Staci Slaughter, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s chief of staff, poses for a portrait at City Hall in San Francisco.
Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle
Staci Slaughter, a quiet force shaping San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s agenda, is preparing to step down after a year and a half as his chief of staff.
Slaughter plans to retire from her role in late June, according to the mayor’s office. She said in a statement that she wanted to return to private life after helping Lurie launch his administration and secure a string of victories over the first 18 months of his tenure.
Slaughter, 59, will become the most powerful Lurie official to exit City Hall under his mayorship, and the first of his top lieutenants to have left their position. The mayor has not yet announced who will succeed her.
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While Slaughter has stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight during her time working for Lurie, she has been an instrumental figure in his administration behind the scenes. She is one of Lurie’s closest advisers and confidants, helping him translate his campaign rhetoric into policy and overseeing his public-relations efforts.
She is one of several Lurie senior aides with deep experience in the private sector — she had a nearly three-decade career with the San Francisco Giants. She had worked in City Hall before, as press secretary for former Mayor Frank Jordan in the 1990s. As Lurie’s chief of staff, her salary last year was about $259,000, according to city data.
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Slaughter said in her statement that Lurie brought her on to help him get his administration off the ground, set up a “culture of collaboration” in city government, advance his policy agenda and make “meaningful progress toward bringing San Francisco back.” She felt she had accomplished those goals and would leave City Hall on a high note, with Lurie buoyed by a 74% job approval rating in the Chronicle’s poll this month.
“By every measure, the City is moving in the right direction and, for the first time in a very long time, San Franciscans feel the city is on the right track,” Slaughter said. “With that foundation in place, I feel this summer is the right time to return to retirement and hand the reins over to our talented Mayor’s Office team, who will keep moving San Francisco forward.”
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Staci Slaughter, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s chief of staff, has stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight during her time working for Lurie, but she has been an instrumental figure in his administration behind the scenes.
Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle
As chief of staff, Slaughter’s role has been different from her predecessors in other mayoral administrations. Instead of directly managing the dozens of department heads who run San Francisco’s sprawling bureaucracy, Slaughter worked with a team of Lurie-appointed policy chiefs who had their own portfolio of city agencies. She also coordinated with agencies such as the city administrator, controller and city attorney’s offices.
Slaughter has been closely involved in the most pressing issues facing Lurie, including the city budget, labor relations, legislative priorities and key hiring decisions. She serves as an extension of the mayor, who begins each morning with Slaughter updating him about problems that arose overnight or talking through important decisions he needs to make that day.
Slaughter was also an architect of Lurie’s communications strategy, encouraging him and his staff to take pride in their accomplishments while also remaining clear-eyed about the city’s remaining challenges. Lurie has followed that blueprint on social media, where he has amassed a large following by posting regularly about his visits to local businesses, his policy plans and his concerns about ongoing issues such as public drug use and homelessness.
“Staci Slaughter took our priorities and mapped out the plan. She helped assemble and mentor a team of leaders to implement that plan,” Lurie said in a statement. “And she reset the tone in City Hall, fostering a culture of collaboration that the second floor hadn’t seen in years, to help turn that plan into reality.”
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Slaughter was also involved in perhaps the lowest point of Lurie’s tenure, when an appointee he installed on the Board of Supervisors, Beya Alcaraz, resigned after just one week on the job. Alcaraz stepped down after a series of damaging revelations about her background that embarrassed Lurie, raising questions about whether he had set the short-lived supervisor up to fail by not vetting her background more thoroughly.
Slaughter advised the mayor when he appointed Alcaraz, though she did not lead the selection process — that was helmed by another aide, with input from an outside research firm.
City Administrator Carmen Chu worked closely with Slaughter and described her to the Chronicle as an “extremely compassionate” leader who was steady and even-handed under extreme pressure.
“Especially for a person in that role, it’s easy to get reactive with all the things that happen in the building, but she always carries forward this very calm demeanor and is thoughtful and deliberate about how she goes about advising the mayor,” Chu said.
Whoever succeeds Slaughter will be tasked with helping Lurie sustain the popularity he’s enjoyed throughout his first year and a half — despite some looming political headwinds.
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Lurie is already facing mounting resistance from the city’s public-sector labor unions, who are gearing up to oppose expected spending cuts in his next budget proposal due June 1. Slaughter will still be around while that proposal is vetted by the Board of Supervisors, but tension between the mayor and unions is likely to linger after that.
Staci Slaughter will become the most powerful Lurie official to exit City Hall under his mayorship, and the first of his top lieutenants who have left their positions. The mayor has not yet announced who will succeed her.
Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle
Most of the unions representing city workers have contracts that expire next year, and some labor leaders have already threatened to strike if negotiations deteriorate. One leading union is also opposing Lurie’s plan to extend a contract related to his signature initiative to overhaul the city permit system. And a November ballot measure Lurie is pushing to shorten and simplify future San Francisco ballots is also facing skepticism from some influential labor leaders.
Lurie has benefited from having a moderate-leaning majority on the board that is friendly to his agenda, but whether that majority will remain by year’s end is far from certain. Two of the mayor’s allies will face voters for the first time in June, and five seats on the board are on the ballot in November.
So far, Lurie has encountered little difficulty executing his political plans — and Slaughter’s supporters say she has been a big part of making that happen.
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“She doesn’t fluster. She also doesn’t demand the limelight,” said Jason Elliott, a longtime aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Mayor Ed Lee who has known Slaughter for years. “In politics, having nerves of steel and being content to watch people around you succeed — I think that those are, if not unique, certainly rare traits.”
Elliott said he’s been impressed at how well the Lurie administration has managed San Francisco, and he has no doubt that Slaughter is a major reason why.
“This is a well run city right now,” he said. “It starts with Daniel Lurie and it runs through Staci.”