Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie wins San Francisco mayor’s race

SAN FRANCISCO —  Philanthropist and Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie has won the hard-fought race for San Francisco mayor, ushering in a new era of leadership for a city whose voters made clear they are fed up with brazen retail theft and sprawling tent cities.

It took two days to determine a winner under San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters to select multiple candidates by order of preference. The city uses a multiround process to count the ballots, and it can take several rounds of tallying before a winner receives more than 50% of the vote. Though thousands of votes remained uncounted Thursday evening, the gap of support between Lurie and his opponents was deemed too big to bridge.

Lurie, a centrist Democrat, outpaced incumbent Mayor London Breed and three other prominent local Democrats, receiving 56.2% of the total ranked-choice vote compared with Breed’s 43.8% as of Thursday’s count.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, the only leading candidate running as an old-school progressive, came in third after being eliminated from the running with 21.6% of first-choice votes, and venture capitalist Mark Farrell, a moderate, trailed in fourth place. Supervisor Ahsha Safaí was knocked out of the running early after getting just 2.7% of first-choice votes.

Lurie did not immediately issue a statement after the race was called Thursday. But at an election night event, he summarized his leadership vision for jubilant supporters gathered at a music venue in the Mission district to cheer him on.

“Our challenge and opportunity is to show how government can deliver on its promise of a safer and more affordable city,” Lurie said. “And executing on these promises requires us to be courageous, compassionate and honest.

“It’s never been more clear to me that so many people love this city, and it’s time for us to start making people feel like the city loves them back.”

In a statement posted on social media Thursday evening, Breed said she had called Lurie to congratulate him.

“Being mayor of San Francisco has been the greatest honor of my lifetime. I’m beyond grateful to our residents for the opportunity to serve the City that raised me,” Breed wrote. “During my final two months as your mayor, I will continue to lead this City as I have from Day One — as San Francisco’s biggest champion.”

The transition from Breed to Lurie marks a remarkable turn on many fronts.

Breed, 50, made history six years ago when she became the city’s first Black female mayor. She was born into poverty in the Western Addition, at the time one of San Francisco’s toughest neighborhoods, and raised by her grandmother. She lost a sister to a drug overdose and has a brother in prison for robbery. Before being elected mayor, she was president of the powerful Board of Supervisors.

Lurie, 47, was also born in San Francisco, the son of a rabbi. His parents divorced when he was a young boy, and his mother, Miriam Haas, went on to marry Peter Haas, who helped raise Lurie. Peter Haas, now deceased, was the great-grandnephew of the Levi’s founder and a longtime executive at the company. Lurie and his mother are among the primary heirs of the Levi Strauss family fortune. Lurie has never before held elected office.

Throughout the campaign, Lurie distinguished himself as a political outsider running against four City Hall veterans. He pledged to root out government corruption, a concern among voters following a series of political scandals in city departments and nonprofits in recent years.

The election was broadly viewed as a referendum on Breed’s efforts to address homeless encampments, crime and a flagging post-pandemic economy that cut at voters’ sense of a safe, well-functioning city.

“This is not an election that was about an ideological or policy-based shift or rejection of Breed,” said Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. “It’s an outsider who is different and who was able to portray himself in that way as someone who will do things differently.”

In a marked shift for San Francisco, the city’s wealthy tech sector played an influential role in this year’s race. Tech titans who have put down roots in the city poured millions of dollars into campaign contributions, pressing for an outcome that would infuse this famously liberal city with more centrist politics.

That money overwhelmingly benefited Lurie, Farrell and Breed.

“It’s been the billionaire election,” said Jim Ross, a veteran Bay Area Democratic strategist.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed faced a tough reelection bid against four challengers who said she had not done enough to address property crime and homelessness in the city.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

Breed was first elected in 2018, winning a special election after the unexpected death of then-Mayor Ed Lee. She led the city through a challenging period that includes the unsettling early spread of COVID-19 and the subsequent exodus of scores of downtown tech workers who, amid pandemic-related shutdowns, found themselves able to work remotely — and more cheaply — from other cities.

Breed has never been a bleeding-heart progressive, despite San Francisco’s liberal reputation. But the Breed of six years ago was more open to experimenting with a progressive reformist agenda when it came to solving intractable issues such as addiction and poverty.

In the last two years, by contrast, she has become a leading voice in a movement to crack down on homeless people and addicts who refuse shelter or treatment. And this year she successfully championed two local ballot measures that bolstered police surveillance powers and will require drug screening and treatment for people receiving county welfare benefits who are suspected of illicit drug use.

Many of her supporters touted her quick action to shut down San Francisco in the early days of the COVID emergency, a decision credited with saving thousands of lives. And she earned influential endorsements from housing organizations based on her work to ease San Francisco’s affordable housing shortage.

In making her case for reelection, Breed touted recent data showing improvements in some of San Francisco’s greatest problems, notably a reduction in property crime and violent crime over the last year.

Her opponents dismissed that progress as too little, too late, and seized on voter dissatisfaction to pitch themselves as more qualified alternatives.

Both Lurie and Farrell promised a more concerted crackdown on crime and homelessness and to reinvigorate the downtown economy.

Lurie had the advantage of his family’s vast wealth to strengthen his name recognition. He showered his campaign with more than $8 million of his own money. His mother contributed more than $1 million to an independent committee backing his mayoral bid.

He touted his role as founder of Tipping Point, a San Francisco nonprofit that funds efforts to lift people out of poverty, to highlight his commitment to solving intractable problems. He said the organization has funneled $500 million to Bay Area organizations focused on early childhood education, scholarships, housing and job training since its founding nearly two decades ago.

Farrell entered the race with support generated during his seven years as a supervisor, and made the case that his blend of political and business experience made him most qualified to get San Francisco back on track. But his campaign floundered amid ethical concerns. This week, he agreed to pay a fine of $108,000 following an ethics investigation that determined he had illegally financed his mayoral campaign with money poured into a separate ballot measure committee he sponsored to reduce the number of government commissions in San Francisco.

Peskin, a longtime supervisor, organized a robust grassroots campaign focused on traditional liberal ideals, such as making the city affordable for nurses, teachers, and the artists and bohemians who have long made San Francisco a creative hub.