Mayor Daniel Lurie’s efforts to reform the city charter and expand the mayor’s power got a major cash infusion in recent weeks from a handful of tech and real estate investors, including Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective.
Lurie’s ballot measure committee, Clean Up City Hall, reported $1.5 million in donations between June 16 and June 30 — $500,000 from the Emerson Collective, and $500,000 from venture capitalist John Doerr.
Matthew Paige, a real estate investor with Twin Tree Venture and Anthony Salewski, a Managing Partner at Genstar Capital, a private equity firm, both gave $250,000 to the committee.
It marks the first recorded support for Lurie’s charter efforts by Emerson, a venture capital investor and philanthropic organization founded by Jobs in Palo Alto in 2011.
Lurie’s committee is pushing three ballot measures that would remake City Hall if approved in November.
One measure would raise the threshold of signatures needed to put a measure on the ballot, which critics say would make it harder for grassroots organizers, another would empower the mayor to reorganize and consolidate 24 city departments and fire their leaders, and a third would centralize government contracts through the city administrator’s office.
The donations raise the committee’s total fundraising for the three measures to $8.6 million this year
“Mayor Lurie is leading a broad coalition of small business, labor, and community leaders to modernize a broken Charter built by — and benefiting — City Hall insiders and special interests at the expense of everyday San Franciscans,” Lurie’s campaign spokesperson Max Szabo told Mission Local in a written statement. “The result is a system that breeds corruption, wastes taxpayer dollars, and shields government from accountability.”
The Emerson Collective and Jobs have long supported Lurie: Emerson gave $50,000 to the mayor’s transition, and Lurie and Jobs have reportedly met to discuss a “branding campaign” for San Francisco.
The Emerson Collective is a donor to Mission Local.
The charter reform committee has recorded staggering contributions from San Francisco’s billionaires, including $2 million from Sequoia Capital Chairperson Michael Moritz and $1 million each from hotelier John Pritzker, Ripple founder Chris Larsen, and Larsen’s spouse Lyna Lam.
Notably, Moritz and Larsen were on opposite sides of Lurie during the heated mayoral race two years ago and spent $1.5 million to defeat him. They’ve since become premier financiers of his political agenda.
“These reforms will restore accountability to City Hall and end the excuses,” Szabo said.
