For the last two weeks before the election, Mission Local’s campaign dispatches are switching daily between the major candidates. Today: Daniel Lurie. Read earlier dispatches here.
Daniel Lurie’s campaign is on a roll. And the momentum has never felt better.
The San Francisco Chronicle called incumbent London Breed a “safe choice” last week, but gave Lurie its endorsement as “the only candidate that fits.”
And then, the paper’s new poll dropped Monday, showing that Lurie is now the candidate to beat. The poll, based on 802 voter interactions conducted Oct. 15 to 16, showed Lurie with 23 percent of the first-choice votes, with Breed at 24 percent. But the ranked-choice voting would put him ahead at 56 percent to 44 percent for Breed — a large margin, and a win for Lurie.
Another poll released the same day and commissioned by Board President Aaron Peskin’s campaign from the polling firm Public Policy Research also showed a tie between Lurie and Peskin in first place at 25 percent, with Breed at 18 percent in third place, and Mark Farrell at 15 percent in fourth place.
“It’s very exciting,” Lurie said Tuesday night as he stepped outside onto Carl Street in Cole Valley after his 235th (but who’s counting) meet-and-greet, a house party or Q&A session. He has been doing these since he launched his campaign 13 months ago, and will continue all the way until the election.
“But you’ve seen me for a very long time now,” he added, referring to our See How They Run series, which has followed him since the day he declared for mayor. “I don’t stop, and I’m not going to stop.”
Moisés García, Lurie’s LGBTQ outreach director and one of the only two campaign staffers at the meet-and-greet, agreed.
García said the campaign schedule has been similar since the get-go. But with the election only 14 days away, there is a heavier focus on visibility. On Tuesday, for example, Lurie was outside of the Castro Muni Station with staffers and signs, talking to voters.
Weekends are even more packed, García continued. Last Saturday, Lurie hit nine events in 11 hours: Meet-and-greets in Dogpatch, the Potrero Hill Festival, the India Basin Waterfront Park opening in Bayview Hunters Point, and a Filipino block party in South of Market, just to name a few.
“This is what he wanted,” García said as guests trickled in to hear Lurie speak. Half a dozen guests greeted Lurie and told him that they’ve already voted for him as their first choice. As of Tuesday, more than 10 percent of the voters citywide had returned their ballots.
Lurie said he will sprint at this pace all the way to the finish line — in this case, to 8 p.m. on Nov. 5, when voting closes. If he wins, this will be his first City Hall job, the mayor of San Francisco, overseeing 34,000 employees.
He said he has a game plan for what his administration will look like, but declined to reveal any details at this point in the race. “I just think it’s unwise to talk about that when the voters are still making decisions,” he said.
But he has spilled some of the details on the campaign trail.
Lurie talks a lot about accountability at City Hall. A scene he always paints to voters is that he will sit down with all the major department heads and interview them for the job they have. His Monday would always start with an 8:30 a.m. meeting with the major department heads in Room 200 on their weekly, monthly, and yearly goals.
Peskin once publicly taunted Lurie’s promise to sit down with major department heads and interview them.
“I won’t have to interview 53 department heads, because I know each and every one of them,” Peskin said during the Sept. 30 mayoral forum. “I know their strong suits, I know their weak suits.”
No matter to Lurie, who said he is serious about the interviews. “I think there are going to be a lot of people that tell me that they want to move on,” he predicted. “When a new boss comes in, you want to make sure that people understand what type of expectations there are going to be in the new administration.”
“It’s going to be a lot tougher. And there’s going to be a much higher level of accountability than they’ve seen in quite some time,” Lurie said.
