Daniel Lurie Poised to Be Next Mayor of San Francisco After Spending Record Sum In Election
Daniel Lurie, the billionaire heir to a Levi's jeans fortune who, with the help of his mother's wealth, launched a campaign to become mayor of San Francisco, is well ahead of incumbent London Breed in ranked-choice votes.
With some unknown number of ballots left to be counted, the San Francisco mayor's race appears to be headed in one direction, and that is the replacement of London Breed as mayor of San Francisco with challenger Daniel Lurie. After spending over $13 million between his campaign and several election committees — three times the sum spent by Breed and her support committees — Lurie held 56.3% of ranked-choice votes as of the last count at 12:36 am Wednesday.
Breed was in second place after 14 round of initial tallying, with 43.7% of votes. Supervisor Aaron Peskin was eliminated in Round 13 of tallying, and held 21.5% of first-choice votes — compared to Breed's 24.6% and Lurie's 28%.
In terms of first-choice votes, Lurie also came out ahead, but by a smaller margin, with 29% of votes, compared to Breed's 25% and Peskin's 22%.
A total of 234,453 votes have been counted, representing a 44.89% voter turnout in San Francisco. Mail-in, provisional, and other ballots will continue to be counted, and an update to the ranked-choice tally will be given at 4 pm on Thursday, November 7.
Lurie posted this lenghty statement below to X on Tuesday night, which certainly sounds like a victory speech. In it, he writes, "Turning around this city is not going to happen overnight. No matter who wins this election, we have extremely difficult challenges ahead." And, "This moment calls for leadership rooted in true public service, one that puts the people of San Francisco above all else. To tackle these issues, we need to work together and turn the page on the politics of demonizing each other on every issue."
The Chronicle has a map of where each candidate's first-choice votes came from, and you can see support for Lurie was strong across the western half of the city, including the Sunset, Richmond, as well as parts of the Castro and Noe Valley, and the wealthier precincts of West Portal, Forest Hill, and St Francis Wood. Support for Breed was spread out through the center of the city and the Bayview, while Peskin pulled many first-choice votes from the Mission and Bernal Heights. Mark Farrell's bulk of support came from the Marina and Pacific Heights.
Breed has yet to make a formal statement since election night, but the SF Standard had her on the record Tuesday night, saying Lurie's campaign and the $8 million of his own money he poured into it, "It's been one of the most sad and horrible things that someone could take their personal wealth and buy this office. It's disgusting."
Still, Breed cautioned that the vote count is not over.
The results may change over the course of the coming days, and not all ballots have been counted.
