It’s Tuesday night and the Gen Z interns for Lurie are partying — with a purpose.
The assignment? Grab the attention of young voters. At Cafe Du Nord, a live music venue and bar at 2174 Market St. in the Castro, 27-year-old Tashrima Hossain and other interns have pulled in highschoolers, college students, parents, and even a baby held in its caretaker’s arms. Oh, there’s also an 80-something woman present.
Okay, it’s not the breakout event of the year, but it’s lively and vibrant — different from the usually quiet and small crowds at the house parties. Attendees are greeted with raffle tickets for a bottle of red wine gifted by Blush! wine bar or a bag of Lurie campaign materials.
Guests trickle in and spread out in the dimly lit venue — grabbing drinks at the bar, posing for Polaroid photos, and huddling around Lurie, anxious to introduce themselves.
DJ Moody Jones, wearing sunglasses and headphones, blasts upbeat hip-hop remixes so loud you have to yell to be heard. Lurie, wearing his staple Levi’s jeans, white button-up shirt and white sneakers, leans over to make small talk as he makes his way through the room.
This is not the first time Lurie’s youthful staffers are dipping their toes into campaigning. His Instagram and TikTok accounts are small — some 2,500 Instagram followers and about 150 on TikTok — but often mixing in trends of the day. One shows a montage of “passing the phone;” in another — more traditional — the candidate speaks directly into the camera about where he is standing and what he has heard while canvassing on the streets.
Cal Kinoshita, a 19-year-old on break from school in London, is one of the brains behind the Instagram Reels and TikTok videos. Kinoshita says Lurie and his staff have been receptive to Gen Z’s creative ideas.
“We previously did one using a Brat song for a video, even ahead of the Kamala campaign,” says Kinoshita, referencing the album from British singer Charli XCX’s trending song 360. It has become the Kamala Harris campaign’s go-to meme.
“Kamala IS brat,” wrote Charli XCX in July, prompting the campaign to switch its X banner to match the neon green of the Brat album cover.
But Kinoshita picked up on Brat earlier, posting Lurie’s own Brat clip on July 2.
“We also did a ‘demure’ one today,” Kinoshita adds, referring to the latest trend coined by TikToker Jools Lebron, who says “Very demure, very mindful” while filming herself applying perfume in the car.
But, there’s no perfume on Lurie’s reels. It’s all campaigning. In one of Konishita’s Instagram Reels, the interns and young staffers take turns underscoring Lurie’s track record on building affordable housing at Bryant Street, chairing the Super Bowl 50 Committee, and prioritizing public safety, homelessness, and invigorating downtown. And of course, calling the candidate’s policies “very demure, very mindful, very considerate.”
An hour into the event, the interns take the stage alongside Lurie’s 13-year-old daughter Taya.
Each of them asks the crowd a series of multiple choice questions about San Francisco: What is the oldest building in the city? (Mission Dolores.) How many years did it take to build the Golden Gate Bridge? (Four.) The crowd shouts out the answers and cheers when someone answers correctly. The biggest cheer goes to Taya when she asks what bird is on the city’s flag. The answer? A phoenix.
When Lurie is about to take the stage to make his pitch to the young voters, he greets his wife Becca Prowda, who works as protocol director for Gov. Gavin Newsom. Prowda has skipped the Chicago Democratic National Convention to be here — with the city’s young voters.
Unlike his opponent Mark Farrell, who often campaigns alongside his wife and three kids, Lurie’s family (he has a wife and two children) has yet kept a lower profile, so their presence tonight is special and Lurie is beaming.
Almost a year ago, Prowda walked with Lurie hand-in-hand to the Department of Elections to file for his mayoral candidacy.
“It has been a total thrill,” Prowda says. In her eyes, his candidacy is a bigger step than Lurie establishing his nonprofit Tipping Point. “Every couple of days, he’s been at every corner of the city.”
But the two try to have a “politics free-zone” at home, Prowda says. “I’m in Sacramento politics and he’s in San Francisco politics,” she said. “So we tried to spend time with the kids. Not talk about politics at the dinner table.”
Facing a younger crowd, Lurie tries to lighten the mood. “I feel like I’m doing standup comedy,” he says, holding a microphone in his hand. And, sometimes campaigning is kind of like that.
Purple and blue spotlights shine on Lurie. The crowd laughs and then he dives into public safety, homelessness, housing, and city red tape. His audience has other questions.
“I’m struggling with Levi’s jeans,” DJ Jones says to the scion of the Levi Strauss denim empire. “Is 501 the right one?”
Tough question, Lurie says, but he has an answer. “I’m going with 511, just for the record,” he says. “I mean, 501, you can’t go wrong with it, but I’m wearing 511 right now.”
Jones then pivots to student housing and downtown revitalization. Lurie points to the supply and demand problem: A 135-unit teacher housing in the Sunset which is ready for tenants this fall recently saw 900 applications. Fixes? Converting downtown commercial spaces to residential buildings, demolishing some older buildings in poor condition, and building more.
Another young voter asks about the school district’s crisis, adding that she knows the mayor doesn’t run the school district.
“The mayor has the microphone and the City Hall steps,” he says, noting that the city pays for $200 million of the $1.3 billion yearly San Francisco Unified School District budget. “There’s going to be strings attached.” Other than that, he also promises fiscal oversight over SFUSD, resources from departments such as the Department of Children, Youth and their Families, more frequent Muni buses and ambassadors riding alongside students.
To a question about the general safety of sending kids to school, Lurie underscores public safety — trained clinicians on the streets for the mental health and drug crisis, police patrols and walking the beat, and a fully staffed police department.
Closing the speech, he asks for votes. “I’m not here for my next political job. And I’ve made this pledge to a rabbi and a priest, and I’m going to do it to other faith leaders shortly.” Lurie promises “I want to do two terms as your mayor.”
“This is a ranked-choice voting election. It’s confusing. It gets weird,” Lurie says in closing. “The only thing you need to really know is: Put Daniel Lurie No. 1.”
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