Op-Ed: Beya Alcaraz and Mayor Daniel Lurie’s failure

by Emil Amok Guillermo

I’m a San Franciscan in exile, so you’ll want to hear my perspective on the historic elimination of the first Filipino supervisor in San Francisco history.

But first, my live one-man memoir show about my Asian American life in San Francisco has a one-night run at the SF Marsh this Wednesday, Nov. 19 @ 7:30pm. 

Get tickets here.

As a native Filipino San Franciscan, I’m sensitive to Beya Alcaraz being hoisted up in history, as a Filipino first only to be publicly decapitated 8 days later by her enabler, SF Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Filipinos in San Francisco won’t get another chance like that for a long time.

I don’t blame the 29-year-old former pet shop owner. I do blame her for the choice of business. Pet shops are good for selling leashes and food and such, but actual dogs and cats? When there’s a population crisis and you can go to an animal shelter. 

I don’t even blame her for being sloppy in her business. As political appointees go, have you seen what it takes to sink a Trump appointee? 

I do blame Alcaraz for being willing to be a political pawn. She was unqualified from the start and set up for failure by Lurie, who thought he could win the votes of  Asian Americans and Filipinos specifically with this unvetted choice.

But what was he really doing? 

You’ll recall the mayor made news by talking to Donald Trump a few weeks ago when Trump was about to send in ICE, the military, the full treatment on SF.  According to Lurie himself, he didn’t tell the president much besides repeating crime stats and talking points. It probably didn’t influence Trump as much as calls from Tech Bros to lay off SF, but still, Lurie got a win. 

Maybe he took another lesson from Trump: Hiring and vetting technique, or lack thereof.

Alcaraz is low-level Hegsethian, my name for the vetting process used for Department of Defense secretary Pete Hegseth, the former weekend Fox host, totally unqualified to lead a multi-billion dollar agency like the DOD.

But why does one pick Hegseth? Personal reasons? The sex allegations? Power abusers like Trump do it to have a loyal lackey, an unquestioning sycophant. 

In pet shop talk, they want one lap dog, please. 

That was Alcaraz. Lurie wanted one sure-fire vote on the board. And Alcaraz obliged until people wondered, “Who is Alcaraz?”

I asked that of SF State Asian American History professor emeritus Dan Phil Gonzales on my “Emil Amok’s Takeout” private podcast on YouTube@emilamok1. And even though she was a local Saint Ignatius grad like Gonzales, he was suspicious from the start. 

“She’s just 29,” he told me. No one knew what she’d done. Now, thanks to the media, we do.

You mean to say there were ZERO qualified Filipinos? Of course there are, Gonzales told me.

But Lurie wasn’t looking for one of those. He wanted to appoint someone Trump-style. He wanted his own Hegsethian appointee, a Lurie loyalist who knew they weren’t a supe for any other reason but to be the lap dog.

Gonzales is important because as a pioneering member of the San Francisco Filipino American Democratic Club, he knows the history of Filipino local political power in the city.

He knows how Dick Cerbatos and Rod McLeod, who served on the San Francisco School Board in the ‘80s, were supposed to create a path from the school board to the Board of Supervisors.

They both were derailed, and no one has been able to really mount a really serious bid for higher office in SF in over 40 years.

Gonzales talks about an infrastructure for Filipinos to develop and grow. But most Filipinos leave the city and go to the peninsula or neighboring counties. Filipinos have had mayors of these smaller cities. 

But not San Francisco. And now, because of the Alcaraz debacle, it probably will take a much tougher grassroots district effort where the SF Filipino population is. Maybe the Excelsior. Maybe South of Market. Not in the Sunset when Lurie gave a big boost to a bad candidate.

Here’s how to know how cynical a choice it was. Lurie didn’t even let her serve out the term and then run to prove herself.  Alcaraz could have run against an open field and showed her stuff. 

But in the end, the mayor asked for her resignation and she obliged.

Appointees worth their salt control their own destiny. Alcarez didn’t even do that. 

A sad chapter in SF history. And the Filipino Asian American history of the city.

For observers like Gonzales and me, whose fathers came from the Philippines in the 20’s to a racist San Francisco, we see a city that hasn’t changed much. 

Today’s politics is no better than yesterday’s. Filipinos are still not represented. 

Alcaraz will forever be a negative footnote of the failure of diversity in the liberal bastion that is San Francisco.

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and a former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.”  He has written columns on race and social justice issues for more than 30 years. He’s also a humorist and a stage monologist.

See him perform his latest “Emil Amok” monologue, this Wednesday, one night only,  Nov. 19 at the SF Marsh.