San Francisco's next mayor could be a venture capitalist or Levi's heir

Mark Farrell, left, and Daniel Lurie are running for San Francisco mayor

By Hannah WileyStaff Writer

Oct. 29, 2024 3 AM PT

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is facing a tough reelection fight.
Venture capitalist Mark Farrell and Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, have emerged as two likely candidates to topple Breed in a messy five-way race.
Key issues include crime, homelessness and economic revival for the city’s downtown.

SAN FRANCISCO — On one of the final weekends before the Nov. 5 election when San Franciscans will decide whether to reelect Mayor London Breed, one of her challengers took selfies with costumed voters at a Halloween block party in the famous Castro district and another waved to crowds from atop a trolley rolling through the city’s residential west end.

“It was a really hard choice,” teacher Katrina Rose said at the Halloween party, explaining her vote for political novice Daniel Lurie as her top choice for mayor in the city’s ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters to select multiple candidates by order of preference.

But she said her decision boiled down to who she thought could help shake San Francisco’s post-pandemic economic malaise and alleviate fears of crime.

“I felt like (Lurie) was not too progressive, not too conservative. More moderate,” Rose said.

Across town in the Richmond district the day before, volunteers for Mark Farrell, another leading candidate, rode the trolley with him while sporting blue sweatshirts printed with Farrell’s smiling face.

Mayoral candidate Mark Farrell stands on top of a trolley bus with supporters

“He’s far and away the absolutely best candidate for mayor,” Barbara Pletz said. “He’s got tons of experience in both the private and public sectors, and he’s actually been mayor before, and did a great job.”

Farrell and Lurie, both moderate Democrats, have emerged as two likely candidates to topple Breed in San Francisco’s messy — and bitter — five-way race for mayor.

Breed rose to power as mayor in 2018 after the unexpected death of Mayor Ed Lee. After initially earning accolades for her decisive action to shut down the city in the early days of the COVID-19 emergency, Breed has since struggled to steer the city through a series of problems: a surge in crime and homelessness during the pandemic, a cratered downtown economy and a sense among many that things have spiraled out of control.

Though Farrell and Lurie promise to bring vastly different leadership to San Francisco, their message sounds similar to Breed’s. All three have promised to get tough on property crime and remove thousands of homeless people from the streets. Their economic plans include major investments in downtown. The tech industry has spent millions of dollars backing their campaigns, making this year’s mayoral race the most expensive in modern city history.

The ranked-choice system makes polling in the race a challenge. Breed in some recent surveys maintains a slight edge in first-choice voters. But Lurie has recently surged in popularity when accounting for second-choice votes, while Farrell has historically polled well.

“Mark Farrell has staked out the far-right corner of San Francisco politics, especially on crime,” said Jim Ross, a veteran Democratic political consultant, while Lurie’s strategy is “to be as broadly popular as possible.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed smiles to a crowd of supporters

Former city leader wants to make San Francisco unwelcoming to drug users and tents

A San Francisco native, Farrell served on the Board of Supervisors for seven years representing wealthy neighborhoods that overlook the Golden Gate. He became interim mayor in early 2018 after getting the job via a bruising political fight. When he left City Hall six months later to spend more time with his family, he thought he was done with politics for good.

But as San Francisco fell apart during the pandemic, Farrell said it was his family who persuaded him to step back into the political arena.

“I did not have to enter this race, but I keep coming back to what I am fighting for, what we are teaching our children,” Farrell said. “Aside from them, the only other thing that I will fight for with that type of vigor and passion is our city of San Francisco.”

Farrell touts a “zero-tolerance approach to crime,” with promises to shore up police staffing and crack down on drug dealers. On homelessness, Farrell pledged to clear all large tent encampments within his first year in office, with a focus on funneling more people into short-term shelters rather than rely on more permanent supportive housing, which takes years and millions of dollars to build.

Several tents line a sidewalk in San Francisco.

He says San Francisco has to demonstrate it’s no longer a place welcoming of tent encampments and public drug use.

“Our reputation is such that we will leave them alone and they can live that lifestyle as long as they want,” he said. “That’s not the future of San Francisco.”

As the co-founder of a small venture capital firm, Farrell has been particularly critical of Breed’s handling of San Francisco’s post-COVID economy and the hallowed-out downtown once teeming with tourists and workers. He’s promoted business-friendly tax policies and financial incentives to bring remote workers back into the office.

Kanishka Cheng, chief executive of the moderate political advocacy organization TogetherSF Action, which endorsed Farrell as its first choice, said he has the right experience to lead San Francisco out of crisis.

“The city of San Francisco is a really tough beast to govern and to navigate and to manage,” said Cheng, who has worked for both Farrell and Breed. “Mark was always willing and able to take up tough issues and find consensus.”

But Farrell’s campaign has recently been on the defensive after several ethical scandals.

