population has decreased 7%. At the same time, our city government head count has increased 8%. That just doesn't make sense. I mean, that's insanity, right? Nobody would operate their own household, small business, big business that way. But the bigger bucket of that 5 billion, approximate $5 billion of growth, over two billion of that is going to a big bucket called community health and welfare. And again, ask anybody in San Francisco the five billion dollar bigger number, but around community health and welfare. And you think about those. I think about that inherently, the homeless, the drug issues on our streets, those suffering that are less well off.

the drug issues on our streets, those suffering that are less well off. No one sees that type of increase. And the reality is it's going mostly to these nonprofits now in San Francisco. Day one, when I launched my campaign, I said, the day I become mayor, I'm going to initiate a full audit of our entire nonprofit industrial complex, the city of San Francisco funds, which we desperately need to do. It's led to a lot of corruption and inefficient, ineffective spending. I mean, to give you a quick example, last year alone for homeless services only, the mayor funded 248 different nonprofits. That's number one. And the worst part is...

That's almost two and a half. I thought it was something like 80. I had no idea it was that many. Here's the worst part. Multiple instances, up to six different city departments were funding the same nonprofit with six different city contracts, but they didn't realize it or know about it. And that's why I've been very clear as soon as I come into office, one of the major structural policy differences, and this is born from having been there, done that, I'm going to cut off every department's ability to issue their own third-party contracts, bring it under one roof, cut out the corruption, make our spending much more efficient, much more effective, and then ultimately be able to truly tell these nonprofits and for-profit

entities that we fund out of City Hall, these are performance contracts. These are not annuities to pay your salaries. We're going to put in KPIs. We're going to put in true performance metrics. And if you don't hit them, your funding's over. And we have to be very dogmatic about that because this is not to fund their salaries. This is to fund services for San Francisco residents. If we're not getting the bang for our buck, they're gone. Cardick, I know you had a related question about homelessness. Do you want to tee it up? Because we're kind of on there now. Yeah, for sure. For homeless. I mean, the first question I actually have, Mark, based on what you just said is, do you think the bigger problem is corruption or simply incompetence?

Yeah, it sounds like stupidity is what you were saying before. Yeah, but corruption exists. It's a big problem. It's a big problem because it erodes faith in our city government, right? Hey, if you think certain people are stealing or doing what have you, or we've seen, you know, going to lavish steak dinners and limos in Tahoe on our city fund, kind of on the backs of our city government. Yeah, that erodes faith in our city government.

And that's the problem. Do I think it happens all over the place? Probably not. The real issue here, as I think about driving San Francisco forward, we have to root that corruption out. Let's be super clear about that and hard stop on that. But the real issue is incompetence and a lack of leadership inside of City Hall. We need a mayor who's going to come in. I tell everyone, the least sexy part about being mayor

is that you need to be in there and actively manage your city government. You need to be in the weeds with every department. I mean, the next mayor is going to inherit what? Close to a $16 billion budget, 35,000 plus city employees, and over 50 direct department head reports. When I was mayor before, I was at 815 on my desk. We brought the whiteboards, cranked, had lunch brought in, cranked with department heads, policy, vision, brought them back the next week if it wasn't working. We need someone in the weeds. And this mayor has just been very kind of absentee, governing by press release. That doesn't work. And we're seeing, unfortunately, the results on our streets as we live our daily lives in San Francisco. And that has to change. We need a leader with not only a backbone and a vision for where we're going to go as a city,

but someone who can't wait to get in the weeds with our different city departments and run our city government effectively. Because I don't care if it's in the public sector or a private sector, an organization that large, you have to be a leader and a manager of that entire organization and it's simply not happening today. And then the follow up on that, Mark, basically for homelessness, when I talk to any group of friends that's going to vote in the city, a lot of people realize we have more money than almost any other city. Even for nonprofits, last year alone, we spent $1.7 billion. We sent over at nonprofits. About 20% of that has gone to now known corrupt nonprofits. And so if that's true, we could do crazy things. You could build a tower. You could build an island. You could

have a nurse per homeless person. You know what I mean? With that kind of money, especially if you're running a company, I've never worked in government, so that might be a different problem, but it doesn't mean it can't be solved. The money is physically there. That's what we all know. And so I kind of just love to hear your opinion on that and how can we actually get this done? Because more money is clearly not the answer. Look, couldn't agree with you more. A few things I'll point to. Number one, we have had a housing first approach for a homeless situation since the mid-90s. It says Mark Farrell's homeless on the streets of our city. The best outcome for me is a permanent subsidized unit of housing.

