San Francisco: Shift to the Right

When he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1987, Art Agnos described himself as an outsider who would shake up city hall. Four years later, he finds himself on the outside again. Last week the liberal Agnos was defeated in his bid for a second term by former police chief Frank Jordan, a self- described moderate with little patience for the city's high-profile populations of homeless people and panhandlers. Jordan got 52% of the vote.

Jordan benefited from a coalition of blue-collar and rich voters peeved that under Agnos the city seemed more interested in declaring itself a sanctuary for...