San Francisco has always been a gilded town. The Gold Rush built the city. The tech economy minted billionaires. And the artificial intelligence bonanza is expanding the city’s wealth to unforeseen heights. But San Francisco hasn’t had a mayor who matched its boomtown flair quite like it does now.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, a former nonprofit executive and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, has opened the money spigots like no city leader in contemporary history. He has raised large sums to invest in downtown improvements and tackle homelessness. He and his allies have brought in unprecedented funds to advance his political priorities and preferred candidates. And he has spent his own money on a team of political operatives, a highly unusual arrangement for a mayor of a city with a population of under one million.
The Standard endeavored to take the most expansive view yet of the mayor’s money machine through a months-long review of hundreds of pages of campaign and financial records. According to our analysis, about $164 million has flowed through political, philanthropic and personal channels connected to Lurie since he launched his campaign for mayor in 2023. The total does not include an additional pile of money: a nonprofit set up by his well-heeled circle that has quietly helped push his political accomplishments, with finances that have remained largely undisclosed. The figures reveal a mayor whose dollar footprint dwarfs that of his predecessor, Mayor London Breed.
Lurie’s top donors across philanthropic and political lines:
The support of Moritz and Larsen is notable, as both backed Lurie’s opponents in the 2024 mayoral campaign.
“Mayor Lurie has challenged those who have built their success here, including many who opposed his candidacy, to give back to San Francisco,” said the mayor’s spokesperson, Max Szabo. “That support has helped protect food assistance for families, strengthen Muni, and advance commonsense reforms to make City Hall work better for everyone.”
The full extent of Lurie’s financial clout is coming into focus at a pivotal moment. The Nov. 3 election will test whether the millions he has corralled will successfully push through his high-stakes ballot proposals and chosen candidates.
Here’s a look at four categories in which Lurie has transformed the rules of money at City Hall: The Philanthropic, The Political, The Pocketbook, and The Persuasive.
Category
Fund, campaign or group
Donor or founder
Money
Other tie
Blue is The Philanthropic, black is The Political, gray is The Pocketbook, and dashed gray is The Persuasive.
Summary: Of $163.7 million connected to Mayor Lurie since 2023, it falls into four categories: philanthropic ($123.6 million), political ($38.9 million), personal spending on political operatives ($1.2 million) and an undisclosed nonprofit. The same donors and founders, including Michael Moritz and Crankstart, Chris Larsen, Mimi Haas, Tipping Point and financiers Alec Perkins and Adam Clammer, connect to multiple categories.
Source: S.F. Ethics Commission behested payment and campaign finance filings, IRS filings and city records obtained by The Standard. Donor totals include philanthropic and political giving since 2023.
The Political: $38.9 million
Lurie spent an unprecedented $10 million of his own money in the 2024 election. His candidacy was also propped up by a circle of wealthy donors, who contributed $6.7 million to a pro-Lurie PAC created by two financiers, Alec Perkins and Adam Clammer.
Since then, the political spending around Lurie has continued unabated. Having rubbed shoulders with the city’s elite for years as the founder of Tipping Point, Lurie is able not only to get San Francisco’s wealthiest to give but can rely on far fewer contributors by attracting larger donations.
Lurie and his allies have pushed enormous sums toward political priorities, starting in the June primary. That’s when a PAC formed in January by Perkins and Clammer spent $643,000 to support Alan Wong and Stephen Sherrill, an unusually large sum for two local supervisor races. The PAC, SF Believes, also spent $170,000 against Wong’s opponent, Natalie Gee, and $140,000 against a labor-backed ballot measure to raise the city’s Overpaid CEO Tax.
But the real money has always been earmarked for November.
Lurie’s four ballot proposals — three charter reform measures and a parcel tax to keep Muni funded — have collectively raised $18.6 million.
Lurie has leaned on wealthy interests to fund his November ballot measures. | Source: Morgan Ellis/The Standard
In November 2024, two political committees were formed in support of Proposition D, which would have reduced the number of city commissions and given the mayor more authority over commissioner appointments, among other tweaks to the city charter. The two committees, one headed by mayoral candidate Mark Farrell and the other by moderate group TogetherSF, together raised $9.5 million across 162 contributors, with an average donation size of $60,703. One of the committees that raised $7 million was also fighting a competing measure, Prop. E, which prevailed over Prop. D.
At the time, Prop. D was considered a well-resourced ballot measure in terms of monetary support.
But that was before Lurie’s fundraising was put to the test.
Two years later, Lurie is attempting a similar charter reform measure for this November’s election, though on a different scale. Propositions D, E, and F (that’s a new Prop. D) attempt to reform access to the ballot, contracting, and executive-branch power — and the fundraising prowess behind them stands in stark contrast to 2024.