Can I just back up? So to define for people who maybe don't understand what that means, we're talking about the idea that every homeless person in the city is entitled to like a free one bedroom apartment or something. Well, that's the policy approach. I mean, we're obviously not there yet. But I think that what you're hinting to as well as the bottom line is we don't have enough taxpayer dollars to fund that when we're building units at 800, $900,000 a clip, let alone if we did that, everybody would move to San Francisco because they were promised lifetime of free housing, if you will. So we need to move. I've been very clear from a housing first approach to a shelter first approach where we get people off the streets en masse, have the ability to get people off the streets, a roof over their heads, almost triage at that point in time. Right. Different services available, whether you have mental health, drug issues.

You know, not everyone's going to be alike, but get them off the streets and give them a chance at a different life. We can do that and clean up our neighborhoods at the same time, feel great about what we're doing as San Franciscans and have a dramatic impact on our streets. But I also think, you know, it's, we have to think outside the box in so many ways in our city government. And that's why I think, you know, having been in the private sector for over 20 years makes a big difference. You know, right now, the city, oftentimes we encounter somebody who has a drug issue and our solution is rent them an SRO room in the Tenderloin, leave them alone and basically think they're going to get better. That's the definition of insanity. You know, but we own, for instance, facilities outside of our own city limits that might be more conducive

where someone wouldn't want to go. You know, We own a place called the Law Cabin Ranch, 22 acres close to Half Moon Bay. It used to be part of our juvenile probation department. It has beds, plumbing. It's been shuttered for five years. Let's reopen that facility, have services attached to it, a place where people might want to go to recover, get off the streets of San Francisco, clean up our city and help them out individually. That's a win-win for everybody. We're just not even talking about it as a city government right now. My question would be, or not my question, I guess it's the question is why do they want to be in the city? And it's related to our first bucket, which was crime. It's because that's where the drugs are, right? So, I mean, if you don't have like an open air

drug market downtown in the Tenderloin, then already there's less of an incentive for someone to be in the city, I think, and maybe more of an incentive to go to a facility like you're talking about. Look, 100%. You know, the drug supply is a major problem in San Francisco. Obviously, we don't have border walls in San Francisco and never will. So the question is, what do we do? And from my perspective, I've been very clear about declaring a fentanyl state of emergency as soon as I'm in office. You can get state and federal funds with that. Most important piece is that you can get state and federal law enforcement help. I believe in our sanctuary city in San Francisco, but when we

bring the federal law enforcement into the equation, the risk of actual deportation, the risk of deportation for the foreign nationals, which account for 95% plus of the drug dealing in San Francisco right now, especially as it relates to fentanyl, has to be on the table. If it's not, it's a joke. You know, I was with a police officer about two months ago. Poor guy, he found somebody with a backpack, you know, dealing fentanyl, small amounts on them, the way they organized this. And his only solution was to write the guy a ticket. And I watched this guy look at the ticket, look up at the officer, smile, crumple the ticket up, throw it down the street and walk away. And, you know, first of all, that means it's ineffective.

But second of all, do you realize how demoralizing that is to the police officers on our streets when they realize they're essentially neutered? And so we need federal law enforcement to come in on the drug dealing side of the equation. To your point, cut off the supply. And we're going to make a long step towards really solving this issue in San Francisco. Yeah, the Honduran drug dealer thing that has been I mean, I remember Chase Abodin sort of accusing people of racism for talking about that. But it seems to me like quite an important thing that there are foreigners in the city selling drugs and when they are apprehended, they cannot be deported. I know you were saying the sanctuary city thing, you know,

you're pro sanctuary city. Probably most people think that is something like, there's like a little old lady here who's been living here for decades and we're not going to let ICE deport her. How do you navigate? Like, how do you make sure that she's fine, but Honduran drug dealers are being deported? Yeah, that's where you have the federal government come in from a law enforcement perspective around drug dealing. That's the targeted area. That's the issue that matters the most to San Franciscans in the drug crisis right now. That's how you do it. And look, we don't take any joy, but I'm a data guy. We got to be honest about where we sit as a city right now. I love our city. I'm born and raised here, raising our children here. There's no bigger cheerleader for San Francisco than I am. But I don't care if it's a drug crisis or economy. If we want to move our city forward in a sustainable fashion, really turn the page on the last few years of complete failed leadership in City Hall and chart a different course, write a new chapter for San Francisco, we have to be honest about where we sit.

