San Francisco's first Black female mayor, London Breed, conceded the race for mayor to Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie on Thursday, pledging a smooth transition as he takes over the job, the AP reports. Breed, who was raised by her grandmother in public housing, could not overcome deep voter discontent and lost to anti-poverty nonprofit founder Lurie. "At the end of the day, this job is bigger than any one person and what matters is that we keep moving this city forward," Breed said, adding that she had called Lurie to congratulate him. "I know we are both committed to improving this city we love."
While San Francisco's streets have been cleaner and homeless tents much harder to find in recent months, Breed's fellow Democratic challengers on the campaign trail repeatedly hammered her administration for doing too little, too late as homeless tent encampments, open-air drug use, and brazen retail theft proliferated during her six years in office. Voters flocked to Lurie, 47, a city native from a storied family who pledged to bring accountability and public service back to City Hall. He is the founder of anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community, which says it has invested more than $400 million since 2005 in programs to help people with housing, education, and early childhood.
Lurie pumped nearly $9 million of his own money into his first-time bid for mayor, which drew criticism from Breed and other opponents. But he said that as a political outsider, he needed to introduce himself to voters and in the end, some voters said they liked that Lurie's financial wealth shielded him from being beholden to special interests. Lurie is an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune through his mother, Mimi Haas, who wed Peter Haas when Lurie was a child. Peter Haas, a great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss, was a longtime CEO of the iconic clothing company who died in 2005.
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