San Francisco’s billionaire-backed centrists chalked up their 2024 electoral victories, like the takeover of the city’s Democratic Party, to a “moderate coup” against progressive political power. But that same year, they failed to catch their white whale: a change to the city charter that would have created an even more powerful mayor’s office.
Two years later, Mayor Daniel Lurie is closer than anyone to this goal. The heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune has raised roughly $13 million from wealthy friends and allies to push a package of ballot measures — D, E, and F — that would consolidate the power of the mayor’s office over city government (though also removing his own power to unilaterally place measures on the ballot).
Voters will have the chance to radically change City Hall on Nov. 3. Prop. D, if passed, would quadruple the signature requirement for residents and organizations to get initiatives on the ballot; Prop. E would expand the city administrator’s contracting power; and Prop. F would give the mayor the ability to fold and merge entire city departments.
In the process, Lurie has introduced an unfamiliar class of political benefactors to San Francisco.
“The mayor has certainly brought in a new crop of donors I hadn’t heard of before,” said one moderate political strategist.
That includes Thomas Laffont, an investor who never gave to a local San Francisco election until he donated $250,000 to Lurie’s charter amendment campaign. Hims and Hers CEO Andrew Richard Dudum and his spouse Lea also made their first major donation: a combined $125,000 for the charter measures.
Andrew Houston, CEO of Dropbox, gave $100,000. Matthew Sonsini, an investor who is married into the billionaire Sobrato family, also gave $100,000 (Sonsini has never given to past races but family members have). Tara Schuster, an author in Tennessee, gave $25,000. Meyer Malka, a managing partner at the Palo Alto fintech venture capital firm Ribbit, gave $100,000.
One thing ties these new donors, with the exception of Malka, together: At some point, all of them were financial supporters, partners or board members of the anti-poverty nonprofit Lurie founded, Tipping Point Community.
Other Tipping Point members — like Michelle Boyers, who gave $200,000 to Lurie’s charter amendment campaign — only took their first step into San Francisco politics to support Lurie’s mayoral bid in 2024. Two groups playing a central role in Lurie’s political machine — Believe in SF and SF Believes — were also started by a major donor and board member at Tipping Point.
At Tipping Point, those donors saw “what Daniel Lurie can do and believe in him,” said one political worker close to the mayor.
The bulk of the major giving in the November election comes from tech money — with the exception of John Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel empire, who contributed $1 million. Topping the rankings are tech figures like crypto executive Chris Larsen, former venture capitalist Michael Moritz, and businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs (via her venture capital and philanthropic company, Emerson Collective).
Taken together with the mayor’s new political donors, you have a “different type of oligarchy,” said David Ho, a progressive political consultant.
Ho said he has been hard-pressed to find major political involvement from some historically involved families: The new money has “drowned out” the old.
While old money families like the Fishers, Hellmans, Shorensteins, Haases and Wilseys have given some money this year (Marco Hellman gave $50,000 to Lurie’s charter committee), it has paled in comparison to tech donors’ sums.
By contrast, Moritz, Larsen and Larsen’s wife, Lyna Lam, have given roughly $6 million combined.
Eric Jaye, another strategist, likened the trend to a tech concept: “blitz scaling.”
“The blitz scale ethos is ‘outspend your rivals fast enough that you can dominate the market before you can enter it,’” said Jaye.
Click on the nodes to explore San Francisco’s tangled web of power and influence.
Graphic made by Kelly Waldron. Reporting by Waldron, Brandon Pho and Christina Baris.
Charter ‘reform’
The last time San Francisco centrists pushed charter amendments, the changes were less extensive and they failed — spectacularly. A ballot measure in 2024, also known as Prop. D, would have enhanced mayoral authority over a drastically reduced roster of city commissions.
But the measure’s campaign messaging was hitched to a polarizing political figure who was also running for mayor, Mark Farrell, and sputtered out despite raising over $9 million from billionaires like Moritz, who has since become a financier of Lurie’s current charter effort.
But while Farrell was a polarizing figure who, ultimately, sank Prop. D, Lurie is popular — and he figures to do the opposite. He has squarely centered himself on the messaging for the three measures, appearing on ubiquitous internet ads and mailers.
It helps that he is rich: Since taking office in January 2025, the mayor has spent at least $1.2 million of his own money on private consultants and communications professionals to burnish his image and boost public approval.
Still, his charter campaign’s message has been about taking on a status quo of corruption and government waste at City Hall. So how does that square with the fact that he runs City Hall?
“We’re running a reform message,” acknowledged one person close to the campaign. “If voters feel really good about the city, then we’re running against our own message.”
A multi-year incumbent running on the theme that government is corrupt and not working is a dangerous and combustible proposition — and indeed, it blew up on Mayor London Breed during her own efforts to pivot to “reform” well into her tenure, and push for charter amendments.
For the likeable and ever-popular Lurie, however, things may work out.
Plus, he is benefitting from a lack of significant opposition — labor unions, singularly focused on supporting Supervisor Connie Chan in the congressional race, are effectively sitting this contest out.
In June, labor groups took a big swing against the mayor and moderates, and failed: They unsuccessfully spent over $3 million trying to pass the “Overpaid CEO Tax,” Prop. D. This time, unions and progressive groups have raised just $200,000 to fight Prop. D.
That’s not to say there’s no opposition at all.
Prop. D would raise the signature threshold from 2 percent of the electorate to 8 percent and prove costly or even prohibitive to future progressive groups: It will mean more money from unions and progressive donors is spent on hiring paid signature gatherers, or make them rethink putting measures on the ballot.