And if that means that 95% of the drug dealers plus are from out of the country, let's be honest about that and let's deal with it that way. It's data. You have to have a data-driven approach. Similarly with our economy, if we are pushing 40% plus commercial vacancy rates downtown. I talked to a guy the other day. He owns a commercial building on Powell Street in between Union Square and the cable car turnaround, that kind of four block used to be massive commercial tourist stretch. He said as of December last year, he had a tenant paying him $200,000 a month in rent. He just wrapped up negotiations with three major retailers, like global brands, offering three years of free rent. And they all said no. They didn't want to

take the inventory and employee risk. That's where we sit. So let's be honest about where we sit and let's move forward and let's give policies to address that and start to make a difference. One sort of related, now that we're on the topic of homelessness, obviously related to that is the question of housing. I think some people sort of incorrectly characterize the homeless problem as a housing problem entirely when I think probably mostly it's drugs. But on housing, that is something that everybody in the city thinks about. You know, it seems like we can't build new housing. It seems like the housing, and in my mind, and maybe you disagree, maybe you agree, it seems like we need to build more housing to get the costs down. What is going on there? And what is your plan to fix it?

Yeah, look, we have to be incredibly pro-housing here in San Francisco. I want to build housing across our city. And I've been very clear about that during the campaign. And when I was a supervisor and mayor before, I was always incredibly pro-housing inside of City Hall. And the reality is this. We're under a state mandate to build about 10,000 units a year of housing. Last year, we built 2,000. This year, we're on pace to build 350 units. And as of two months ago, year to date in our planning department, we had approved 16 new units of housing. Not 1,600 or 16,000, 16. I mean, it's scary how bad we are failing. To me, housing policy has to be number one, zoning,

number two, legislation, and number three, mayoral directives to our planning department to streamline. Number two, legislation. And number three, mayoral directives to our planning department to streamline. You know, zoning, happy to talk through details there. We need increased zoning in every neighborhood. But to me, the biggest opportunity for new and massive upzoning exists in the financials kind of downtown area, south of Market Mission Bay, along transit corridors and so forth. Legislation, we have to reduce the inclusionary from 16% to 10%. One simple thing alone, because I've sat down with real estate PE firms, I've looked at their financial models with them. We doubled as a city government the other year, the transfer tax on buildings from three to 6%. That is about a 17% IRR hit on every single real estate, commercial real estate investment in San Francisco. That's dramatic. I mean, that makes professional real estate folks say, I'm not going to put my equity and my debt in San Francisco. I'm going elsewhere. But we need someone who understands

that and comes in and says, you know what? That is literally hampering our ability to build new housing here in San Francisco. We need to reverse that out. We need to give developers incentives to actually start building. So to your point, we can build more housing. We can increase affordability by reducing costs, reducing rental prices here in San Francisco. That's where we need to get to. Mark, even moderate groups like GROSF have kind of just endorsed three candidates, basically an everybody but pescan approach. And they say, hey, if you want clean street conditions and safety, vote for Mark. And if you want housing, you know, vote for, you know, the incumbent mayor Breed. And so kind of how do you feel about that characterization? And do you think it's true? Because most San Franciscans be like,

you know, can we have both? Right. Yeah. Yeah, look, I don't dispute them on crime and clean streets and, you know, growing our economy for sure. But the right balance between being incredibly pro-housing, but not saying every single neighborhood in San Francisco needs to look the same and to be up zoned the same. We can do it with a big scalpel instead of a blunt tool instrument. And at the end of the day, you know what we need to do? We need to throw ideology out the door inside of City Hall because I don't think it's helping. You know, the yimmy-nimmy debate, progressive-moderate debate, forget about that. Let's have a mayor focus on results. That's what I want to be held accountable to. I want to put a KPI page up on the landing page of our government website. Here's what Mark