Even though Lurie’s charter reform effort is more robust, he has been able to rely on far fewer donors to raise more money: 54 contributors have given a combined $13.5 million, with an average donation of $249,817.
Top contributors to charter reform include Moritz, Larsen, and investor John Pritzker. (Moritz also gave handsomely to the 2024 effort, a total of $3.2 million.)
Meanwhile, a coterie of blue-chip companies — Airbnb, OpenAI, and Anthropic, among others — have given liberally to Lurie’s Muni measure, Prop. H. It has also picked up support from the Electrical Industry Service Bureau, the Transport Workers Union, and the Teamsters.
The totals make his opponents’ efforts this election season look sparse.
For example, a progressive-backed committee against the mayor’s Prop. D charter reform measure — Fair Access No on D — has raised approximately $200,000. Keally McBride, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco, said progressives have not only faced issues matching moderates on spending but have struggled to fight back with a coherent message and grassroots campaign. Opponents of Prop. D argue that making it harder to get something on the ballot will bar less-resourced groups from placing measures before voters, whereas Lurie says the sheer number of propositions each election has become unwieldy.
“I don’t get the sense that they have the people of San Francisco’s collective imagination at this point,” McBride said about the city’s progressive wing. “They’re not going to be able to run out thousands of people to door-knock over the weekend.”
Outside of the mayor’s ballot measures, his allies have spent heavily on November’s supervisor races in an attempt to maintain a moderate majority on the Board of Supervisors.
Larsen has forked over $540,000 to a PAC supporting Theo Ellington, the moderate pick for the District 10 race. That represents one of the largest contributions ever in city history from an individual to a third-party group supporting a lone candidate. In the other supervisor race this fall, the Lurie-linked SF Believes PAC donated $50,000 to a committee supporting Manny Yekutiel before he dropped out.
The Philanthropic: $123.6 million
Lurie’s background in philanthropy is paying off at City Hall.
In his first two years in office, Lurie has helped steer at least $123.6 million in private donations to city efforts, including donations to public-private partnerships aimed at easing the homelessness and addiction crises, revitalizing downtown, and funding emergency food assistance.
Some of those donations appear in behested payment reports — public filings that track donations made at an official’s request.
Every time the mayor asks a wealthy donor to support a city initiative, San Francisco law requires a public paper trail, and those filings are piling up. Officials must report these solicitations to the Ethics Commission as “behested payments.” In less than two years, Lurie has reported $53.9 million across more than 220 filings — meaning 220 donors explicitly gave him credit for their philanthropic giving.
Breed reported $90.4 million over her six-and-a-half-year tenure, but the majority was from COVID-19 donations in 2020. The pandemic funds supported local non-profits and small businesses, as well as residents facing financial and economic insecurity. Around $3.4 million was donated in the form of supplies like masks.
In Lurie’s first full year in office, donors gave $40.2 million at his request. In Breed’s first full year, she reported $3.4 million.
Behested payments capture only some Lurie-influenced philanthropy. For example, when CalFresh benefits were set to expire last fall, Moritz’s Crankstart stepped in with a $9 million donation to the SF-Marin Food Bank. Moritz told The Standard he made the donation because Lurie was in office.
London Breed
$90.4M
2018–2024, including $48.5M in COVID-19 payments
Daniel Lurie
$53.9M
2024–2026 (year to date)
Running total
Total
By year
Note: Lurie’s figures do not include some donations to the Downtown Development Corporation and Breaking the Cycle that aren’t captured in behested payment records.
Source: San Francisco Ethics Commission, Form 803 behested payment filings
Breaking the Cycle: $49 million
Of Lurie’s total behested payments, $34 million went toward Breaking the Cycle, a public-private fund he launched a few months into his term to target homelessness and addiction.
The fund has raised $49 million. The $15 million that didn’t show up in Lurie’s filings include $11.5 million that flowed directly from Tipping Point Community, the nonprofit Lurie founded that helps to manage the fund, and $1 million donated by the philanthropic consulting firm Third Plateau. The remaining $2.5 million represents the unpaid portion of a $4.5 million pledge from Haas, Lurie’s mother.
Faced with a budget gap, the Lurie administration framed the private capital as a way to stretch city services despite revenue shortfalls. It would also allow the city to bypass sluggish bidding processes and bureaucratic red tape that can delay the deployment of public funds.
The philanthropic flex drew on Lurie’s wealthy allies beyond Tipping Point and his mother, including $10.5 million from Crankstart, $10 million from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, $6 million from San Francisco Partners, and $2 million from the Dolby family.
