The day after Beya Alcaraz, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s pick for District 4 supervisor, resigned from a post she had taken up just seven days earlier, political insiders in San Francisco were unified in their response: How could this happen?
And, what happens now?
Alcaraz, the only supervisor appointee in modern San Francisco history with zero political experience, was ousted hours after Mission Local found she admitted in writing to paying workers “under the table” and potentially dodging taxes, and just days after the San Francisco Standard found her former pet store was awash in dead animals and a rodent infestation.
Lurie told reporters Alcaraz was vetted. Those close to City Hall questioned that assertion.
At a Friday press conference at the steps of City Hall, Mayor Daniel Lurie answered questions about the resignation of Beya Alcaraz, his pick for District 4 Supervisor. Photo by Xueer Lu. Nov. 14, 2025.
“That’s just basic competence,” political strategist David Ho said of Team Lurie’s look into Alcaraz’s background. “This is really stunning, given his team inside and outside the City Hall.”
Background checks are not especially difficult, Ho said. It takes “five minutes, maybe an hour, if you take the N-Judah out in the Outer Sunset,” he said, to talk to Alcaraz’s associates. “That is Politics 101. Maybe someone forgot to hand in their homework.”
Lurie’s team had considered the appointment carefully in other ways: Lurie said at a press conference on Friday that he had a “good understanding” of what the Sunset needed because of the “house parties that I’ve been attending and the community meetings that I’ve been going to the last couple months.” The mayor’s schedule shows that between Sept. 23 and Oct. 16, Lurie held seven meetings on “district issues” at District 4 addresses.
Those meetings ended on Oct. 16. Four days later, on Oct. 20, a poll was put out to District 4 residents as a temperature check of a hypothetical candidate named “Sara Reyes” who matched the resume of Alcaraz.
A screenshot of a poll obtained by Mission Local shows that District 4 was surveyed before the appointment to gauge Alcaraz’s favorability. The description of a woman under the pseudonym “Sarah Reyes” matches the background and ethnicity of Alcaraz.
Lurie declined to reveal any details about the vetting process at a Friday press conference announcing the resignation. The New York Times reported that Lurie hired a private firm to look into Alcaraz and that it raised possible issues with her former pet store, but did not find the allegations of tax dodging unearthed by Mission Local.
Those allegations were new to Lurie and they convinced him to ask for Alcaraz’s resignation, he said at the Friday press conference. Lurie was apologetic and promised to “do better” in the future. “The news that came to light yesterday was new to me,” he said. “We are going to have a much more thorough vetting process.”
Lurie said he has begun the search to replace Alcaraz. Several city supervisors have suggestions for him and some said on Friday that they had passed names to the mayor’s office. Most declined to share those names.
District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton and District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, for their part, said that Lurie should appoint Natalie Gee, Walton’s chief of staff.
That is unlikely: Gee is on San Francisco’s progressive wing, and Lurie will look to maintain the moderate majority that’s currently on the board. Gee said that she has never been approached by the mayor’s office, but on Oct. 28 declared she would run for the seat in the June 2026 special election.
Others have also thrown their names in. David Lee, who lost to Catherine Stefani in a State Assembly race last year, pulled papers to run today. Albert Chow, a hardware store owner in the Sunset, is also contemplating a run.
Chow told Mission Local that he didn’t get the job after conducting three interviews with Lurie and his team, and filling out a survey.
By Friday morning, Beya Alcaraz’s name has been scrubbed from the door to the District 4 Supervisor office. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman. Nov. 14, 2025.
While Alcaraz had no government experience, Lurie’s next appointee may. District 7 Supervisor Myrna Meglar said it was “not the time right now to consider people who have no civic engagement experience or knowledge of the community.”
She listed off a series of issues facing the board: threats from Trump, persecution of immigrants, the budget deficit, the housing crisis, and more. The current board is already filled with newcomers. “We just don’t have the time to train,” she said. “Maybe in some other time we could, but not right now.”
Eric Jaye, a political consultant, said Lurie would need to change his “philosophy that San Francisco government is so broken that you have to bring in people with no experience to fix it.” After all, Jaye said, Lurie viewed Alcaraz’s lack of experience not as “a bug,” but as “a feature.”
Regardless, Lurie will need to move quickly, most said. The appointment of Alcaraz was a “self-inflicted mistake” that “kind of signals the end to Lurie’s honeymoon,” Ho said. A pick that “should have made him stronger actually made him weaker and put him in a more challenging position,” added political strategist Jim Ross.
Lurie’s administration declined to say when the next appointee will be made. The next most consequential act for the board, voting on the city upzoning plan, is scheduled for December. Lurie said he won’t necessarily require an appointee to agree to vote yes on the plan, however. “There are no red lines on positions,” he said at the press conference on Friday.
Perhaps most pressing is the public perception, however.
“I think he needs to appoint somebody today or Monday at the latest,” Ross said. “The longer this lingers the more it will be a drag on his administration.”