San Francisco has some well-off people running for mayor (ahem, Mark Farrell and Aaron Peskin). Mayor London Breed doesn’t shape up too badly, either, with a yearly salary of nearly $400,000.
But nonprofit executive and Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie is likely several orders of magnitude richer than his competitors — and he hasn’t been afraid to throw his wealth around for his campaign. Lurie has given more than $6 million to his bid for mayor, along with a bit of help from his mother.
For us normies, it raises the question: As mayor, would Lurie understand the plight of the average San Franciscan’s needs and wants?
Lurie, who ran the antipoverty nonprofit Tipping Point for nearly two decades, admits he may not have personal experience of how the other half lives but claims his professional roles make up for that.
“I’m never going to say I can put myself in somebody’s shoes,” Lurie said in a recent joint interview hosted by ABC7 News, The Standard, and tech commentator Kara Swisher. “But I’m going to walk alongside people every step of the way.”
Swisher pointed to what may be the largest dividing line between the haves and have-nots in San Francisco: education. The troubled public school district is facing a leadership crisis and is set to close some schools due to falling enrollment.
Lurie said his children attend private school.
“We made that decision,” Lurie said. “We have friends that have the means to send their kids to private school and chose public school. And I understand people want to ask me about that, and I respect that.”
To compensate for his privileged background and lack of political experience, Lurie said, he helped house tens of thousands of people through his nonprofit and led efforts behind Santa Clara’s Super Bowl 50 in 2016.
He often points to 833 Bryant St. as his flagship affordable housing model, one he says was built faster and cheaper than city-led projects and a framework he wants to replicate if elected. However, critics say the project’s successes are exaggerated.
“A door has been opened to me in my life,” Lurie’s said. “I’ve always brought as many people through those doors as possible, whether it be through Tipping Point, whether it be through [the] Super Bowl, whether [it be through] getting housing built on Bryant Street on time and under budget [with] good paying, union labor. I’m going to continue to do that as your mayor.”
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