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Staci Slaughter, Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s chief of staff, poses for a portrait at City Hall in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gabrielle Lurie\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Staci Slaughter, a quiet force shaping San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie<\/a>\u2019s agenda, is preparing to step down after a year and a half as his chief of staff.<\/p>\n Slaughter plans to retire from her role in late June, according to the mayor\u2019s office. She said in a statement that she wanted to return to private life after helping Lurie launch<\/a> his administration and secure a string of victories over the first 18 months of his tenure.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n 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\u2019s closest advisers and confidants, helping him translate his campaign rhetoric into policy and overseeing his public-relations efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n She is one of several Lurie senior aides with deep experience in the private sector \u2014 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\u2019s chief of staff, her salary last year was about $259,000, according to city data.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Slaughter said in her statement that Lurie brought her on to help him get his administration off the ground, set up a \u201cculture of collaboration\u201d in city government, advance his policy agenda and make \u201cmeaningful progress toward bringing San Francisco back.\u201d 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\u2019s poll<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n \u201cBy 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,\u201d Slaughter said. \u201cWith 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\u2019s Office team, who will keep moving San Francisco forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Staci Slaughter, Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gabrielle Lurie\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n As chief of staff, Slaughter\u2019s role has been different from her predecessors in other mayoral administrations. Instead of directly managing the dozens of department heads who run San Francisco\u2019s sprawling bureaucracy, Slaughter worked with a team of\u00a0Lurie-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\u2019s offices.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Slaughter was also an architect of Lurie\u2019s communications strategy, encouraging him and his staff to take pride in their accomplishments while also remaining clear-eyed about the city\u2019s remaining challenges. Lurie has followed that blueprint<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u201cStaci Slaughter took our priorities and mapped out the plan. She helped assemble and mentor a team of leaders to implement that plan,\u201d Lurie said in a statement. \u201cAnd she reset the tone in City Hall, fostering a culture of collaboration that the second floor hadn\u2019t seen in years, to help turn that plan into reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Slaughter was also involved in perhaps the lowest point of Lurie\u2019s tenure, when an appointee he installed on the Board of Supervisors, Beya Alcaraz, resigned after just one week on the job<\/a>. Alcaraz stepped down after a series of damaging revelations about her background that embarrassed Lurie<\/a>, raising questions about whether he had set the short-lived supervisor up to fail by not vetting her background more thoroughly.<\/p>\n Slaughter advised the mayor when he appointed Alcaraz, though she did not lead the selection process \u2014 that was helmed by another aide, with input from an outside research firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n City Administrator Carmen\u00a0Chu worked closely with Slaughter and described her to the Chronicle as an \u201cextremely compassionate\u201d leader who was steady and even-handed under extreme pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially for a person in that role, it\u2019s 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,\u201d Chu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whoever succeeds Slaughter will be tasked with helping Lurie sustain the popularity he\u2019s enjoyed throughout his first year and a half \u2014 despite some looming political headwinds.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Lurie is already facing mounting resistance from the city\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Gabrielle Lurie\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n Most of the unions representing city workers have contracts that expire next year, and some labor leaders have already\u00a0threatened to strike<\/a> if negotiations deteriorate. One leading union is also opposing<\/a> Lurie\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s end is far from certain. Two of the mayor\u2019s allies will face voters for the first time in June, and five seats on the board are on the ballot in November.<\/p>\n So far, Lurie has encountered little difficulty executing his political plans \u2014 and Slaughter\u2019s supporters say she has been a big part of making that happen.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cShe doesn\u2019t fluster. She also doesn\u2019t demand the limelight,\u201d said Jason Elliott, a longtime aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Mayor Ed Lee who has known Slaughter for years. \u201cIn politics, having nerves of steel and being content to watch people around you succeed \u2014 I think that those are, if not unique, certainly rare traits.\u201d<\/p>\n Elliott said he\u2019s been impressed at how well the Lurie administration has managed San Francisco, and he has no doubt that Slaughter is a major reason why.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a well run city right now,\u201d he said. \u201cIt starts with Daniel Lurie and it runs through Staci.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staci Slaughter, Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s chief of staff, poses for a portrait at City Hall in San Francisco.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7,143,145,144,13,101],"class_list":["post-333127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-politics","tag-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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