London Breed Concedes San Francisco Mayor Race to Daniel Lurie

San Francisco Mayor Concedes Race to Levi Strauss Heir

Mayor London Breed acknowledged on Thursday that Daniel Lurie, a first-time candidate, would succeed her in office.

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By Heather Knight

Reporting from San Francisco

London Breed, San Francisco’s first Black woman mayor who steered the city through the pandemic but also saw its quality of life sink, conceded her re-election race on Thursday.

Ms. Breed said in a news conference at City Hall that she had called Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who has never held elected office, to congratulate him on his win.

“Being mayor of San Francisco has been the greatest honor of my lifetime,” she told journalists in a meeting room off her office. “I’m beyond grateful to our residents for the opportunity to serve the city that raised me.”

The Associated Press had not yet called the race, though local news outlets did. Ms. Breed said she thought it would take “a miracle” to change the outcome at this point.

Mr. Lurie will take office in January, and Ms. Breed vowed she would work to ensure a smooth transition. Both Mr. Lurie and Ms. Breed are Democrats and San Francisco natives who grew up mere miles from each other, he in luxury and she in poverty.

Mr. Lurie, the founder of an anti-poverty nonprofit, said in an email that he would speak Friday morning. “I’m deeply grateful to my incredible family, campaign team and every San Franciscan who voted for accountability, service and change,” he wrote.

Mr. Lurie vowed during his campaign to improve public safety and city services for residents.

Ms. Breed’s concession came after multiple rounds of counting under the city’s ranked-choice voting system. Mr. Lurie cultivated support from various communities and particularly focused on appealing to Chinese American voters. He also made a concerted effort this fall to ask voters to list him as their second candidate if he was not their first choice, and he secured high ballot rankings from voters across San Francisco’s ideological spectrum.

Perhaps no city in the country took as hard a hit in reputation by the Covid-19 pandemic. The technology companies that had fueled its modern boom also spurred its bust once their employees worked remotely. That had the effect of emptying out downtown office towers and leaving few customers for the retail shops that had catered to tech workers.

During and after the pandemic, property crime surged, fentanyl killed an average of two people each day, and homeless encampments abounded. Police officers took longer to respond to crimes, public schools were closed longer than nearly anywhere else, and numerous departments were roiled by corruption scandals.

The first signs that voters were unhappy came in 2022, when they recalled three San Francisco school board members and the city’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin.

Voters told pollsters this year that they also were dissatisfied with Ms. Breed and were not optimistic about the future of the city. Mr. Lurie seized on the longing for change, using his wealth — including $8.6 million of his own money and a $1 million donation from his mother, the billionaire Mimi Haas — to flood mailboxes and airwaves with ads telling voters that Ms. Breed was not up to the job.

Critics pointed out that he had never worked in government and seemed to be jumping the line by running for mayor rather than a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where many of the city’s executives have gotten their start. They also slammed him for trying to buy the job.

On election night, Mr. Lurie spoke to a packed room at The Chapel, a concert venue in the city’s Mission District, as his mother, 10-year-old son, 13-year-old daughter and other relatives looked on from the balconies above. His wife, Becca Prowda, an aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom, stood by his side.

Mr. Lurie said in his speech that cynicism has spread throughout San Francisco in response to “record budgets, worse outcomes and more excuses.”

He said he would try to help small businesses thrive after many of them shut down during the pandemic. He also plans to hire more police officers to walk around city neighborhoods. And he wants to make it safer for older Chinese residents to ride the city’s buses and walk city streets, following a spate of anti-Asian attacks.

“So many people love this city,” Mr. Lurie said. “It’s time for us to start making people feel like the city loves them back.”

That same night, Ms. Breed addressed her supporters at Little Skillet, a soul food restaurant near the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark. Fighting back tears, she said it was too soon to call the race, though she knew it would be tough to win re-election.

In a speech to journalists and her supporters, she condemned Mr. Lurie’s big spending on the race.

“It has been really one of the most sad and horrible things I’ve seen in politics in San Francisco, that someone would take their wealth and just basically buy this office,” Ms. Breed said. “It’s really unfortunate and pretty disgusting.”

On Thursday, though, Ms. Breed struck a more conciliatory tone and gave no comment on his spending. Asked by a reporter whether conceding the race was the most difficult speech she had ever given, she said it was not.

She pointed to the time in 2017 when she was president of the Board of Supervisors and had to announce at a hospital in the middle of the night that the mayor, Ed Lee, had just died. She also referred to 2020 when she ordered the city into lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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