Is San Francisco…Conservative?
When you think of San Francisco, you probably don’t think of a place that is politically moderate. The Bay Area has historically been a political lightning rod, known for its progressive policies and the unlivable outcomes of those policies. But what if the most ‘radical’ thing San Francisco did recently…was start agreeing with conservatives on basic realities? The city has begun to shift, and it just might have rediscovered common sense.
Reform to Public Transportation
Last week, as I was scrolling through recent political news, a headline caught my eye. It read, "San Francisco Solved Metro Vandalism with One Neat Trick.” Obviously wanting to know what the neat trick was, I proceeded to click and read through the article.
Now if you know anything about San Francisco, you know it is not the safest place in the world; in recent years especially, the city has gained national news attention on a regular basis as the poster child for progressive policies. That reputation isn’t unfounded, in fact it’s rather well-deserved. One key area where residents of the city experience the outcomes of bad policies most is public transportation.
San Francisco public transport has been widely viewed as unsafe due to high rates of harassment, open drug use, and violent crime on both the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and Muni. In fact, a 2025 survey reported that 36% of riders have experienced physical assault firsthand, with another 74% reporting they had witnessed it happen to someone else.[1] Which, although insane and deeply troubling, also makes sense – because when a city has the 10th largest homeless population in the nation[2] and historically soft-on-crime policies, as SF does, then of course that is a recipe for unsafe conditions in any public environment, especially one as accessible as public transportation.
But there has apparently been a recent policy change that is rolling all this back. According to the article I was reading in The Atlantic, BART installed new, six-foot tall, plexiglass barriers that ensure riders pay the fare before entering to ride. So, you’re probably asking, how is this revolutionary? Didn’t they always require riders to pay the fare? Well, not really.
San Francisco has continually caved to public pressure and accusations of racism, able-ism, and a whole host of other -isms that people use to force politicians to adopt “more empathetic” (ahem, weaker) policy positions. The gates they previously had in place years ago were called “anti-poor, anti-homeless, and ableist,” and in an attempt to not be any of those things, they were done away with.[3] Additionally, there was outrage against workers dispatched to check for riders’ tickets. Critics accused this process of being racist by disproportionately affecting people of color – which, I’m not sure how someone not having paid to ride the transit relates at all to their race, or how it is the fault of the person asking to see their ticket – but nonetheless, it forced the hand of BART leadership to stop the practice under the guise of “racial profiling.”[4]
But with the stunning results of the 2025 survey that I mentioned earlier, the BART Police Department and other leadership determined things could not continue the way they were being done. People needed to be able to utilize public transportation without the fear, or even expectation, of being assaulted. In response, they installed 715 of the new fare gates across all stations in SF, and doubled police officer presence systemwide, including on the trains themselves. The outcomes of these actions have been nothing short of what you would expect when you actually enforce the rules – with overall crime down a whopping 41% as compared to last year.[5] On top of that, graffiti and vandalism have been majorly reduced, and the new system is poised to generate an estimated $10 million annually simply by ensuring every rider pays the required fee.[6] BART spokesperson Alicia Trost has acknowledged the success of the new gates as well as police presence, “The numbers tell us that these fare gates are preventing unwanted behavior that impacts the station environment. Those people are no longer entering BART.”[7]
What was most interesting to me about this whole story was the fact that officials literally saw the poor outcomes of their policy decisions and decided to course correct. They saw that by not enforcing any kind of fare policy, they were letting people into BART stations and on trains who were only there to commit vandalism or crime. By doing something as simple as installing a gate, they have been able to keep those bad actors out. Seems like common sense reform to me!
Reform to Public Safety
While the recent BART change may be the clearest example of commonsense reform in the city, it is not the only one to pay attention to. In fact, overall crime across San Francisco dropped significantly in 2025 and that trend is continuing in 2026. Overall crime was reduced by 25% in 2025, and homicides decreased to record levels in the past 70 years.[8] This is a huge deal for the bay area!
What has contributed to this shift? To no one’s surprise, it is once again attributable to policy course corrections.
