City Hall Outsider Daniel Lurie Wants to Clean Up Local Government as Mayor

San Francisco voters will choose their next mayor this November, and KQED’s Political Breakdown is bringing you interviews with all the top candidates.

Daniel Lurie, founder of the nonprofit Tipping Point Community, hopes to translate his background in philanthropy to reduce homelessness and tackle other government issues.

Here are five key takeaways from our interview.

He’s a City Hall outsider 

Lurie is the only leading candidate in the race who hasn’t served on the Board of Supervisors. And he blames the people inside City Hall for the problems San Francisco is facing and supports reforms to the city’s convoluted commission system.

“I’m worried about the direction our city is heading in,” Lurie told KQED. “The City Hall insiders who got us into this mess, I don’t think, are equipped to get us out.”

Lurie believes his background in business and philanthropy has better positioned him to pull San Francisco out of a sluggish economic recovery following the pandemic.

The Tipping Point founder was working blocks away from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 and said the experience working at the Robin Hood Foundation, which helped rebuild downtown Manhattan, deeply influenced him.

“I saw everything that morning,” Lurie said. “To be part of helping rebuild New York City, it was an honor.”

Through nonprofit work, Lurie has already made inroads in City Hall, however. His nonprofit has helped build affordable housing with local government, and Lurie chaired the Super Bowl 50 committee.

“I can call business leaders across this country,” he said. “We need action, and we need someone committed to the city.”

He’s an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune

Lurie comes from a long line of San Francisco denim royalty. The heir to the Levis Strauss fortune said he is proud of his connections to the iconic brand.

“I grew up in and around the company. I am proud of it. I saw Levi’s values firsthand,” he said. We took care of our LGBTQ workers… long before it was required by law.”

Lurie was born and raised in San Francisco, where his father, Brian Lurie, was a rabbi at Temple Emanu-El and ran the Jewish Federation for 17 years.

“People he never met, he was helping. That had a huge influence on my life.”

Lurie also acknowledged how his wealthy background might set him apart from everyday voters.

“I’m going to ask them (voters) to judge me on the choices I have made in my life,” Lurie said. “Everything in my body and soul has been for serving this community.”

He led — and completed — a major housing project in San Francisco

As CEO of Tipping Point, Lurie led construction on a 145-unit affordable housing project at 833 Bryant Street. With San Francisco struggling to build tens of thousands of units in its pipeline, Lurie said the Bryant Street project, which received $50 million through Tipping Point, will serve as a model for overcoming housing production delays.

“Let’s build a modular factory here that’s union-run,” he said. “This is the city that knows how, but we have become the city of ‘No, we can’t do that.’”

Lurie is a proponent for more housing at all income levels but said that as mayor, he would be focused on expanding options for middle-income families, such as teachers and firefighters and increasing development in the city’s commercial corridors.

Lurie stresses City Hall needs more accountability

“I am tired of these insiders that have built up a broken, ineffective and corrupt City Hall. I believe all of my opponents in this race have been a part of the problem,” Lurie said on Political Breakdown. “They have a lot of experience and they have a track record of doing less with more every single year.”

As mayor, Lurie said he would ramp up efforts to audit the nonprofits that San Francisco contracts out with to provide services.

“There’s going to be a lot of changes,” Lurie said, including that he would sit down with each department head upon entering office and then weekly. “They are going to be held to an account they simply have not been held to date.”

He wants an evidence-based approach to street-level issues

“What we have seen on our streets is shameful,” Lurie said. But “this is not something the city can do alone.”

If elected mayor, Lurie said, he wants to declare a citywide emergency order to direct resources to slow fentanyl overdoses. However, he has so far avoided calls to bring in forces like the National Guard, something his opponent Mark Farrell is advocating. “We need more mental health and more drug treatment beds,” he said.

To slow the rate of people falling into homelessness, he said he also wants to expand resources like housing vouchers and improve rapid rehousing efforts for people who do lose their housing.