Farrell cares about. Here's what he's targeting. You know what? If I succeed, I don't even need a pat on the back. Just nod your head. Go ahead and criticize me if I'm not meeting you, but let's be held accountable. That's an interesting question or an interesting point, interesting idea, the KPIs on your page. What are your KPIs? Look, it's around the main topic areas, right? It's around public safety, the number of officers on our streets, right? It's about the funding of our police department. With the homelessness, sure enough, it's amount of tenant camments out on the streets of San Francisco, the amount of people we get into shelter, the amount of people that we send home to loved ones that will take them in and house them in different parts of the country.

As it relates to the drug crisis, amount of overdose deaths on our streets. We're breaking our own record every single year. We need to stop that. You know, this harm reduction approach as it relates to fentanyl is like oil and water. I mean, literally witnessing every single day nonprofit workers funded by our city government right now running through the tenderloin with shopping carts, handing out free packets of tinfoil and straws to those suffering from fentanyl addiction, just enabling their drug abuse on the streets, enabling them to slowly kill themselves and crushing our neighborhoods. I just don't get that approach, and it's not working. We need to get people off the streets, like I said before, give them a chance at a different life, clean up our neighborhoods at the same time. That's what's important. And then our economy.

Let's cut the commercial vacancy rate in half. Let's talk about units that we're converting from commercial to residential. Let's talk about our unemployment rate in San Francisco, our convention business in San Francisco, our sales tax that we received downtown in San Francisco. About three months ago, year over year, we were down 42% in sales tax in downtown. That's a real problem. And we need to have a mayor that's going to aggressively address that and also have the background and the chops to actually make it happen. And that's why I'm incredibly excited about the impact that we can have as mayor of San Francisco, just starting literally less than three months from now. Well, certainly there's a sense of what's wrong and what needs

to be fixed. It's like triage at this point. I think a big part of the problem is bureaucracy in terms of solving our problems. And one of the more interesting propositions I've ever seen is Prop D. Kardik, why don't you talk a little bit about or ask the question related to Prop D? Because I would love to hear, Mark, your take on this. Yeah, sure. I mean, you brought it up earlier. There's tons of commissions. You brought up that multiple people in government are paying the same nonprofit, the big blob

that is bureaucracy. And so at a high level, as far as I know, Prop D is going to cut those commissions and also cap them, which is really interesting. It feels like it's a groundbreaking proposition. So I'd love to hear, like, I know you have a lot of support behind that, kind of how that's going. Do you think it's going to pass? And, you know, what it's going to do for, you know, how is it going to affect us in our daily life? Not just kind of at that wonky level. No, no, fair enough. Look, I think it's one of the more important propositions that's been on the ballot in years in San Francisco as it relates to the structure of our city government.

So to level set, we have 130 commissions inside of City Hall to help kind of operate city government. By order of magnitude, LA has 48. San Diego has 49. We do not need 130 commissions. That comes with 1,200 city commissioners. It makes no sense in San Francisco and very, very costly. So Prop D does a few things. Number one, it reduces the amount of commissions, caps them at 65 total. So cuts them in half, essentially. The second part, what I think is probably the most interesting is it takes them from being policy bodies. And to me, I say it always, it's the police commission over the last two years really exposed the glitch in the matrix here because our current mayor appointed two commissioners without vetting them. And they had no law enforcement background. And they basically voted against how she thought

they were going to vote and behave. And you can't remove them because they're appointed to four-year terms. And so right now you have the majority of the police commission with no law enforcement background dictating policy literally to the police officers on the street. It's insane. And so it takes Prop D makes all these commissions, takes them from policy bodies to advisory only in nature and invests all the authority to run those departments from a policy perspective with the department head. So in the case of the police, it would be the police chief, Department of Public Works, the head of the Department of Public Works. And then at the end, it also allows the mayor to hire and fire each department head. It also allows the mayor to hire and fire each department head. So at the end of the day, if you want a truly accountable city government,

the people elect the mayor, the mayor appoints a department head, the department head sets the policy. That's where you want to be. Right now, it's this unfortunate, again, matrix of who can hire and fire who, the different policy bodies. There are way too many of them. We got to cut the bureaucracy, cut the dysfunction, and let's get San Francisco to be an accountable city government. It could have a real dramatic effect in the city of San Francisco. This takes me to a topic that I really wanted to discuss with you, which is just what the mayor can do.

