What weary San Franciscans are saying after voters rejected ‘stranglehold’ of the progressive left

Standing next to a red and gray tent, a piece of foil gripped in her left hand, a woman yelled that she needed a straw.

"There's a park. There's children right there," Darren Stallcup said as he walked past her on the trash-strewn sidewalk. "You can't smoke fentanyl next to the park."

"I can smoke anywhere I want to," the woman shouted. A San Francisco Police Department SUV sat parked mere feet away.

Scenes like this are nothing new to Stallcup, a 27-year-old California native who documents the Bay Area's homelessness and drug crises on social media platform X.

Homelessness and open-air drug markets have proliferated in San Francisco in recent years, becoming a focal point in this year's local elections. (Courtesy Darren Stallcup/X)

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"The California I knew as a little boy no longer exists because of all the chaos and lawlessness in our community," Stallcup told Fox News Digital last week.

But he and other San Francisco residents hope Election Day results spell a brighter future for the city.

"People voted for change," said Tom Wolf, an activist who was once a homeless addict. "I think they got tired of the virtue signaling, the control, the stranglehold that the progressive left has had on San Francisco politically."

Voters overwhelmingly ousted Democratic Mayor London Breed in favor of political newcomer and Levi's heir Daniel Lurie, who has vowed to declare a fentanyl emergency on his first day in office, shut down the open-air drug markets proliferating in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, and force drug users to choose between treatment or jail.

While the economy and cost of living dominated voters' concerns nationally, San Francisco residents had a much different set of priorities: homelessness and crime.

More than 31% of respondents ranked homelessness as San Francisco's top issue in a KRON4 News/Emerson College Polling survey ahead of the election. Crime came in second and, more distantly, the cost of housing ranked third.

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The total number of homeless people rose 7.3% in San Francisco from 2022 to this year, according to the city, with more than 8,300 people living in shelters or on the streets. 

"The economy and the city cannot fully recover unless people feel safe coming here, until businesses feel safe coming back to San Francisco and opening up," Wolf said. "Our downtown is still 40% empty since the pandemic. We have the slowest recovery of any city in the United States."

Lurie told KTVU he wants to build 1,500 additional shelter beds in six months and 2,500 tiny homes to help alleviate the homeless crisis, and require RVs to park in designated zones.

Wolf celebrated Lurie's win as a sign that the "narrative around our approach to drugs and homelessness and crime in San Francisco and California is changing."

Stallcup agreed, but went a step further, slamming Mayor Breed as a "colossal failure" and predicting it will take "years of rebuilding to repair the damage that she has done."

While those hopeful for change saw several wins, like the San Francisco Board of Supervisors losing its progressive majority — as well as its only self-described Democratic Socialist member, Dean Preston — the bay remains deeply blue. Mayor-elect Lurie positioned himself as a moderate Democrat, which is "the best you're going to get in San Francisco," Wolf said. "And that's right where I fall as well."

Lurie flexed his liberal bona fides by vowing to be an ally "every single day" to the city's LGBTQ population. And when then-candidate Donald Trump vowed to dismantle sanctuary cities, Lurie signaled his commitment to uphold San Francisco's decades-long ordinance preventing city officials from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in most circumstances.

Daniel Lurie, left, defeated incumbent San Francisco Mayor London Breed in the city's mayoral race. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AP/Jeff Chiu)

Stallcup, who films some of his videos while wearing a red MAGA cap, is optimistic the presidential election will have positive trickle-down effects on his city, most directly through tougher border policy.

"I believe Trump will prioritize the safety and well-being of women and children so that families can go down to Union Square and shop once again without fear of their lives," he said. "I believe he's going to shut down the border, to close down the fentanyl trade, as well as deport Honduras fentanyl dealers who have been an absolute burden to our community."

Wolf, meanwhile, hopes the election's outcome serves as a wake-up call to the Democratic Party.

"Progressive policy doesn't work unless you have a modicum of public safety," he said. "If people feel safe and they're making money, they'll vote liberal."

Hannah Ray Lambert is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals.