Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: Daniel Lurie. Read earlier dispatches here.
With ballots being mailed out to San Francisco voters on Oct. 7, the 7.6 percent of them who registered as Republicans might be surprised to see whom their fellow Republicans are telling them to vote for.
A rising Republican political group called San Francisco Briones Society has put moderate-leaning Democratic candidate Daniel Lurie as their first choice for the November election, ranking Mark Farrell as second and the incumbent Mayor London Breed as third. All three are registered Democrats.
This came at the expense of Farrell, whose conservative campaign rhetoric has won over law-and-order voters and is backed by donors such as Thomas Coates — a rent-control foe who gave $500,000 to a political action committee supporting Farrell and another $250,000 to Farrell’s ballot measure committee supporting Proposition D to reform city commissions and give more power to the mayor.
“I’d say it was pretty evenly split between people who wanted Mark Farrell first and Daniel Lurie first,” Jay Donde, co-founder of the San Francisco Briones Society said about the decision made by a nine-person committee. “The one thing that Daniel has over all of the other candidates is that he can say that he was not in office and did not take part in the politics that led us to the current mess the city is in.”
Donde acknowledged that Farrell has experience in government but called it a “double-edged sword.” “Sometimes it’s better to have new blood, new perspectives, fresh eyes in City Hall,” he added, while emphasizing the two are both “good candidates” that would be “a significant improvement over the status quo.”
“I’m a proud lifelong Democrat so it’s not an endorsement I’m seeking,” Lurie said in a statement. “But my campaign has always been about bringing people into the fold, not pushing them away.”
“I welcome the support of every San Franciscan who is committed to restoring safety, ending homelessness and shutting down open air drug markets,” Lurie said. “That’s not partisan. It’s common sense.”
This is not the first time Lurie has received support from the Republican party or a Republican political group. In fact, Lurie and Farrell are the two top picks for the San Francisco GOP — with Lurie’s name placed ahead of Farrell’s on a chart.
Ellen Lee Zhou, the only Republican candidate in the mayoral race, who wears a red MAGA-like hat while campaigning, has failed to make the cut for either the city’s official Republican Party or the upstart Briones Society. Across all the Republican groups in the city, Zhou is only able to make it as a second choice endorsed by the San Francisco Young Republicans, which placed Farrell as first and Aaron Peskin as third.