Because I do think a lot of people have this idea of the mayor as almost like a king, you know, just come in and fix this. But over the last however many 10 years or whatever of just insanity, and it's gotten increasingly worse, obviously in 2020 it was really bad, 2021 was bad. There was just a question of who is actually in charge? Where are decisions actually being made? I would love to know just what can the mayor do right now? And then what, if you take this election, are you going to be able to do day one? Yeah. And let's be clear, having been mayor before, the mayor of San Francisco is incredibly powerful, an incredibly powerful structural position. And for our current mayor

or anybody else to say otherwise is just an excuse for not getting things done. When I was mayor and I decided to clear out the large tenant encampments in San Francisco at the time we had these tenant encampment cities growing 30, 40, 50 strong, I didn't ask the board of supervisors. I brought my department heads together, the six of them that govern kind of touched on the homeless issue. I said, we're changing our policy. We're going to offer shelter and housing, treat people the right way. But if they say no, we're taking tents away because I believe the sidewalks of our city belong to everybody. Young families, professionals, the elderly, not people that choose to come to San Francisco and choose a lifestyle on the streets of our city. And within six months, because we were consistent with that policy, we saw people coming into

shelter with greater velocity or just leaving San Francisco. And you know what? I'd like to help people, but if they're leaving because we're making that lifestyle inconvenient, And you know what? I like to help people, but if they're leaving because we're making that lifestyle inconvenient, okay, that's success as well for the mayor of San Francisco. That, to me, has to be where we go. So that's number one. But second of all, let's talk about the budget. You know, to me, the budget of any given mayor across our country is the number one policy document and important way they can affect the city of San Francisco or any city. It's how you spend your money.

This year's budget was $15.8 billion. And the way it works is the mayor puts the budget together, proposes it to the board of supervisors. They analyze it. I mean, they're the Congress to the White House, right? They're the legislative body. They analyze it, make a few tweaks, comes up with a compromise. This year of the $15.8 billion,

the Board of Supervisors analyzed less than half a percentage point of the entire budget. So put another way, over 99.5% of the mayor's budget wasn't even looked at by the board. Rubber stamped it. Yeah. So this is a ridiculously powerful position inside of City Hall.

But I think what we're also missing, you have to find common ground to work together. I don't care if you're in the private sector or in the public sector. And right now, if you disagree with somebody, this tone starts with the mayor. If you disagree, right now it's a big old blame game. And not only that, but you know what, I can, Cardiff, you guys are, you're bad people for disagreeing with me. And I'm going to say that on press and so forth. That's no way to build relationships. You can disagree on a policy, disagree on a law, you know, talk poor about each other in the press policy-wise, but maintain that relationship, that working relationship. So on that next issue, you can find common ground, move forward, make a difference for the city of San Francisco and our residents.

That doesn't happen right now. This mayor has totally failed, created a toxic atmosphere inside of City Hall. Those types of working relationships have to be brought back if we're going to move our city forward. And it's something I just can't wait to do because it will have a tremendous impact moving forward. So it sounds like budget is the big one where you see that you're going to have power. And then there's some kind of unilateral action possibly you could take in terms of clearing up tent encampments and stuff like that. Is there anything else that just is like low hanging fruit that as the mayor, you can take care of day one in San Francisco? Oh, look, 100 percent.

You know, we could be here for a long time talking about that. But the reality is the 52 departments that exist in city government are mayoral departments. So they're under the mayor's control. So, for instance, you know, I said day one, fire the police chief, bring in a new police chief. That's under my control, right? I don't have to ask the board of supervisors for that. Clearing out tenant encampments, treating people the right way with compassion, respect, but taking their tents off the streets, we can do that day one. Changing our approach from harm reduction, handing out those packets of tinfoil and straws day one, and we can remove

that. I can remove that as mayor from our Department of Public Health. So there's so much that we can do inside of City Hall that the mayor of San Francisco can do right away to effectuate change. Look, we're going to need new laws passed over time, for sure. You need to have working relationships with the Board of Supervisors. I tell people all the time, 90% of what you do as mayor has nothing to do with the board of supervisors. You're leading your city. You're running your different departments. You can have a ridiculous impact on the city. It just takes leadership. And that to me is where experience matters. Certainly a track record of success matters, but then a strong vision for where you need to go to. So every department is very clear

