# Daniel Lurie **Daniel Lurie** (b. February 4, 1977) is the 46th Mayor of San Francisco, sworn in **January 8, 2025**. He is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune through his stepfather, Peter E. Haas, and the founder of the anti-poverty grantmaker [[Tipping Point Community]]. He beat incumbent [[London Breed]] in November 2024 as a moderate Democrat who had never held office, the first such San Francisco mayor since 1911. **The KB-relevant story:** San Francisco's tech donor class **did not pick Lurie in 2024**. Its main vehicles backed Mark Farrell, and Lurie funded his own campaign with family money. Once he won, the same donors became his base. In 2026 they are paying for his attempt to rewrite the city charter, and they lined up beside him against both the city's executive-pay tax and the state billionaire tax. With [[Donald Trump]], Lurie has avoided public confrontation, and Trump has praised him as a Democrat who is "trying very hard." > [!warning] Correction (2026-10-04) > Earlier versions of this page, and of [[London Breed]], [[Chesa Boudin Recall]] and [[California Tech Exodus Ecosystem]], said Lurie won "with substantial backing" from GrowSF, TogetherSF and Neighbors. That is wrong for two of the three. [[TogetherSF]] spent about $5.4M on **Farrell**, and [[William Oberndorf]] put $1.2M behind **Farrell**. [[GrowSF]] endorsed Farrell, Breed and Lurie "in any order." Lurie's money came mostly from himself and his family. ## Background - **Family.** He is the son of Rabbi Brian Lurie and Mimi Haas. After his parents divorced, his mother married Peter E. Haas of the Levi Strauss family. He is a first cousin once removed of Rep. Dan Goldman. In February 2025 the San Francisco Chronicle estimated his net worth at **$8–47M**. He is married to Becca Prowda, a former protocol director for Governor [[Gavin Newsom]]. - **Education and early career.** Duke (BA 1999); field organizer for Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign; Robin Hood Foundation in New York (2001–03); UC Berkeley Goldman School (MPP 2005). - **Tipping Point (2005–2019).** He founded [[Tipping Point Community]] on the Robin Hood model and ran it for 15 years, then became board chair when Sam Cobbs took over as CEO in January 2020. - **Super Bowl 50.** He led the Bay Area's bid committee for the 2016 Super Bowl, which committed 25% of its revenue to local nonprofits. ## The 2024 election He launched his campaign on September 26, 2023. He gave more than **$8M of his own money**, and his mother gave **$1M** to a supporting committee, possibly the largest single contribution to a San Francisco candidate committee on record. Other large donors included WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum and Oleg Nodelman ($250K each). Lurie raised more than $16M in total. | Candidate | First-choice votes | |-----------|--------------------| | Daniel Lurie | 26.3% | | [[London Breed]] (incumbent) | 24.4% | | Aaron Peskin | 22.9% | | Mark Farrell | 18.5% | | Ahsha Safaí | 2.9% | Lurie won the final ranked-choice round **56–43 over Breed** after 14 rounds. Farrell, the favorite of [[TogetherSF]] and [[Neighbors for a Better San Francisco]], finished fourth. Eric Newcomer's headline put it this way: *"Maybe not their first choice, but tech gets a new, moderate SF mayor."* ## Transition team: Sam Altman as co-chair On **November 18, 2024**, Lurie named a seven-person co-chair group for his transition. It included **[[Sam Altman]]**, CEO of [[OpenAI]], along with former Twitter CFO Ned Segal, former fire chief Joanne Hayes-White, José A. Quiñonez, former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs, Nancy Tung and Paul Yep. Sara Fenske Bahat directed the transition, with Ann O'Leary as counsel and former City Controller Ben Rosenfield as senior adviser. Two of these names come back later. Tung became chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, which voted in August 2026 to oppose the state [[California Billionaires Tax]], the same position Lurie took. Rosenfield was one of the three people Lurie asked to broker a deal on the [[San Francisco Overpaid CEO Tax]]. ## Tenure timeline | Date | Development | |------|-------------| | **Jan 8, 2025** | Sworn in. Caps his own salary at $1 a year | | **Feb 2025** | Office-to-housing conversion legislation; online permit tracker | | **Mar 17, 2025** | Launches the [[Partnership for San Francisco]], a CEO council co-chaired by [[Laurene Powell Jobs]] and Ruth Porat, with members including Sam Altman | | **May 13, 2025** | "Rebuilding the Ranks" police staffing plan. The campaign goal was 425 new officers, deputies and dispatchers in three years | | **Jun 25, 2025** | Unveils the **Family Zoning Plan**, which raises allowed housing densities in what the SF Standard calls the city's "exclusionary neighborhoods" | | **Jul 2025** | A poll puts his approval at 73% *(Wikipedia; single-source)* | | **Oct 22–23, 2025** | Phone call with Trump, after which Trump calls off the federal surge. See [[San Francisco Federal Surge Reversal]] | | **Nov 6–13, 2025** | Appoints 29-year-old pet-store owner Isabella "Beya" Alcaraz to the District 4 Board seat. She resigns **seven days later** after reports on health violations and business practices. Lurie: "I regret that I didn't do more to make sure she could succeed." Alan Wong is appointed Dec 1 | | **Dec 2, 2025** | Board passes Family Zoning **7–4**, his signature