SF Mayor Daniel Lurie is extremely sensitive to how he is viewed by the public, so much so that we’re now learning he’s spent $870,000 out of his own pocket on PR consultants to manage his image in his first year in office.
It’s no secret that Levi Strauss heir and SF Mayor Daniel Lurie won the 2024 mayoral election in large part because of his spending his own vast sums of money on the race. And it may be more accurate to call it his mom's money, because his mother Miriam "Mimi" Haas fell into the family fortune by marrying Levi Strauss’ great-grandnephew Peter E. Haas. So Daniel Lurie won the lottery without buying a ticket, by virtue of a stepfather from a fabulously wealthy clan.
Suffice to say that Lurie did not have to flip burgers to put himself through college, and is by no means a self-made man. Without that $9 million of his own money that he spent on the campaign, it is an open question whether Lurie would have won that election.
The trend has continued since Lurie took office. The Chronicle reports today that Lurie has spent $870,000 out of his own pocket since taking office in early 2025, with most of that sum going to outside speechwriters, PR consultants, and top advisers to the centrist political agitator group GrowSF.
More specifically, the Chronicle found that Lurie’s own personal dollars were spent getting advice from local PR firm Szabo and Associates ($130,000), Democratic mega-consultant Lis Smith ($50,000), speechwriter Jennifer Pitts ($60,000), and political consultant Tyler Law ($60,000), among others.
I am incredibly excited about the future of San Francisco, and the role @GrowSF is going to continue to play in bringing common sense to the city.
— Sachin Agarwal (@agarwal) February 13, 2025
We're assembling an all star team: recently we announced Tyler Law (@tyzlaw) is joining us as a Senior Advisor, and David Broockman… https://t.co/a2cli4qEFt
Tyler Law is a particularly interesting entry on this list. GrowSF also hired Law as a “senior advisor” shortly after Lurie was sworn in, back when Lurie was in “We don’t owe them a goddamn thing” mode with all the tech PACs who’d boosted Mark Farrell’s campaign. GrowSF clearly worked the Lurie administration nepotism dynamic to get into the mayor’s good graces by hiring one of his top consultants, and indeed, this paid off when GrowSF’s director was named to Lurie’s City Charter reform task force.
None of this is illegal, and again, Lurie pays for these outside consultants from his own pocket. And yes, SF politics has always been tainted by money. But we’re moving into unchartered territory when you have people born into spectacular personal wealth using that wealth to guide their administration.
Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 21: (L-R) Macy's Union Square store manager Jonathan Davis, San Francisco SPCA CEO Dr. Jennifer Scarlett, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, California State Senator Scott Wiener and San Francisco District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter attend as Macy's and the San Francisco SPCA unveil the 39th Annual Macy's Holiday Windows at Union Square, featuring puppies and kittens available for adoption, on November 21, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Macy's)