The first change is the prioritization and support of police. SF’s Mayor issued an executive order back in May of 2025 to increase staffing in the city’s police department. This included strategies like letting retired officers return to the workforce, cutting bureaucratic red tape in the hiring process, and boosting the department’s recruitment and marketing efforts.[9] By October, the San Francisco Police Department was reporting the largest influx of new recruits they had seen in years, with entry-level applications up by 40%.[10]
Other changes include targeted campaigns against each type of crime ravaging the city. One of these is the work of the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center, which made over 6,000 arrests in 2025 for drug dealing, drug use, and other drug-related crimes. For retail theft, the SFPD has enacted patrols and advanced license plate reading technology that have both deterred crime and led to key arrests. Plus, SFPD has employed the use of drones to provide air support to officers first responding to the scene of a crime.[11]
But the best and most effective change has been the prosecution of criminals. Previous District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, was notorious for his focus on reducing incarceration, instead implementing diversion programs and eliminating cash bail. He was recalled because of how progressive he was – and for what a failure his tenure was in the role. In contrast, the new District Attorney, Brooke Jenkins, outlined her priorities, saying in response to the dropping crime rates, “I have made working with the San Francisco Police and other law enforcement agencies a top priority and am proud of the work that we have done together to drive crime in San Francisco to historic lows. Working together, we have shown our residents and our state what is possible when leaders prioritize public safety over ideology and politics.”[12]
Reform to Small Businesses
Meanwhile, the recognition that safety is important in a city is not the only area being reformed; there is also a growing understanding of the importance of local business. In the 2024 election, San Franciscans passed Proposition M – which significantly raised the small business tax exemption threshold to $5 million in gross receipts and eliminated registration fees to simplify taxes and encourage business growth.[13] Residents voting to reducing taxes in a blue city is unheard of!
On top of that, SF’s Mayor also passed the PermitSF Legislative Package last year, which cuts red tape to accelerate economic recovery and support small businesses.[14] He said of the legislation,
“When I talk with our small business owners, I hear the same story again and again: Working with the city feels like swimming upstream. The permitting process should be simple – instead, it slows them down, drains their resources, and discourages investment. I am determined to create the conditions for success, with legislation like the package I’m about to sign and through the partnership of everyone here.”[15]
There is a recognition that business is the driver of economic success, and cities that overburden their residents with regulations discourage that investment rather than empower it.
Pragmatic Leadership
So, considering all these changes, what is going on in San Francisco? Where is this coming from? Is San Francisco becoming – dare I say it – conservative?
It all boils down to leadership. There have been different initiatives and measures here and there that have contributed to each of the changes discussed, but most of them are driven by a top-down approach, with the leadership at the top setting the tone for the policy directions the city is heading in. Which brings us to San Francisco’s current mayor, Daniel Lurie, who was elected in 2024.
Since being elected, his administration has centered on a more pragmatic, results-oriented approach to issues like street conditions, public safety, and city services. During his campaign, he pledged to balance the budget deficit and crack down on crime[16] – two issues top of mind for San Francisco voters. And thus far after his election, he has delivered on those promises.
Lurie’s key philosophy is that there are a handful of issues that are not partisan at their core – think of crime, government fiscal responsibility, and basic economics. On those issues, he stresses that common agreement is far more important than party loyalty. Another key example outside of the many already mentioned is Lurie’s decision to end San Francisco’s policy of giving out free drug supplies like syringes.[17] This embodies the idea that it isn’t conservative or liberal to recognize that enabling addiction is a bad position to take. He even said as much during his campaign, “I welcome the support of every San Franciscan who is committed to restoring safety, ending homelessness, and shutting down open-air drug markets. That’s not partisan. It’s common sense.”[18]
Lurie symbolizes a significant move toward the middle politically for San Francisco, and it’s something that is desperately needed in our state if we are to have any hope of returning to a livable society. We need leaders all throughout California who are pragmatic – who see the outcomes of policy and course correct when it is off. If you pass a law to hand out free needles to the homeless so they can continue doing drugs but then lament the fact that the drug epidemic in your city is worsening, you are willfully blind to the consequences of your own actions.
But that is exactly what our Governor and our Legislature has been doing! They raise minimum wage, then complain about inflation. They mandate affordable housing, then cry that young families can’t afford to become first-time homebuyers. They raise taxes but feign outrage at how high gas prices are. In literally every circumstance, they cause the very problems they pretend they are upset about, and it is because there is a supreme lack of honesty and pragmatism in our leadership.
Good leaders lead based off outcomes, not intentions. You might have intended to help minimum wage workers by giving them a higher paycheck – but the outcome has realistically hurt them by pushing up inflation. In that scenario, a good leader takes a step back and tries a different approach, recognizing that one didn’t work. But when you are moved by your ideology, it prevents you from leading with this type of pragmatism. It blinds you and causes you to continually shift the blame for all the problems plaguing you.
What California needs, in all her major cities, is more leaders like Mayor Lurie who say there are issues that are not partisan but are evidence-based; and who then make their decisions based off the evidence and not off their own emotions.