first-year win | | **Jan 2026** | State of the City shifts focus from public safety to **affordability**. The 2026 agenda includes free childcare for families earning under $250K and subsidies up to $310K | | **Jan 26, 2026** | Opposes the state billionaire wealth tax: "We would drive revenue out of our state when 49 other states don't have [a wealth tax]." See [[California Billionaires Tax]] | | **Feb 6, 2026** | After compromise talks fail, opposes **both** competing business-tax measures. See [[San Francisco Overpaid CEO Tax]] | | **Feb 2026** | Calls on the teachers' union (UESF) to return to bargaining as a strike looms. [[Garry Tan]]: "Lurie is right to call for a return to the table" | | **Mar 5, 2026** | [[Kristi Noem]], minutes after being fired as DHS secretary, calls Lurie "cooperative" | | **Mar 2026** | Proposes three charter amendments with Board President Rafael Mandelman. See [[San Francisco Charter Reform]] | | **Mar 26, 2026** | Trump at a Cabinet meeting: "He's a Democrat, but he's trying very hard" | | **Jun 2, 2026** | Both business-tax measures fail | | **Jun 17, 2026** | His Muni parcel tax (now **Prop H**) qualifies after he personally delivers the petitions | | **Jul 23, 2026** | Charter Props D, E and F qualify by petition. His committee has now raised $11.5M | | **Sep 10, 2026** | Declares a **"rent emergency"** at Alamo Square: median rents up 26% in a year and eviction notices up 44%, tied to the AI boom. Proposes 25% higher Ellis Act relocation payments and $3M more for Tenant Right to Counsel | | **Sep 2026** | Endorses Manny Yekutiel for District 8 supervisor. Separately, asks federal immigration authorities to release Ho Yin Mo, an aide to Assemblymember Catherine Stefani detained by [[ICE]]. It is his first public break with the administration | | **Oct 1, 2026** | Yekutiel suspends his campaign after new on-the-record groping allegations, and Lurie withdraws his endorsement. It is his second vetting failure after Alcaraz | | **Nov 3, 2026** | Ballot: Props D, E and F (charter), Prop H (Muni), and state Prop 40 (billionaire tax) | ## How the billionaire class has responded The tech-wealth response to Lurie splits into three groups. **1. Funders of the moderate agenda: all in.** The money that went to Farrell in 2024 now pays for Lurie's agenda. His charter committee has raised **$11.5M**. The largest donors are [[Michael Moritz]] ($2.59M), [[Chris Larsen]] ($1.49M), Lyna Lam ($1M), [[John Pritzker]] ($1M), [[Emerson Collective]] ($550K) and [[John Doerr]] ($500K). Larsen also gave $500K to a PAC backing Lurie's pick in District 10, $700K against the Overpaid CEO tax, and $10M against state Prop 40. [[GrowSF]] attacked the supervisors who voted against his upzoning plan. In a Sept 28, 2026 column, Mission Local's Joe Eskenazi compared the result to the [[Gilded Age]]: San Francisco's wealthiest have "unprecedented control of city politics," with no organized opposition comparable to that era's. **2. Trump-adjacent CEOs: they ask Trump for restraint, and he listens.** In October 2025, [[Marc Benioff]] said he'd welcome the National Guard, and [[Ron Conway]] quit the Salesforce Foundation board in protest. Benioff and [[Jensen Huang]] then helped persuade Trump to call off the surge. Trump's praise in March 2026, and Noem's, presents Lurie as a Democrat the administration can work with. The cost of that arrangement has been Lurie's near-total public silence on federal immigration enforcement, which ended only with the Ho Yin Mo letter in September 2026. **3. The All-In, exit-and-complain wing: no documented reaction to Lurie.** As of October 2026, the vault found no documented reaction from [[David Sacks]], [[Elon Musk]] or [[Peter Thiel]] to Lurie as mayor. Sacks has opened an office in Austin and Thiel has left the state. Their energy has gone into fighting the state wealth tax rather than into San Francisco, which their 2020–2024 rhetoric treated as the leading example of Democratic failure. The "San Francisco is a failed city" argument at the center of the [[California Tech Exodus Ecosystem]] is harder to make while the mayor is a moderate whom Trump himself praises. ## Patterns worth tracking - **Fixer, not fighter.** Each confrontation so far (troops, the CEO tax, the wealth tax) was handled through private access and coalition deals rather than public conflict. - **Vetting failures.** Two personnel debacles in eleven months (Alcaraz, Yekutiel), each in a race where his endorsement or appointment was decisive. - **Centralizing power.** If Props D, E and F pass, he gains hire-and-fire power over department heads and makes citizen initiatives four times harder. The latter is the one tool his labor and progressive opponents used against him in June 2026. - **The AI-boom contradiction.** His donors and allies are the AI industry, whose wealth he has credited with the city's recovery. The same wealth is the cause he cited when he declared a rent emergency. ## See Also - [[San Francisco Federal Surge Reversal]] · [[San Francisco Charter Reform]] · [[San Francisco Overpaid CEO Tax]] · [[California Billionaires Tax]] - [[Tipping Point Community]] · [[Partnership for San Francisco]] · [[GrowSF]] · [[Neighbors for a Better San Francisco]] · [[TogetherSF]] - [[London Breed]] · [[Michael Moritz]] · [[Chris Larsen]] · [[Sam Altman]] · [[Marc Benioff]] · [[Ron Conway]] - [[California Tech Exodus Ecosystem]] · [[US Mayors Hub]]