After years of negative headlines and post-pandemic economic struggle, San Francisco has picked a wealthy Democratic outsider with no government experience to serve as the city’s new mayor.
Daniel Lurie, 47, is one of the heirs to the Levi Strauss jeans company fortune, and previously spent 15 years as the executive of a San Francisco non-profit he founded. He defeated several Democratic challengers, including the current mayor, London Breed, in an election that was expected to break local campaign spending records.
“I’m deeply grateful to my incredible family, campaign team and every San Franciscan who voted for accountability, service and change,” Lurie said in a statement. “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 poured more than $8m of his own money into his campaign, while his billionaire mother, Mimi Haas, backed him with another $1m. He will be the first San Francisco mayor since 1911 to win office without previously serving in government, making him the city’s “least experienced mayor in a long time”, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But the Chronicle also ended up endorsing Lurie, praising the “balance of compassion and toughness” in his planned approach to dealing with the people in San Francisco struggling with homelessness, and saying the city needed a change in leadership, making Lurie’s inexperience potentially worth the risk.
Lurie had touted his experience funding and building affordable housing at the Tipping Point Foundation as evidence that he could lead San Francisco in the right direction.
San Francisco is dominated by Democrats, and so the choice was effectively between moderates and progressives, with voters focusing on pragmatic centrists. Lurie beat and will replace Breed, the city’s first Black female mayor, who has led the city since 2018.
Breed, who was raised by her grandmother in public housing, conceded the race on Thursday when it became clear she could not overcome deep voter discontent and was trailing Lurie, a philanthropist and anti-poverty non-profit founder.
“At the end of the day, this job is bigger than any one person and what matters is that we keep moving this city forward,” Breed said, adding that she had called Lurie to congratulate him. “I know we are both committed to improving this city we love.”
The northern California city has come to represent the challenges faced by many large US cities that have struggled with an uneven economic recovery and rising cost of living since the Covid-19 pandemic. Standout issues across all candidates’ campaigns were housing and crime, even with crime down 32%.
San Francisco has the highest median household income among major US cities, but homelessness remains intractable. Since a June supreme court ruling, Breed’s administration has been actively sweeping unhoused encampments.
Her critics pointed out that sweeps are temporary fixes and the city has not done enough to offer shelter to its unhoused population.
In an interview with Reuters, Lurie said sweeps were a tool for the city to combat homelessness and promised to stand up 1,500 emergency shelter beds in his first six months in office.
Lurie is an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co fortune through his mother, Mimi, who wed Peter Haas when Lurie was a child. Peter Haas, a great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss, was a longtime CEO of the iconic clothing company who died in 2005.
Both the Levi’s name and Haas family philanthropic foundations are deeply embedded in San Francisco’s history and identity.
Lurie’s father, Brian Lurie, is a rabbi and longtime former executive director of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation.
