A PG&E executive testified that Mayor Lurie demanded the lights be turned back on during the Dec. 20 blackout for his daughter's Nutcracker performance, but now PG&E is backtracking on that claim.

There’s still plenty of finger-pointing and recriminations going around over the December 20 PG&E blackout that left more than 200,000 households and businesses without power. And one very minor issue was why PG&E put emphasis on a Nutcracker performance that day when there were clearly other larger problems to be sorted out.

Well, the SF Board of Supervisors had their much-ballyhooed hearings about the blackout on Thursday, and Supervisor Bilial Mahmood was not pleased about this Nutcracker business. “You prioritize the opera where no one is living to restore service before you prioritize restoring service in communities,” Mahmood said at the hearing.

But PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh pushed back (or at least he did at first).

“We did not make that decision on our own accord,” Singh told Mahmood. “We were requested by the mayor to provide temporary generation to that specific location and we responded to that and by that time we had about 90% of our customers restored.”

And more shit is hitting the fan as we learn that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s daughter was a cast member of that Nutcracker production, as the Chronicle reports. Though PG&E quickly hurried back any accusations that Lurie pulled strings to get the power back on, saying in an updated Thursday statement that, “the mayor did not ask or direct PG&E to restore power to the opera house.”

“It is of course true that PG&E was constantly in touch with City department of emergency management staff and city leadership throughout the process of restoring power to all parts of San Francisco, including key government, municipal and public locations,” PG&E spokesperson David McCulloch continued in the same statement.

That statement added that Lurie “did not ask or direct PG&E to prioritize power to the opera house,” and says that the CEO Singh “acknowledges that he misunderstood this information when he answered Supervisor Mahmood’s question.”

Lurie obviously had to get his own statement in too, here.

“For days through the blackout, Mayor Lurie personally pushed PG&E to restore power across San Francisco as quickly as possible,” Lurie told the Chronicle through his spokesperson Charles Lutvak. “But to be clear, the mayor never directed any PG&E employee to provide power at any specific venue — and the San Francisco Ballet didn’t even have PG&E support until after the weekend.”

As for why the blackout went so much longer that PG&E had anticipated, the utility said Thursday that (in the Chronicle’s words) “the company uses an AI model that is typically accurate for small, routine outages but failed during the substation fire.”

Related: Massive Power Outage In San Francisco Leaves 200,000+ In the Dark, Disrupts Muni and BART [Joe]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 21: San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie speaks during a Domestic Violence Awareness Month rally on October 21, 2025 in San Francisco, California. Mayor Lurie joined local leaders on the steps of San Francisco City Hall for a rally to observe Domestic Violence Awareness Month. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)