With the Trump administration likely to yank hundreds of millions from SF in already-promised reimbursement funds and other federal subsidies, Mayor Lurie is sending a team of negotiators to Washington, DC in hopes of preventing this.
We’ll say this much about new San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie: He is very good at backroom negotiations with his fellow billionaire-types to win positive outcomes for San Francisco. It was Lurie’s secret negotiations that are credited with ending the months-long Marriott Hotel strike before Lurie even took office, and he also reportedly near-single-handedly kept the Databricks AI conference in town when that conference was threatening to leave. So, Lurie has shown he can pick up the phone and call other wealthy, powerful C-suite executives to hammer out deals.
Does Lurie have this magic with notoriously San Francisco-hating Donald Trump? We may soon find out. The Chronicle reports today that Lurie is sending a team of SF delegates to Washington, DC, in hopes of getting hundreds of millions of previously promised FEMA reimbursement dollars reinstated, plus to lobby for other federal funding, as the city grapples with its extremely large budget deficit.
“While I am prepared to make the tough decisions to tackle the city’s budget crisis, we are looking to Washington to partner with us on San Francisco’s comeback,” Lurie told the Chronicle in a statement. “San Francisco drives innovation across the country, and when San Francisco wins, the country wins. This team of senior leaders from our administration is ready to work with our colleagues in Washington to make sure our city is strong so our country can be too.”
Lurie himself does not appear to be going to Washington, DC. Though his “team of senior leaders” that reportedly is going includes City Attorney David Chiu, SFMTA director Julie Kirschbaum, and Lurie’s manager of state and federal affairs Eileen Mariano, who happens to be the late Dianne Feinstein’s granddaughter.
But it doesn't sound like they’ll be lobbying Trump directly, or even indirectly. The Chronicle reports that Lurie’s envoys will “meet with members of the Bay Area’s House delegation and both of California’s U.S. senators, among others.” So that’s mostly elected Democrats, who are out of power in the two chambers of Congress.
The FEMA dollars are the big cash prize, but the delegation is coming with other asks too. They’re hoping for federal funding to support some Muni projects, and they’re likely to advocate to maintain the Presidio Trust, which Trump has vowed to eliminate.
And the delegation’s most longshot goal here is to win federal dollars to help raise the city’s waterfront to respond to rising sea levels. That seems an unlikely get, considering that Trump and most of his GOP allies in Congress think that climate change is a hoax. But there could be a different Congress come the 2026 midterms, so there could be an eventual change of heart in DC toward funding San Francisco.
Related: Report: Trump and Musk Want to Sell Off Two SF Federal Buildings [SFist]
Image: @DanielLurie via Twitter
