There’s only one candidate who’s already sending out mailers for SF’s November mayoral elections while it’s still April, and that’s Levi Strauss heir Danial Lurie, whose campaign PAC is bolstered by a million-dollar donation from his mom.
The dust has barely settled from the March 5 primary election, and the November 5 SF mayoral election is still more than six months away. So you figure you’d be getting a break right now from those election mailers that you probably throw straight into the recycling when they arrive in your mail. But one candidate for mayor is already advertising pretty hard via those slick, glossy election mailers, and sent out three of them in recent weeks.
At first glance, all three of these mailers for Levi Strauss heir and nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie look like pretty much the exact same ad, so you almost wonder if his campaign got played by some plucky salesperson down at the print shop. But a closer look shows that one of these ads is a 12-page booklet, and another folds out into a very large “Democrat Daniel Lurie for Mayor” window sign.
Moreover, these are not from the Daniel Lurie campaign itself. They’re from a Lurie-supporting political action committee (PAC) called Believe in SF, Lurie for Mayor 2024, which has notably received a $1 million donation from his mother Miriam “Mimi” Haas, and contributes to Lurie’s current war chest of nearly $4 million.
According to the Examiner, “The committee — dubbed Believe in SF, Lurie for Mayor 2024 — disclosed spending $216,000 on a February mailing and $279,000 on an April 15 mailing, neither of which included the window sign that was delivered this month.”
Another campaign filing last week shows $252,500 was spent on “Mailer 3,” though it’s unclear which of these mailers that refers to, or whether it is the window sign.
But about that window sign. You may have received it, and it appears to be a normal-size political ad. But notice that it also declares “Window Sign Inside!” like it was a Cracker Jack box promoting the prize inside or something.
Once you unfold the mailing, you get the poster that can be placed in a window. Though it declares the million-dollar donation from his mom in rather large font.
Another one of the mailers is a 12-page booklet that serves as a little biography about Lurie, and lays out his vision in exceedingly vague terms. “Read Daniel’s Plan for Change in Every Neighborhood,” the booklet declares on Page 5, with an arrow pointing forward. The booklet goes on to name no specific neighborhoods whatsoever, but each page has headers with platitudes like “Believe in Creating a Safer, Cleaner San Francisco,” and “Believe in Solutions to the Homelessness and Addiction Crisis.”
All told, these filings indicate that Lurie’s PAC has spent $747,000 on mailers as of late April, while his opponents have yet to send out one single mailer.
And yes, we here at SFist are aware there has been a deluge of these Daniel Lurie PAC digital ads on this very website — and these very same ads are appearing on plenty of local media websites all over town, as part of this PAC push.
Related: Mayoral Candidate Daniel Lurie Raising Eye-Popping Sums of Money From VCs and His Family [SFist]
Images: Joe Kukura, SFist
