I'm playing Sandbox 0.6.7. I'm stuck on the Cali: Pariah quest.

I've been at the "get more renown so William will notice you" stage for a long time. What do I need to do?

I've been upgrading slaves and the mansion aggressively. Should I stop doing that and just accumulate cash? Or is there one specific upgrade I need to get?

It's not being elected mayor, or at least it wasn't in 0.6.6, and I didn't see anything about it in the changelog. I'm not sure the exact number, but I had at least 5000 reputation points across all the guilds when I was finally able to visit him.

You need to be mayor, which happens when you finish the Civil War questline.  (Sandbox mode skips the prelude to the Civil War, but not the civil war itself.)

I was under the assumption that you become the mayor at the end of the prologue, not Act I. Either way, this is an amusing oversight seeing as sandbox mode removes the story. It's a shame seeing as that questline ends with Cali getting her own personal weapon (the first one available as far as I can tell) even if it doesn't stand out much in terms of stats. Perhaps reputation points would be a good replacement for sandbox mode considering the whole "you need more reputation" hint.