on kind of that we're rowing on the same war on the same boat for a different San Francisco. And again, I think the impact we can have is dramatic on the streets of our city. You mentioned the private sector a second ago, and that made me think of the tech industry. You also talked about the demonization of people and whatnot. I think that the government really demonized the technology industry over the last handful of years. Breed switched it up recently because I think she had to. She realized just how radically the vibe had shifted in the city. I would like to know just where in your vision for the future of San Francisco do you see the technology industry and what are you planning to do to, I guess,

help bring that vision to fruition? Oh, great one. Yeah, look, and let me be clear, what you're talking about in the past X number of years about the demonization of the tech industry is real, and it happened. And I was the first one to say that how incredibly misplaced that was, right? These are people that are coming in, starting companies in San Francisco, hiring people, contributing to our local economy, out in bars and restaurants. And when it was, whether it was the Google buses that people were protesting in front of a number of years ago, I co-wrote the legislation that kept Twitter inside of San Francisco and started really revitalizing the mid-market area. Employers were coming in, small businesses were being created and starting to flourish. It was working.

And so to me, that demonization of any industry is just simply wrong. At the end of the day, were we over-indexed to tech heading into COVID? Probably in the city of San Francisco. And long term, the name of the game has to be diversification of our economy, for sure, in San Francisco. The number one part of our economy has always been health care. People don't talk about that very much. Number two has always been tourism. Tech is going to be a leading player, plain and simple.

And from my perspective, I will be a mayor that is incredibly proactive with our technology community saying, thank you for being here. You are welcome to be here. What can we do to make your life better? What can we do to be proactive with your industry? And we want to get out of the way. So thanks for being here in San Francisco. And, you know, we have a seedling, like, you know, a sapling of growth here with some green shoots with the AI industry.

We need to nurture that, harness that, and we need to let that flourish and grow. And we need to let every other part of our technology industry grow here in San Francisco. We are really blessed to have a lot of investors here in the Bay Area, people like Gary Tan and Y Combinator here in San Francisco that are kind of having their companies be in San Francisco. They don't get credit enough for actually contributing to our local economy, being such positive influencers for San Francisco. They need to get that credit. And we need to say thank you. And what can we do to partner with you together to continue to have this industry flourish? It's just a complete departure from what our current mayor has done. Just, you know, again, having spent over 20 years in the private sector, you know, in and around the tech industry

at every job and every given time, you know, in and around the tech industry at every job and any every given time, you know, having that background and understanding what motivates the capital markets, companies, investors, I think is so critical as we seek to rebuild our economy here in San Francisco, and actually be able to talk the talk with CEOs and execs and investors to say, you know what, we're gonna make San Francisco place you want to come. You know, don't go to Austin anymore. Don't go to miami santa monica come back i mean people want people want to be in san francisco they just need you to help like give them the bare minimum we're talking about like the bare minimum we're talking about like not hostile policies uh and we're talking about crime

is illegal and you know the housing is more affordable and it's like, these are, these are the things. Cardiff, uh, do you have one last question? Then I've got one and it will be a quick one and we'll get you out of here. Sure. Yeah. This could go, go along, but we can keep it quick. I think it's important for people who are listening and haven't voted yet.

Uh, voting for mayor isn't so simple. We have ranked choice voting. The, the, this is one of the longest ballots, but even the mayor selection itself is an entire page on the ballot. Uh, I think there's 10, 15 people running, maybe four or five serious ones. And so could you kind of talk through like how people should think about running choice voting? And if you give a quick blurb on basically, you know, you have an alliance with Safai that you made recently. I think a lot of us were hoping there'd be better, you know, no bad blood between you and Lurie.

