BigMoneySF: How Mayor Lurie’s efforts to reshape City Hall brought in a new donor class – Mission Local

BigMoneySF: How Mayor Lurie’s efforts to reshape City Hall brought in a new donor class  Mission Local

San Francisco's November ballot measures have drawn in gobs of money — and a new crop of wealthy individuals. San Francisco’s billionaire-backed centrists chalked up their 2024 electoral victories, like the takeover of the city’s Democratic Party, to a “moderate coup” against progressive political power. But that same year, they failed to catch their white whale: a change to the city charter that would have created an even more powerful mayor’s office. Two years later, Mayor Daniel Lurie is closer than anyone to this goal. The heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune has raised roughly $13 million from wealthy friends and allies to push a package of ballot measures — D, E, and F — that would consolidate the power of the mayor’s office over city government (though also removing his own power to unilaterally place measures on the ballot).

Prop. D, if passed on Nov. 3, would quadruple the signature requirement for residents and organizations to get initiatives on the ballot; Prop. E would expand the city administrator’s contracting power; and Prop. F would give the mayor the ability to fold and merge entire city departments. In the process, Lurie has introduced an unfamiliar class of political benefactors to San Francisco. “The mayor has certainly brought in a new crop of donors I hadn’t heard of before,”