Daniel Lurie’s bizarre, cynical pick for Sunset supervisor

Last week, Mayor Daniel Lurie stole a page from the script of the president whose name he refuses to utter. By appointing a glaringly inexperienced and unqualified supervisor to represent the Sunset, the mayor made an uncharacteristically cynical and risky move — especially for someone whose own thin résumé was a liability in his run for office.

As far as I can tell, Lurie’s political calculus in naming Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz — a 29-year-old former pet-supply shop owner who never had shown the slightest interest in San Francisco’s civic affairs — to the Board of Supervisors goes something like this: By appointing someone who is a blank slate, with no known positions on anything other than loving the Sunset, Lurie has birthed a lawmaker who will be completely loyal to him. If Alcaraz can somehow win a special election in June, then a general election five months later, he will have created an iron-clad ally on the famously fractious board.

But this is a huge risk for the mayor. He and the team that vetted Alcaraz will be wholly responsible for guiding her through the complexities of governing and politicking, from staffing her legislative office to positioning her for a campaign against formidable competition.

The mayor got Alcaraz off to a quick start: As The Standard’s Power Play newsletter reported Sunday, Lurie is activating his “prodigious fundraising network” to support the new supe, and his staff is already helping her hire her own. On Friday, he accompanied her to the annual Bruce-Mahoney football match between St. Ignatius College Preparatory School and Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, where Lurie (opens in new tab)threw an impressive, pregame spiral (opens in new tab) and Alcaraz wore her SI varsity jacket from her days on the high school’s crew team.

Lurie is already attempting to spin Alcaraz’s shortcomings into positives. “When I talk to Beya, I see someone who is not a career politician but has spent her life in service to this community,” he said at her swearing-in ceremony. “She doesn’t owe anyone anything other than the people who live right here in the Sunset.”

It’s impossible to fault Alcaraz, who had the gumption to approach Lurie at a night market, for wanting this role. Before last week, she was working for an after-school enrichment program, having apparently mucked up her failed pet store, which smelled “like death” when she handed it over to a new owner, The Standard reported Monday. Now she is (opens in new tab)earning more than $175,000 a year (opens in new tab) in a government job with top-notch benefits.

Chutzpah alone, however, is a poor substitute for qualifications, experience, or even previously demonstrated curiosity about the subject matter.

Alcaraz attended Diablo Valley College in the East Bay and City College of San Francisco but didn’t receive a degree from either. She told me in a brief phone interview Saturday that she studied physics and business but didn’t finish the coursework because she devoted herself seven days a week to her store. (She bought the store in 2019, when she would have been at least 22, more than enough time to have earned a two-year associate degree.)

Alcaraz at her former store, The Animal Connection, in February. According to the new owner, Alcaraz left the store in a state of squalor when she handed it over this year. | Source: Autumn DeGrazia/The Standard

College is neither for everyone nor a prerequisite for success in life. It is, however, required for many jobs in San Francisco government. For example, the city stipulates that candidates for a senior administrative analyst role, a relatively low-level bureaucratic position, have “a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university and three years full-time equivalent experience performing professional-level analytical work.” 

Legislative aides on the Board of Supervisors, the type of people who will work under Alcaraz, must have “two years of general administrative or office-management experience, preferably in a public or community-based agency” or have graduated from “a four-year college or university … or an equivalent combination of training and experience.”

Alcaraz doesn’t merely lack credentials. Before she pitched Lurie, she hadn’t shown any clear interest in government. I asked her over the weekend if she had ever been to a Board of Supervisors meeting or a commission hearing. “I have been diligently reviewing the videos,” she told me, referring to (opens in new tab)SFGovTV (opens in new tab) replays of legislative sessions — which I took to mean she hadn’t.

I have, in past columns, railed against the multitude of San Francisco’s commissions, and I often am stupefied at the hours of time wasted by the city’s prodigious public commentariat. But say one thing for the volunteer public servants on the dais and the gadflies who grill them: They show up. They demonstrate their interest in the city’s governmental affairs. 

Alcaraz listed for me examples of her civic engagement. “I’ve always been very active in the service world. I have volunteered at at-risk youth camps. I coached basketball. I did a pet-food bank. I would work the church fundraisers for sports camps and help plan parts of the dinners.” She also compared herself to Lurie: “I think the mayor is kind of an example of someone who wasn’t in office before, and then suddenly was.”

Oh my. I am not here to denigrate the value of bake sales and church dinners and the good deeds they fund. But they hardly are preparation for the complexities of this city’s legislative affairs, which are a convoluted mess that take even seasoned operators decades to learn.

Alcaraz told an affecting tale last week about her frustration with applying for a permit to build an animal-waste shed behind her shop, and how the experience helps her empathize with the plight of small-business owners. No doubt. But that’s a bit like saying that suffering the indignity of being kept waiting for hours in the emergency room makes you eligible to be a surgeon. 

The elephant in the room of Alcaraz’s unlikely ascension is the outsize controversy over last year’s Proposition K — which closed a section of the Great Highway to cars and created the Sunset Dunes park — as well as the subsequent firestorm that cost former Supervisor Joel Engardio his job. Alcaraz has refused to say how she voted on Prop. K. She told me she wants to look forward rather than “causing new divisiveness.”

Based on a defensive comment she made last week, though, I’m guessing she voted yes. “The way I voted on Prop. K is because we didn’t have all the facts,” she said at her appearance with Lurie. “We weren’t informed. I did the best I could with the information I was given.”

I asked her why she felt uninformed. “What I mean by that is the way in which Prop. K was introduced,” Alcaraz said. “Obviously, the Sunset felt completely betrayed and blindsided. There was no public forum. We weren’t able to voice our feelings.”

The response suggests that Alcaraz has mastered the typical gripe of San Franciscans who don’t like a thoroughly aired out policy decision — and proceed to complain that they aren’t being heard. That Engardio bamboozled his constituents is an assertion with which opposing sides will never agree. That the Sunset wasn’t able to voice its feelings before and after the vote on Prop. K is laughably untrue.

Americans may have to settle for a (opens in new tab)TV host as defense secretary (opens in new tab) and an (opens in new tab)insurance lawyer (opens in new tab) as the U.S. attorney in a key federal district for years to come. That’s a reality that liberal San Franciscans have to live with. But residents of District 4 will not have to accept Alcaraz. They will have their say about who represents them — and whether they feel respected by the mayor — in seven short months. 

If Lurie doesn’t regret this decision already, he may then.