But unfortunately, it's kind of gone a different way. So if you could maybe talk about that very quickly, the relationship between you and Lurie, but then more importantly, how voters should think about ranked choice voting just so they don't screw it up. Yeah, look, when I launched a campaign, there was definitely some overlapping support with Lurie and the team there. You know, at the end of the day, unfortunately, what we've seen out of him is just the complete lack of experience and just total inexperience would be a real problem for San Francisco moving forward. If the sum total of your career is starting a nonprofit, which is almost like a fund of funds for other nonprofits, that is not the profile of someone that can be the mayor of

San Francisco to bring our city back. It just isn't. And not only that, but it really speaks to his demeanor and who he is as an individual. Spent over $4 million personally attacking me on TV alone. And that's one thing that's politics. But when he started hitting my wife for being a volunteer in San Francisco, I drew the line there. That's it. No, that's not the profile of person that I want to see in office, who they are as a human being. So that unfortunately came off the table

because of his actions. And just an inexperienced team, you know, his team is led by everybody that worked for Chesa Boudin. I mean, that's the type of person you get in office. And I think so dangerous for the city of San Francisco moving forward. Look, rank choice voting is important. I don't like the system. Let me be clear about it. I have always said if there's one thing that should be simple in our democracies, how to vote. And people are, as an educated electorate we have in San Francisco, people rampant confusion about it, even 20 years in to it being the voting system of record in our city. is your choice for mayor. You know what? Put somebody second or third. If somebody else that you could envision in office,

they might not be your first choice. Don't ever put anybody on your ballot you do not want to see or that you think would be toxic to long-term health. Not what's his face, Cardick? I'm blanking now. Peskin. Not Peskin, please. Please don't. Please don't.

Don't even rank him. But yeah, Mayor mark farrell first there we go and you know what i don't get prescriptive beyond asking people uh to vote for me first because people who do have different points of view relationships what have you and that's fair um but it's really important um you know i think the main thing that does not get talked about in this race but that is closing in on and we see this now emerging here in the last two weeks there's really only one moderate in this race in San Francisco. Again, Daniel Lurie has his background having started in a nonprofit.

But you know what? The signature thing that they did was around homelessness. And he funded the Coalition on Homelessness there, which is the organization that actually gave out free tents. And not only gave out free tents, but sued the city of San Francisco from actually being able to remove tents on the streets of our city. That is just not a track record of somebody

that you want as mayor of our city right now. And then London Breed at the end of the day, she's overseen the steepest decline in our city's history. You know, defunded the police department, seen police staffing levels go down 25%, can't recruit. Our economy is literally ranked dead last in the US right now in economic recovery. And we talked about these commercial vacancy rates pushing 40%. That has to change. We need somebody to come in who's really a moderate

that has a background in city government, but also a background in the private sector that can drive San Francisco forward with a real vision. I think the opportunity that exists is just incredible in front of us. This is the last question. And thank you so much for your time here. I know you're busy. Four years from now, what is the city? I would love like a lush description of what San Francisco looks like. You win.

You get to put your policies in place. You just tell me, describe that city to me. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's exciting, right? Okay. The vision for San Francisco is a San Francisco that is once again safe, where the streets are clean, as you think about the homeless and the drug crisis. We have effective policies getting people off the streets and fighting for our neighborhoods. crisis, we have effective policies getting people off the streets and fighting for our neighborhoods,

where our economy is growing again, and we once again regain the mantle of the innovation capital of the world in the tech sector, where our neighborhoods are thriving, because I do believe the neighborhoods are what make up the heart and soul of San Francisco, what makes us so unique as a city, where housing is being built at a rapid clip and it's becoming much more affordable and then we have a focus on keeping young professionals and families in our city that are leaving san francisco in droves right now whether because of our public school system because of other policies we need that next generation of san francisco residents to raise their kids here to be here for the long term. When we achieve that, I will tell you, we will have had probably one of the most dramatic impacts

in the trajectory of San Francisco, again, in modern history. It's not why you do it. It's really, in my opinion, this isn't about a career or ego. You know, aside from my children, the only thing that I will fight for with equal or greater vigor and passion is our city of San Francisco, because let's not forget, we're one of the most iconic cities of the world. We have this natural beauty. We have our parks. We have our universities. We have

more than anything, though, an ethos and a spirit about us that is, again, iconic in the world, worth fighting for. And I'm just incredibly excited about the impact we can have in the world worth fighting for. And I'm just incredibly excited about the impact we can have in the next few years. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. And I hope you win. Hope to be interviewing you once you win. So get ready for that phone call.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye, guys.