Daniel Lurie has been elected mayor of San Francisco, denying London Breed another term after arguing that her flawed leadership caused the city to struggle since the pandemic devastated its downtown and exacerbated the drug crisis, homelessness, and public concerns about crime.
The victory in Tuesday’s race capped a stunning and rapid political ascent for Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who founded a successful charity, Tipping Point Community, about two decades ago, but was not widely known when he began his mayoral bid last September.
Lurie will be the first San Francisco mayor in more than a century to have never served in government before his election. He saw that as a sign of strength as he campaigned on a promise to bring change to City Hall.
Under the ranked-choice voting system, Lurie had 56.2% support to Breed’s 43.8% as of late Thursday afternoon. San Francisco still has tens of thousands more votes to count.
Lurie won by pouring millions of dollars of his own money into his campaign — the main reason the race was the most expensive in modern San Francisco history — and consistently telling voters that the city had been let down by an ineffective group of “City Hall insiders” that included Breed and the other leading contenders in the race.
In a statement Thursday, Lurie said he was “deeply grateful” to his family, campaign staff “and every San Franciscan who voted for accountability, service, and change.”
“No matter who you supported in this election, we stand united in the fight for San Francisco’s future and a safer and more affordable city for all,” Lurie said.
Breed conceded in a social media statement Thursday, saying she had called Lurie to congratulate him on his victory. She said that being mayor had been “the greatest honor of my lifetime” and she was “beyond grateful to our residents for the opportunity to serve the City that raised me.” Breed grew up in public housing in the city and was the first Black woman to serve as mayor.
“My team and I stand ready to support (Lurie) during his transition,” Breed later told reporters in her office at City Hall. “We will always do everything we can to ensure the success of this city and that there is a smooth transition so that the important work that has been done and needs to continue in San Francisco moves forward.”
Breed said that being mayor was “a real gift.”
As he campaigned against Breed, Lurie’s message was amplified by a political action committee that spent heavily on his behalf, financed in part by Lurie’s wealthy mother, Mimi Haas. Taken together, Lurie and the PAC raised more than Breed and the other top candidates combined.
A moderate by San Francisco standards, Lurie ran on promises to expand police staffing, build more homeless shelter beds, shut down open-air drug markets, and root out corruption in City Hall. His policies did not diverge sharply from those of Breed, who is also a moderate. But Lurie said she’d failed to manage the city effectively despite having plenty of time to deliver more meaningful results since she was first elected mayor in 2018.
Breed campaigned on an optimistic message. She pointed to the city’s declining crime reports, a drop in street homelessness, stepped-up arrests of drug dealers and users, and a wave of lively downtown events as evidence that her policies were working. But she was dragged down by widespread discontent with how San Francisco had fared since she won a special election six years ago to finish the term of the late Mayor Ed Lee, who died in office.
Polls showed that most voters disapproved of Breed’s job performance and felt the city was on the wrong track. While Breed won praise for her swift efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in 2020, public opinion soured as downtown emptied out with the onset of remote work and open-air fentanyl markets proliferated in the Tenderloin and South of Market.
Breed’s reelection bid was complicated by the shooting of 49ers rookie Ricky Pearsall in Union Square over Labor Day weekend. The incident put a spotlight on concerns about public safety, which voters had said was their most important election issue. Additionally, reporters uncovered broad mismanagement in Breed’s signature program, the Dream Keeper Initiative, which has invested millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to support the city’s Black community.
Beyond criticizing Breed, Lurie’s campaign also spent big to attack Mark Farrell, a former supervisor who was interim mayor for six months in 2018. Lurie and Farrell are both moderates, so they weren’t far apart on policy, but they repeatedly clashed as they jockeyed to position themselves as Breed’s leading challenger.
When journalists documented concerns about ethical breaches by Farrell, Lurie and his PAC plastered the headlines on advertisements and direct mail. The Chronicle’s final poll of the mayor’s race found that Farrell’s standing among likely voters had dropped, as had his favorability rating.
Farrell and Breed each targeted Lurie, describing him as too inexperienced and trying to buy his way into City Hall.
At her election results watch party at a China Basin soul food restaurant Tuesday night, Breed panned the historic amount of money that flowed in the mayor’s race, led by Lurie’s spending.
“It has been really one of the most sad and horrible things I’ve seen in politics in San Francisco, that someone would take their wealth and just basically buy this office,” Breed told reporters. “It’s really unfortunate and pretty disgusting.”
Asked if she had anything to say to Lurie, Breed said, “San Francisco’s not for sale.”
Breed and her campaign repeatedly told voters that Lurie’s lack of governing experience would make him ill-prepared in the event of a major disaster such as an earthquake. Former fire chief Jeanine Nicholson, a Breed appointee, called Lurie “untested, unprepared and unsuited for the job” in a San Francisco Examiner opinion piece. By contrast, Breed described herself as a “battle-tested” leader.
At the Chronicle-KQED mayoral debate in September, Breed called Lurie “one of the most dangerous people on this stage” because he hadn’t been a government official before.
Breed struck a more conciliatory tone in her remarks to reporters Thursday.
“The campaign has to be behind us and we need to move forward as a city,” Breed said. “We can't look backward. The voters of San Francisco have made their decision. And I ... have always respected the voters and honored the decisions that they made.”
Like Breed, Farrell argued during the campaign that voters should not allow the mayor to be Lurie’s “first real job” and accused him of using his inherited wealth to launch a “toxic smear campaign.”
However, the criticism of Lurie’s professional experience did not broadly resonate with voters. Lurie previously told the Chronicle that he thought his more politically seasoned opponents had all had plenty of time to improve the city but had failed to deliver.
Tyler Law, his campaign consultant, said before the election that Lurie’s personal loyalty couldn’t be purchased by wealthy donors such as those who backed Farrell.
“They fear the change he’s going to bring,” Law said. “It means an end to the status quo that serves their interests over the city’s.”