The money has nearly all been committed, trickling out over time. As of late October, $19 million had been disbursed or was part of an initiative where spending had begun and was being drawn down over time.
The mayor’s Breaking the Cycle fund has raised $49 million. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
That capital has been earmarked for initiatives like a $6 million family homelessness prevention program and $7 million in repairs to permanent supportive housing. Breaking the Cycle also sunk $219,000 into a scrapped attempt to relocate a tiny cabin community for homeless people from a Mission property slated for closure to a site in SoMa. Those 60 cabins remain in storage more than a year later after city officials decided to abandon the SoMa site following lease disputes, site complications, and neighborhood backlash.
Behind the scenes, oversight of the funds is maintained on the last Monday of every month in a “Breaking the Cycle leadership meeting,” according to city records obtained by The Standard. The invite list pairs municipal brass — including Lurie’s chief of health and human services, Kunal Modi, and other key department heads — with top officials from Tipping Point and the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, who together oversee the money’s distribution.
Rebecca Foster, CEO of the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, made clear that private money isn’t a permanent bailout for City Hall, but rather a way to test solutions before the city commits its own long-term funding.
“We’re not trying to fund anything that’s going to require ongoing funding over years,” she said. “The government is best positioned to do that.” Instead, the goal is to use “faster, flexible upfront capital to prove new models, learn from things where they do or don’t work, and then be able to help equip the government to be able to sustain the things that work the best.”
Downtown Development Corporation: $60 million
The second largest share of Lurie’s behested payment filings went to the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation, a nonprofit launched in April 2025, shortly after he took office.
The DDC, which refers to itself as an “independent public-private partnership,” was created as part of Lurie’s plan for the private sector to bankroll downtown’s recovery. Its founding board, a coalition of Lurie’s allies from business, labor, and philanthropy, is chaired by David Stiepleman, cofounder of investment firm Sixth Street, and includes three billionaires: Larsen, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, and former Gap CEO Bob Fisher. Also on the board are influential labor union leader Olga Miranda and Sam Cobbs, CEO of Tipping Point.
At the end of 2025, the DDC announced that it had raised (opens in new tab) more than $60 million from more than 50 funders, including OpenAI, Salesforce, and an anonymous donor. Lurie’s behested payment filings account for $16.1 million to the DDC — the largest coming from Larsen’s Ripple Labs, the Dolby family fund, and Haas.
The mayor has argued downtown’s success is vital to the city’s post-pandemic recovery. | Source: Morgan Ellis/The Standard
“We are aligned with Mayor Lurie and the city as we put philanthropic dollars to work,” said a DDC spokesperson, adding that the organization pays for sidewalk power washing and safety ambassadors, runs a $25 million small-business fund, and has committed $14.5 million to renovating Powell Street and up to $20 million to turning Embarcadero Plaza into a waterfront park.
Records obtained by The Standard show how the fundraising machine runs — and how blurry the line between City Hall and the DDC can be.
In August 2025, Lurie hosted a breakfast for DDC donor prospects at City Hall. “It was a highly successful event and yielded a lot of interest in our work,” Jaime Tollas, a DDC fundraising consultant, wrote to the mayor’s scheduling director in May. “We’d like to repeat this formula this year.”
The DDC relies on Lurie’s top aides to do the asking. At a May “corporate fundraising breakfast” for the Embarcadero park campaign — invited were real estate, banking, and corporate philanthropy executives — the person scripted to deliver “the ask” was not a DDC fundraiser but Ned Segal, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff for housing and economic development. “We’re here today because we hope everyone in this room will join us in supporting what will certainly become one of San Francisco’s most iconic locations,” his DDC-drafted talking points read. This spring, Tollas set up weekly working sessions between Segal and DDC board chair Stiepleman, coordinated through the mayor’s office.
Donors, in turn, set terms. In January, Crankstart CEO Missy Narula wrote to DDC CEO Shola Olatoye and city officials, laying out what a $10 million gift for the Embarcadero park campaign would involve: a DDC guarantee that no funding “gap” would remain, a challenge structure to draw in other donors, and “recognition for Art Agnos,” the former mayor. In June, Narula asked Cynthia Wong, the mayor’s director of strategic partnerships, to schedule a meeting for Agnos to vet the project; it took place in City Hall the following month. In August, Lurie announced (opens in new tab) “Art Agnos Plaza” without mentioning that the idea was first raised by Crankstart as part of negotiations over its $10 million gift. Crankstart declined to comment.
Wong’s job is itself privately funded for two and a half years: $700,000 from Tipping Point, (opens in new tab) whose CEO sits on the DDC’s founding board.
The $60 million raised for DDC is just the start. At a March donor event for women philanthropists, the DDC presented its total fundraising goal by the end of 2026: $120 million.
