What America's Most and Least Popular Mayors Can Teach About Governing

Newsweek

2 days ago

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San Francisco and Chicago are delivering a split-screen lesson in urban Democratic leadership in 2025. In one city, a new mayor is riding a wave of optimism. In the other, a sitting mayor faces historically low approval ratings. Together, they show how public perception can define a politician's fate long before policy results arrive.
A July San Francisco Chronicle poll put Mayor Daniel Lurie's approval at 73 percent just six months into his term — a figure almost unheard of in the city's rough-and-tumble political climate. "I am just focused on delivering results for the people of San Francisco. That's why they elected me," Lurie told reporters when the poll was released.
Lurie's political strength lies in focusing relentlessly on the quality-of-life issues that residents see every day: litter, drugs, street safety and visible disorder. A self-styled technocrat and heir to the Levi's fortune, Lurie took office and immediately declared the fentanyl crisis an emergency, set up a 24/7 drop-off center for people in crisis, and created a dedicated police unit for Union Square and the rest of the city's downtown core. He also pledged to add 1,500 shelter and treatment beds by September and already had 420 funded or opened by May.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie (left) and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (right) are seeing opposite fortunes in 2025, with one riding high approval ratings while the other faces historic lows.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie (left) and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (right) are seeing opposite fortunes in 2025, with one riding high approval ratings while the other faces historic lows.
AP
"This is just the start... a really important moment in our city's trajectory," he said at a ribbon-cutting for a new recovery center.
Chicago's story is the reverse. A February poll by M3 Strategies found Mayor Brandon Johnson's approval at just 6.6 percent, with nearly 80 percent of voters holding an unfavorable view. It's the lowest rating for a Chicago mayor in modern history, according to the Illinois Policy Institute, and among the lowest approval ratings ever measured in U.S. politics.
On paper, Johnson can point to some progress: homicides down 15 percent in his first year, shootings and violent crime trending downward in mid-2025, and a unified shelter system with over 7,000 beds that stabilized a chaotic migrant influx. But perception hasn't followed.
San Francisco: A Honeymoon Built on Visibility
For the City by the Bay, the story so far is one of momentum built on optics and early action. Lurie's first months in office have been defined by highly visible moves that signaled urgency — crackdowns on street-level drug markets, cleanup campaigns in the city's tourist core and a promise to rapidly expand shelter capacity. Lurie has been walking the streets, talking to residents, throwing out first pitches, cutting ribbons and keeping his constituents up to speed with a deft use of social media.
For San Franciscans, the mayor is seemingly everywhere all at once.
California State Senator Scott Wiener said the shift in the city's demeanor from the depths of the pandemic has been palpable. "Over the last year, we've started turning a corner. Homeless encampments are down, drug use is declining, and more people are returning downtown," Wiener told Newsweek. "Progress is visible."
Mayor Daniel Lurie of the San Francisco Giants throws the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day at Oracle Park on April 4, 2025 in San Francisco, California.
Mayor Daniel Lurie of the San Francisco Giants throws the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day at Oracle Park on April 4, 2025 in San Francisco, California.
Getty Images
Yet the same Chronicle poll that delivered Lurie's high marks exposed the vulnerabilities familiar to other big-city mayors. Only 36 percent approved of his handling of housing affordability, and less than half were satisfied with progress on homelessness and the opioid crisis. Those are the very issues that define San Francisco's image nationwide. A failure to show more tangible results could quickly erode his early goodwill.
Lurie also faces a looming $876 million two-year budget deficit and political friction over where new shelters will go. A proposal requiring every district to host one sparked neighborhood pushback and exposed early tensions with the city's powerful Board of Supervisors. His heavy reliance on the Bay Area's tech and business elite to shape downtown recovery has drawn praise for pragmatism — as well as questions about corporate influence inside City Hall.
Chicago: A Mayor Trapped by Perception
Where San Francisco's story is one of early optimism, Chicago's illustrates how quickly a narrative can harden against a mayor. Despite measurable drops in violent crime and the stabilization of a migrant crisis that consumed the city's resources, Brandon Johnson has struggled to convince residents their city is on the right track.
"His low approval ratings are less about his general goals than the challenges the city faces," said Dick Simpson, a University of Illinois Chicago professor emeritus and former alderman. "He has done less well in handling crises and government generally than [his past three predecessors] Mayors Daley, Emanuel or Lightfoot."
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at Robert Healy Elementary School on April 4, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. Johnson is suffering one of the lowest approval ratings seen in modern U.S. politics.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at Robert Healy Elementary School on April 4, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. Johnson is suffering one of the lowest approval ratings seen in modern U.S. politics.Simpson said Johnson's sluggish start hurt him. "He was very slow to get his team together. The transition team report was months late and it took most of his first year in office to make appointments," Simpson told Newsweek. "Many of his staff were unfamiliar with city government and had difficulty making the change from teacher, labor union leader, or community leader. They made many mistakes."
Johnson's progressive governing philosophy — shifting resources from punitive policing to addressing root causes of crime and a focus on identity politics — was always politically risky, and has become even more so. Early critics amplified that risk: the police union's president warned of "blood in the streets" if he won. Even as crime dipped, the narrative of a city adrift stuck.
Adding to the challenge, his "Bring Chicago Home" housing initiative was defeated by voters in 2024, straining ties with the business community and depriving his administration of dedicated funding for homeless services. The migrant crisis consumed more than $600 million in combined city, state and federal spending, sparking resentment in some long-neglected Black neighborhoods as resources flowed to new arrivals.
Experts: Perception Trumps Policy in City Hall
Together, the diverging leadership of two great American cities highlight what political analysts say is a recurring truth: public approval is often driven more by visible action and messaging than by raw statistics.
"Mayor Johnson's record low approval is all his own doing," said Thomas Bowen, a Democratic strategist who advised former Chicago mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot, in an interview with Newsweek.
"Voters just don't trust him anymore to look out for their pocketbooks, improve their schools, or get the City of Chicago back on track," he added.
That dynamic is also a reminder that data doesn't always drive perception. While violent crime is declining in Chicago, San Francisco's challenges remain tied to perceptions of disorder. Yet one mayor is being rewarded and the other punished in the court of public opinion.
"It's less about data tables and more about whether people believe their mayor is visibly in control of the situation," said Simpson, the former Chicago alderman.
The contrast underscores how fragile political capital can be in America's largest cities. In San Francisco, visible urgency has translated into trust and a sense of momentum. Lurie has leaned into that visibility, walking the long-troubled Tenderloin district with police, cutting ribbons at treatment centers and projecting a constant state of optimism across social media.
However, in Chicago, even measurable progress has struggled to cut through when residents don't feel it in their daily lives — a gap that can define a mayor's legacy as much as any policy win or loss, Simpson said.