Nearly $17 million has now been poured into the SF mayoral race, and Mayor London Breed just benefited from huge donations from former presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and the CEO of Doordash, while the Daniel Lurie campaign got another $1.3 million from Daniel Lurie.
It sure seemed bizarre back in 2020 when SF Mayor London Breed endorsed Michael Bloomberg for president, considering how at the time, the also-ran Bloomberg was polling at just 4% in the Democratic race (barely ahead of Amy Klobuchar!). But Breed’s endorsement has paid off long-term. In January, Bloomberg gave $200,000 to a committee supporting Breed's re-election, and then late last week, he gave a whole $1 million to support Breed, according to Mission Local.
But that money was not donated to the London Breed for Mayor campaign, as official campaigns can only take contributions of up to $500. Instead, that money went to a political action committee (PAC) supporting Breed, as PACs can take unlimited donations. The PAC supporting Breed has is bizarrely named “Forward Action SF, Supporting London Breed for Mayor 2024, Sponsored by Abundance Network.” In addition to the Bloomberg donations, the Breed PAC also got $100,000 from Doordash CEO Tony Xu.
As we see above, this brings Breed’s PAC to $2.1 million, and while the actual Breed campaign has raised $1.85 million. The total amount of money raised in the 2024 SF mayoral race alone is now nearly $17 million, and you’ll notice that more than half of that is for the Daniel Lurie campaign and his PAC “Believe in SF, Lurie for Mayor 2024.”
Also last week, Lurie gave his own campaign $1 million, as Mission Local reported at the time. (While donors can only give $500 to a campaign the candidates themselves can contribute however much they want to their own campaigns). Lurie has now self-funded his own campaign to the tune of about $3.5 million, while his PAC got $1 million from his mother Mimi Haas, and plenty more from his late stepfather's Levi Strauss-heir family.
You might find it odd that wealthy venture capitalist candidate Mark Farrell is running in fourth place in the fundraising race, behind Aaron Peskin. But that may be thanks to some creative accounting.
Looking at the issues on the November ballots, the City Hall commission reform measures Prop D and Prop E have by far the most PAC money. And Farrell’s campaign has been accused of commingling his campaign expenses with the Prop D and Prop E campaigns, and even using them as slush funds for his own campaign.
As Mission Local notes, “In the last seven days, close to $5 million was raised in San Francisco for the local races.” (This includes the mayoral race, the propositions, and SF supervisor races.) The site adds, “That brings the total money amassed to a stunning $32,595,515.”
And there are still two months to ge before the election.
Image: (Left) Bloomberg Philanthropies via Wikimedia Commons, (Right) Daniel Lurie for Mayor