The Pocketbook: $1.2 million
While attracting philanthropic and political money to San Francisco is no surprise for a mayor, there is another pocket of cash that’s perhaps unusual: more than $1 million in personal spending to bolster his City Hall operation.
Since entering office, Lurie has spent heavily on a small group of operatives who have helped coordinate media coverage and write his speeches. The arrangement is unique: Former mayors have always had consultants, but they worked for free, with the expectation that they would be paid during a future election cycle. Lurie is allowed to continue to pay his consultants through his 2024 campaign account — as long as they don’t engage in government decision-making, like signing a contract.
“I haven’t heard of something to this scale,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor. “On the one hand, people can say, ‘What are they doing, and what are they doing farming out this work?’ On the other hand, he’ll say, ‘This isn’t taxpayer money.’”
Much of the $1.2 million in reported payments has been spent on four consultants and an opposition research firm. Of the remaining roughly quarter million, a majority has gone toward attorneys, polling, and contributions to the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club PAC, the San Francisco Democratic Party, and the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee.
Here are the operatives and how much they have been paid:
Szabo & Associates: $362.5K
While the mayor has a City Hall staff that handles government communications, Szabo is in charge of the political side, such as endorsement announcements. Once a staffer for former District Attorney George Gascón, Szabo was instrumental in Lurie’s 2024 campaign messaging. Since Lurie has taken office, Szabo has taken on numerous roles, including overseeing communications for moderate group GrowSF, along with the mayor’s charter reform and Muni parcel tax measures.
Thematic Campaigns: $201K
Tyler Law, a partner at Thematic Campaigns, is one of Lurie’s main strategists and is credited with architecting his breakthrough. Like Szabo, Law was a key part of Lurie’s 2024 campaign and helps with current campaigns, including charter reform and the Muni parcel tax.
Lis Smith: $155K
Lis Smith is a nationally renowned consultant who has worked on high-profile campaigns, including Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential bid. She has helped secure national media coverage for Lurie.
Matchstick Communications: $152.5K
Jennifer Pitts, founder of Matchstick, served as Lurie’s speechwriter at Tipping Point. She has continued those efforts and helped on events this year, including “One City Day,” a July volunteer event hosted by the mayor and his wife, Becca Prowda.
VR Research: $128K
Lurie has used the services of the Oakland and Washington, D.C., opposition research firm run by Mike Rice. While candidates often use such firms to dig up dirt on their opponents, it is unusual for a politician to keep one on retainer after assuming office. The mayor’s team has not provided details on what VR Research does, but such firms are sometimes used to vet potential appointees.
The Persuasive: Unknown amount
If you thought there was already enough money sloshing around in Lurie’s world, just hold on: There’s still one more bucket of cash.
Remember the pro-Lurie PAC from 2024 started by financiers Clammer and Perkins, who also started the 2026 SF Believes PAC? They created a nonprofit, Believe in SF, behind the star-studded June coyote video, “Comeback City,” featuring Lurie, Steph Curry, Francis Ford Coppola, and others.
How much the nonprofit has spent is unknown: Its required annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service for fiscal 2025 has not yet been released. Its donors are also unknown, as nonprofits are generally not required to reveal their contributors.
But paperwork filed when the nonprofit was established in 2025 offers clues: IRS documents show the group said it would expend around $30 million between 2025 and 2027. Additionally, an “action” arm of the nonprofit, which was established as a 501(c)(4), an entity that has the ability to lobby City Hall, said it would spend $4.7 million through 2027. However, these totals are likely much higher than the organization intends to spend, according to a person familiar with the nonprofit’s workings.
The cost of production of the video was in the low six figures. It signaled a city on the rise, a narrative Lurie has drilled into the public’s consciousness through his Instagram videos and speeches.
But the nonprofit is not just a movie producer: It’s another arm of the Lurie machine, conducting polling on San Franciscans’ sentiments to inform City Hall and placing ads in local news outlets to subtly promote Lurie’s policy accomplishments. The ads touch on topics that are politically vulnerable for Lurie: affordability and drug use on city streets.
An example of an ad paid for by Believe in SF. | Source: Screenshot
One ad resembles a clipping from a Chronicle article with the headline “San Francisco is stepping up to protect renters as AI reshapes the city’s housing market,” referring to the rental protections that Lurie and others announced in September. The nonprofit has also run ads that show news clippings from KRON4 and CBS News.
The nonprofit is limited in how much it can promote Lurie: When users click on the ads, they are brought to websites featuring city services — likely a way for the organization to avoid accusations that it is directly endorsing a political candidate, something 501(c)(3) organizations are prohibited from doing.