San Francisco Mayor Daniele Lurie was spotted riding the bus and answered a question from a resident
San Francisco Mayor Daniele Lurie was spotted riding the bus and answered a question from a resident
The iron law of urban politics: Not every elected official who rides transit will be a good elected official. But every good elected city official will ride transit.
Wow, as a swiss resident this comes across rude. Dont get me wrong, its nice to see politicians in discourse with the people but the guy just kinda said: "Hello, I have a question and now I have another quite hard to answer political question."
I'd have said: "May I ask you something politics related?" And then accepted a No if the politician wants to have a quite ride.
Behaving like this is going to encourage private travel in a car.
This isn't Switzerland, this is America, and we're at WAR with our politicians. If we see them in public, we will DEMAND answers, and they WILL provide them. If they don't like it, then either stop acting like a hypocritical shithead, or stop taking performative trips on public transport to demonstrate how woke you are. If you are an American politician, you should be confronted publicly, and if you don't like it, stop supporting policies that you can't defend, or stay hidden. But if you go out in public, you better be prepared to defend yourself.
I get where you're coming from, and also, being a politician in the United States means being a public figure, and if you ride public transit you expect people to recognize you and talk to you. It's part of outreach. It's a populist thing.
Joe Biden rode Amtrak to work for 40 years - and from what I understand, now that he's not president, he's riding Amtrak to his office again (albeit guarded by his handlers in case he sundowns). People stop to talk to him, take selfies with him, whatever. It's not (necessarily) rude.
The thing about the United States is, unfortunately, no politician is so poor they have to take public transit. So any pol on the bus expects people to recognize them and start a conversation. If they didn't want that, they wouldn't take the bus.
Yea, I underestimated the car dependency once again. Being "so poor they have to take public transit" is a crazy sentence to me. Our highest executive politicians, the Bundesräte (the left/green moreso than the right ones) regularly ride on public transport, in the more expensive 1. Class, and they expect not to be disturbed.
I mean its a swiss thing as well. Roger Federer and Justin Biber can just stroll through a city and only rarely get bothered by people for selfies.
In the US listening to and relaying the political concerns of constituents is ostensibly a core part of the job of being a public representative, and even bought and paid for reps usually feel pressure to uphold that reputation.
Yeah but this is rude. They shouldn’t have to be accosted everywhere.
happy cake day!
Thanks :D