A year in, and no matter how much he spends on PR, the Mayor’s scandals and unforced errors are becoming too big for the media to ignore.
The latest revelation – fired DHS director Kristi Noem praising the mayor for working “very well” with the feds – is drowning out Lurie’s highly paid PR team’s efforts.
Just the Facts
Here are 10 of the Mayor’s recent controversies:
- Violating city law by refusing to produce records from his October 2025 call with Donald Trump, despite a ruling against him by the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force
- Kristi Noem praised the Mayor saying he works “very well” with the feds. While Lurie’s PR team tried quickly to shut it down, with an unnamed source saying he hasn’t spoken with her specifically in four months, the Mayor’s office hasn’t commented on the story.
- Directed PG&E to power the Opera House for his daughter’s ballet performance while thousands across the city sat in the dark during a massive citywide blackout
- Lied and described one person’s antisemitic chant as an organized group protest; local outlets quickly debunked it, but Lurie still hasn’t apologized or removed his false statement, but instead has allowed it to spread across national media uncorrected.
- Failed to deliver on his campaign promise of 1,500 new shelter beds
- Announced $100m tax break for billionaires the same week he announced cutting 500 city jobs to save $100m.
- Ramped up arrests of drug uses, claiming success, but public drug use is the same, and new data shows there’s been no major change in overdose fatalities
- Appointed a tax-evading, 29-year-old former pet store owner with no political experience to be the District 4 Supervisor – she resigned after only one week; media headlined it as a “big fumble” and noted that the “honeymoon period appears to have ended”
- Bungled the teacher’s strike, refusing to march with teachers or take a side, and showing little interest, resulting in a week long school shutdown, in one of the most historic strikes in SF history
- Backed anti-sideshow legislation, then promoted a chaotic 40,000-person Formula 1 event, including sideshows, at Marina Green that strained public safety and neighborhoods
Daniel Lurie sold San Franciscans on a “new era of accountability and change,” painting himself as the cure for the City’s “doom loop” narrative pushed by the previous administration, tech CEOs and national news outlets. Eager to usher in a sweeping moderate majority at City Hall, the corporate media fully adopted this framing, alongside Lurie’s nearly $900k personally funded PR apparatus. But lately, the scandals have been too big to spin, and even establishment media can’t ignore them. This is partly due to local independent media growing stronger and more organized, showing that these incidents are part of a broader pattern.
San Franciscans and the press are becoming increasingly aware of what’s actually happening. San Franciscans know that rents are on the rise, evictions are the highest in years, AI is taking people’s jobs, and ICE is kidnapping neighbors. No matter how many times the Mayor says, “Let’s go San Francisco” in Instagram videos, these problems still exist, and he’s not addressing them.