A billionaire heir believes he can clean up the drug-infested streets of San Francisco against its least popular mayor ever - and the polls show hes convincing voters.
Daniel Lurie is an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune and has a track record in raising cash to tackle homelessness and drug abuse.
But what excites the Democratic Party is how Lurie, 47, succeeds as a common-sense, law-and-order centrist, even as critics pan him as a trust fund baby and political novice.
A $1 million donation from Luries billionaire mom, Mimi Haas, the biggest stakeholder in the jeans giant, buoyed a record-breaking $8 million campaign thats starting to look unstoppable.
The latest polls show Lurie, who has gained national attention, is neck-and-neck with incumbent London Breed, who seeks reelection even as criminals sew chaos and businesses and residents flee in droves.
Rising Democratic star Daniel Lurie says hell clean up San Francisco, but critics paint him as a trust-fund lightweight
Luries mayoral campaign was buoyed by a $1 million donation from his mom, Mimi Haas, the biggest stakeholder in the jeans giant.
A San Francisco Chronicle survey of some 800 voters earlier this month shows Lurie and Breed each taking 27 percent of the first-round of voting in a field of 13 candidates.
The citys quirky ranked-choice system makes the final outcome tough to predict, but Lurie is best positioned to gain more votes than Breed once stragglers are eliminated.
As last-placed candidates fall off, their votes will filter to remaining candidates. One analysis, with a notable margin of error, says Luries 56 percent final tally will trounce Breeds 44 percent.
Jonathan Brown, president of Sextant Strategies & Research, which conducted the Chronicles poll, said Luries costly advertising blitz had paid off by alerting voters to a viable challenger.
People began to focus on what the next four years of the city will look like, says Brown.
Incumbent Mayor London Breed seeks reelection even as criminals sew chaos and businesses and residents flee in droves.
Breed has been blamed for the citys slow recovery from the pandemic, with the desolate reality of a hollowed out city center in which every store in some retail blocks are shuttered and empty
For Breed, 50, the citys first black female mayor, whos running on a promise of more affordable housing, the momentum was blunted, adds Brown.
Lurie and other moderate challengers say Breed has failed to rid the city of the tent encampments and open drug dealing that blight parts of the iconic city of 809,000 people.
Shes also blamed for its slow recovery from the pandemic, with the desolate reality of a hollowed out city center in which every store in some retail blocks are shuttered and empty.
This week, Lurie campaigned in the downtrodden Tenderloin district with his wife, Becca Prowda, vowing to do better by those who are struggling with mental health issues and drug crises.
The dad-of-two has also vowed to cut red tape and support small businesses, and tackle crime with a new police district focused on Union Square and other nearby downtown areas.
The dad-of-two has also vowed to cut red tape and support small businesses, and tackle crime with a new police district focused on Union Square and other nearby downtown areas
Homeless camps and open-air drug taking have become common sights in the city
A political outsider, he promises to put the city back on the right track from crime, drug use, and homelessness, using skills gleaned from running the Tipping Point charity he created in 2005.
The longtime nonprofit executive has deep ties to the jean giant, which was founded in the West Coast city by a hardworking German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss back in 1853.
The brand has since evolved into one of the worlds largest apparel firms - one that Lurie is poised to partially inherit.
Luries mom Mimi owns 11 percent of the denim giant, making her its single largest shareholder.
She split with Luries dad, Rabbi Brian Lurie, when he was a preteen, before marrying into the Strauss family.
In a video to launch his campaign, Lurie slammed the scourge of 20,000 people sleeping on San Franciscos streets over the course of a year and blamed reckless tax-and-spend policies.
I love this city, but what we are seeing on the streets of San Francisco is not progressive, he complained.
California has doled out more than $20 billion statewide since 2020 on housing for the homeless - as increasingly brazen encampments remain common not only in San Francisco, but also in LA and Oakland.
We have too many people that have been in power for far too long, doing things the same way theyve always been done, Lurie said in the video.
We need the courage to try to do things differently he added, vowing to rip the Band-Aid off in many different departments.
The Democratic mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, has lost momentum in her reelection bid, it is said.
But as Lurie has surged in the polls and looks increasingly viable, hes faced fiercer criticism.
Garry Tan, the CEO of San Francisco tech firm Y Combinator, warns that Lurie represents the continuation of hard-left policies that have led to the citys decline.
Progressive useful idiots and the nonprofit swamp people are going to run this town if you vote this guy in, Tan posted on X.
One of Luries rivals, Mark Farrell, who briefly held the mayorship before Breed, paints him as a rookie wholl be learning on the job.
Daniel Lurie is using his inherited wealth to relentlessly attack me and my family with lies and misleading information—flooding our TVs and mailboxes with a toxic smear campaign, Farrell posted on X.
Instead of presenting a positive vision for San Francisco, hes resorting to dirty politics, trying to deceive voters and distract from his lack of experience.