Unions and progressive groups have called the proposal anti-democratic and a giveaway to wealthy interests who can pay canvassers whether the threshold is high or low. More broadly, Lurie’s critics have lambasted the measure as a brazen power grab. Yet some moderates feel they don’t go far enough.
“This is not 1996 charter reform. These are charter amendments. Comprehensive charter reform would have been taking on way more, like civil service reform or ripping everything out of the charter entirely and turning it into a 12-page document,” said one moderate political strategist. “This is not that.”
Some big-money political groups of 2024, like Neighbors for a Better San Francisco and TogetherSF, are not a major factor this cycle. TogetherSF, in fact, imploded following its disastrous quarterbacking of Prop. D of 2024. Neighbors, which was for many years the top-spending group in local races, has remarkably not spent any money for the November election.
GrowSF is now ascendant. And Lurie’s own newborn multimillion-dollar political groups — a nonprofit called Believe in SF and a PAC called SF Believes — are staking out claims.
“Before there was Neighbors, TogetherSF and GrowSF, and now there’s really just Grow and maybe a little bit of Neighbors,” said the person close to the mayor. “There’s the same amount of oxygen in the room but there’s fewer people breathing.”
The Lurie machine
Those new political pressure groups came in with Lurie. When Lurie ran for mayor, he sailed on the support of Believe in SF, a PAC created by two financiers, Adam Clammer and Alec Perkins, that spent $6.7 million on his race.
Clammer and Perkins have since formalized their operation and turned it into a 24/7 PR operation for the mayor — Believe in SF made the lavish “Comeback City” promotional video featuring a coyote and Francis Ford Coppola.
They also spun up SF Believes, a political action committee. The committee is a recipient of those new Lurie donors: It got $250,000 from WhatsApp co-founder and Donald Trump supporter Jan Koum, as well as multiple six-figure contributions from finance executives. Many of these donors, prior to Lurie’s mayoral campaign, had not contributed to any San Francisco race.
For the November cycle, SF Believes contributed $50,000 to District 8 supervisor candidate Manny Yekutiel, who subsequently dropped out of the race amid sexual assault allegations earlier this month. It also gave $164,000 to the San Francisco Democratic Party this year.
Where are the progressives?
Moderates and business interests have faced little opposition this cycle, barring centimillionaire and former congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti, former supervisor Dean Preston and labor groups fighting Prop. D and supporting District 8 candidate McCoy.
In previous elections, labor has ranked as a major donor, namely in June when groups spent millions trying to pass the overpaid executive tax, or in 2024 when labor spent over $1 million trying to get Connie Chan elected as District 1 supervisor.
This cycle, unions largely seem to be sitting the local races out and giving to Chan. But consultants say it is not a one-off.
“Progressives have been in a prolonged slump since 2020,” said Ho, “Through each cycle, they haven’t really bounced.”
The Democratic Party
The San Francisco Democratic Party has also undergone wholesale change in the Lurie era.
The county Democratic Party is made up of 24 elected seats that are up for grabs every four years. Moderates scored a thunderous victory in 2024: A slate of candidates far outraised its progressive opponents, and took control over the party for the first time since 2016.
They’ve since enjoyed major cash infusions from wealthy centrists and business interests this year, including over $200,000 from Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, $225,000 from the Chamber of Commerce, $181,000 from Chris Larsen and $164,000 from SF Believes.
In many ways, the Democratic Party has become the city’s definitive centrist group — taking criticism for its support of Yekutiel, standing by Flock cameras during a time of national backlash against police surveillance technology, and altering local bylaws to break with the state party and oppose Prop. 40, the California billionaire tax.
The Democratic Party has raised more money — per resident and registered Democratic voter — than any other local party in California as it enters the 2026 election season, according to campaign finance data.
“Money in San Francisco politics has reached an obscene level and the tech ruling class is using its extraordinary wealth to gain increasing control over our economy and civic life,” said Gordon Mar, a former committee member who resigned earlier this month. The local party, Mar said, “has become central to this effort.”
What happens come November?
If all three of Lurie’s measures pass, it will be the most far-reaching change to San Francisco governance since 1996, when voters agreed to trim down their then-century-old charter. It will grant the mayor more control over the organization of City Hall. It will mean fewer city contracts will go up for public discussion and Board of Supervisors approval.
It will also mean a higher barrier for the kinds of citizen-led measures that have appeared on this year’s ballot, such as Prop. I, the proposed city tax hike on the sale of homes worth $10 million or more to fund affordable housing.
Predictably, progressives have gone all-out for Proposition I. At a Sunday morning canvass in the Panhandle, some 30 volunteers gripped signs and door hangers ready to spread the word. A throughline was the fight against billionaire interests.
“Extremist billionaires,” said Sunny Angulo, a longtime progressive organizer, are “dumping record hundreds of millions of dollars” into state and local politics. “Billionaires think they deserve even more tax breaks. We know that we deserve affordable housing.”
Mayor Lurie and many of his charter amendment backers have opposed the measure.
Methodology
The information included on the web reflects filings published by the San Francisco Ethics Commission and the California Secretary of State as of Oct. 16. It includes political candidates and officials, major political groups, as well as individuals that have contributed (or spent) at least $250,000 to this election cycle. It does not represent an exhaustive list of all major donors.
The web also includes contributions to general purpose committees (PACs) and organizations, provided those contributions were in 2026. It excludes major donations from most companies, barring some that are linked to donors that are already on the web.