His opponents have targeted Farrell over a $25,000 fine he settled in 2016 over allegations that his campaign had illegally coordinated with an independent expenditure committee. The state ethics watchdog cleared him of any personal wrongdoing after an investigation determined he was unaware of the coordination.

More recently, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Farrell had failed to disclose a $675,000 loan that he owes the family from whom he bought his tony Jordan Park home. Farrell acknowledged the unintentional “oversight” and said he would correct his disclosure forms. And the SF Standard reported that Breed accused Farrell of asking her office to expedite permits to renovate his house, a claim he has denied.

He’s also faced renewed criticism that his campaign finances are inappropriately intertwined with a separate ballot measure committee he sponsored. Farrell contends that his attorneys have vetted and signed off on the arrangement.

The allegations have been enough to turn some voters off, especially after a series of political scandals that rocked city departments and nonprofits in recent years, undermining public trust.

“I think we need new leadership. And I want that new leadership to be someone who conveys to me, that as a voter and as a citizen, I won’t have to worry about whether there are going to be ever more ethical and moral lapses, fines by the ethics commission, department heads being indicted, convicted of felonies and going to prison,” said former Democratic state Sen. Mark Leno, who endorsed progressive Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin as his first choice for mayor and Lurie as his second.

“It’s just enough already.”

Farrell has chalked up the accusations as political hit jobs that distract from “the real issues in the race.”

“This is a joke. It’s all political,” he said.

While out walking his dog Ridley through his neighborhood Saturday, Farrell strolled past numerous “Mark Farrell for Mayor” signs and chatted with neighbors wishing him luck in the race.

“I’m so pro-Mark,” one neighbor said. “I think he’s the right guy for the city.”

Wealthy political outsider blasts city’s ‘corrupt system’

Like Farrell, Lurie also said he came to the decision to run for mayor because of his kids.

He was walking last year with his two children in the Mission, he said, when the trio intersected with a naked man crossing the street in clear mental distress.

“My kids just looked at me with those eyes ... like, this is not OK,” Lurie said. “It was at that moment I said to myself, ‘There’s more work to be done.’”

Lurie is also a San Francisco native and a member of one of the city’s most prominent families. His mother, billionaire businesswoman Miriam Haas, married the late Peter Haas, a great-grandnephew of the founder of Levi’s. His wife, Becca Prowda, is an aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom who previously worked for him when he was San Francisco mayor.

Lurie founded the Bay Area nonprofit Tipping Point nearly two decades ago, an organization that he said has invested $500 million into community groups that provide housing services, early childhood education and job training.

Lurie’s platform prioritizes solving homelessness and crime. But he argues that, as a political outsider, he’s the most trustworthy candidate to ensure taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted.

“I’m just not a creature of that broken, corrupt system,” he said.

Lurie similarly wants to crack down on drug dealing and invest in the Police Department. But he’s also proposed significantly adding mental health and substance use treatment beds and using behavioral health workers alongside police to treat people on the streets, to be paid for with voter-approved mental health funding and money saved from terminating contracts with problematic nonprofits.

And his economic vision includes reducing bureaucratic red tape that makes it harder for businesses to succeed, while transforming empty commercial space for artists, nightlife and other creative industries.

But Lurie has never held elected office, a fact that has subjected him to harsh criticism in this hyper-political city.

During a debate last month, Breed said Lurie’s lack of political experience made him the “most dangerous man” on the stage. Much attention has also been paid to the $8 million he has poured into his own campaign, along with the $1 million his mother contributed to an independent committee supporting him.

“That is not only dangerous, it’s offensive,” Breed said in a recent interview. “He thinks that he can use his inherited money to be mayor of San Francisco.”

Sure enough, while walking through the Castro street fair, a man called out to Lurie saying he’d seen a negative campaign about his wealth: “Vote no for the trust fund guy,” the man said in explaining the ad. Lurie nodded, saying his opponents were on the attack.

Lurie’s supporters argue his family money is irrelevant, and that he’s demonstrated decisive leadership as a nonprofit leader who’s focused his life’s work on giving back to his community.

“I know his family has a lot of wealth, and he doesn’t hide from that,” said Joanne Hayes-White, a retired San Francisco Fire Department chief. “If anything, that makes me more interested in why he wants to serve. He does not have to have this job, and it comes from a true sense of caring and believing he wants to make a difference and can make a difference.”

Daniel Lurie talks with supporters at a Castro Halloween street fair.

Before Lurie left the Castro fair, Anthony Alfonso, dressed as a pirate, moved quickly through the crowds to take a picture with him.

“I like your vision,” Alfonso told Lurie.

Alfonso said he wanted a candidate who was both compassionate on some of San Francisco’s top issues and able to “restore law and order.” He is looking for a mayor who will end San Francisco’s “doom loop” and usher in an era of innovation with AI and new business.

“As a gay person, or part of the LGBTQ community, I feel it’s in my DNA to be liberal,” he said. “But sometimes I feel disassociated from the extreme left.”

He said he voted for Lurie as his top choice. Farrell was number two.