What This Means for California
This does not mean that San Francisco, today, is conservative. But it does show us that even the most radical cities can move to a more moderate, stable place, that is influenced by the conservative values of personal responsibility, limited government, and biblical morality. Leadership matters, and not all hope has to be lost! This should give us supreme hope for our state – that all it takes is one good leader, one person to set the right tone and to then roll back all the foolish policies that have led us into decline, for us to see real change, for the better. San Francisco is our prime example of why we do not give up the fight. Places can change; people can change! But it starts with clarity about the problems in front of us, honesty about their root causes, and pragmatism in approaching their solutions.
This is why I do what I do here every week, and it’s why you’re here too – because an informed California can truly become a better California. We must let go of the cynicism, the pessimistic all or nothing mindset that says California is too far gone, that change is too impossible, that what has been will always be. If San Fran-freaking-cisco can clean up its crime and drug problems, then surely all hope is not lost! We just must be willing to work for it, to keep the faith, and to fight for truth when it seems the lies are winning. We have to take heart at the small victories, seeking out the places we can find the middle ground and persuading others over to a more moderate position.
So, for today, celebrate this as a win! And then tomorrow, get to work. We have a state to save.
References:
[1] Deutsch-Gross, Zack. “Muni Survey Exposes Dire Need to Address Transit Safety,” Transform, February 13, 2025, https://transformca.org/muni-survey-exposes-dire-need-to-address-transit-safety/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20preliminary%20survey%20by%20San,behavior%20was%20verbal%20harassment%20or%20hostile%20gestures.
[2] Johnson, Steven Ross, Julia Haines, and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky. “The 25 Major U.S. Cities With the Largest Homeless Populations.” U.S. News, January 8, 2025. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/cities-with-the-largest-homeless-populations-in-the-u-s?onepage.
[3] Harding, Amanda. “One Hardline Change and Crime Starts Falling Almost Overnight,” April 21, 2026. https://www.dailywire.com/news/one-hardline-change-and-crime-starts-falling-almost-overnight.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Bay Area Rapid Transit. “Crime on BART Drops 41% in 2025,” January 29, 2026. https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2026/news20260129.
[6] Swan, Rachel. “BART’s Long Fight Against Fare Evasion Is Finally Paying off. Here’s How Much.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 2026. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/new-bart-fare-gates-generate-10-million-annually-21345215.php.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Fang, Tim. “San Francisco Leaders Say 2025 Had ‘Historic’ Drop in Crime; Homicides at 70-year Low.” CBS News, January 2, 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-2025-crime-drop-historic-homicides-70-year-low/.
[9] CBS News. “San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie Issues Order to Increase SFPD Staffing,” May 14, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/sf-mayor-daniel-lurie-issues-rebuilding-the-ranks-order-increase-sfpd-staffing/.
[10] Fang, Tim. “San Francisco Police Reports Surge in Recruits; Entry-level Applications up 40%,” CBS News, October 15, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-police-2025-recruit-surge-officer-shortage/.
[11] San Francisco Police Department. “San Francisco Has Lowest Homicide Rate in 70 Years, Declines Across All Major Crime Categories in 2025 26-001,” January 2, 2026. https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/news/san-francisco-has-lowest-homicide-rate-70-years-declines.
[12] Ibid.
[13] City and County of San Francisco. “Proposition M (2024) - Business Tax Reform.” Treasurer & Tax Collector, May 21, 2025. https://sftreasurer.org/proposition-m-2024-business-tax-reform.
[14] City and County of San Francisco. “Mayor Lurie Signs PermitSF Legislation, Cutting Red Tape for Small Businesses, Driving Economic Recovery.” SF.Gov, July 17, 2025. https://www.sf.gov/news-mayor-lurie-signs-permitsf-legislation-cutting-red-tape-for-small-businesses-driving-economic-recovery.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Walters, Dan. “California’s Politics Drifts Rightward While New York’s Leans Left.” CalMatters, July 4, 2025. https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/07/california-politics-new-york-leans-left/.
[17] Bastian, Alex. “San Francisco Went Too Far in the Wrong Direction. It’s Leading the Way Again.” SF Gate, August 12, 2025. https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/san-francisco-comeback-west-coast-cities-watching-20808184.php.
[18] Li, Han. “SF Republicans Throw Support Behind Surprising Democrat for Mayor.” The San Francisco Standard, October 4, 2024. https://sfstandard.com/2024/10/04/daniel-lurie-sfgop-briones-mayor/.
