Politics
Levi's heir Daniel Lurie leads in early returns in heated San Francisco mayor's race
SAN FRANCISCO — Philanthropist and Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie took the lead in early returns Tuesday, holding an edge against incumbent Mayor London Breed and three other Democrats vying in the heated race for San Francisco mayor.
But with thousands of votes still uncounted, the final results were far from clear. San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters to select multiple candidates by order of preference, complicates the process of quickly identifying a winner.
The city uses a multiround process to count the ranked-choice ballots, and it could take several rounds of tallying before a winner receives more than 50% of the vote. After each round, the candidate with fewest votes is eliminated and those votes are redistributed to the remaining contenders.
Breed, a moderate Democrat and the first Black woman to hold the city’s mayoral post, had 25% of first-choice votes in early results, compared with 29% for Lurie, a fellow centrist Democrat.
The early returns showed Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, the only candidate in the race running as an old-school progressive, with 21% of first-choice votes; venture capitalist Mark Farrell, a moderate, with 18% of first-choice votes; and Supervisor Ahsha Safaí trailing with 3% of first-choice votes.
Speaking to supporters Tuesday night at the bar Victory Hall in the South of Market district, Breed struck an upbeat tone and urged patience with early results. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” Breed told the crowd. “I have been behind before. I have been counted out before.”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed faced a tough reelection bid against four challengers who said she had not done enough to address property crime and homelessness in the city.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
In a marked shift for San Francisco, the city’s wealthy tech sector played an influential role in this year’s mayoral race. Tech titans who have put down roots in the city — and who continue to see San Francisco as an international hub for high tech — poured millions of dollars into campaign contributions, pressing for an outcome that would infuse this famously liberal city with more centrist politics.
That money overwhelmingly benefited Lurie, Farrell and Breed.
Breed, a San Francisco native, was first elected in 2018, winning a special election after the unexpected death of then-Mayor Ed Lee. She has led the city through a challenging period that includes the unsettling early spread of COVID-19 and the subsequent exodus of scores of downtown tech workers who, amid pandemic-related shutdowns, found themselves able to work remotely — and more cheaply — from other cities.
Detractors painted the election as a referendum on Breed’s efforts to address sprawling homeless encampments, rampant property crime and a flagging post-pandemic economy that cut at voters’ sense of a safe, well-functioning city.
“People in San Francisco are frustrated. On crime, on homelessness, on conditions of the streets,” said Jim Ross, a veteran Bay Area Democratic strategist. “The other issue is, this is Year 6 for London Breed. Any politician, their sixth year in office is really a difficult year because people are really looking at you as ‘What have you done?’”
Breed has highlighted recent data showing improvements on some of those issues, notably a reduction in property crime and violent crime over the last year. She has touted her policies to bolster police staffing, increase drug-related arrests and clear homeless encampments. And she has promoted new initiatives to repopulate empty storefronts and enliven the night life with markets and music festivals.
Many of her supporters touted her quick action to shut down San Francisco in the early days of the COVID emergency, a decision credited with saving thousands of lives. And she earned influential endorsements from housing advocacy organizations based on her work to ease San Francisco’s affordable housing shortage.
“I am the change,” she often said on the campaign trail.
Her leading opponents dismissed that progress as too little, too late.
Both Lurie and Farrell promised a more concerted crackdown on crime and homelessness and to reinvigorate the downtown economy. They emerged as appealing alternatives among voters who appreciated Breed’s messaging but had lost confidence in her ability to guide San Francisco out of crisis.
Lurie distinguished himself as the political “outsider” running against four City Hall veterans. He pledged to root out government corruption, a concern among voters following a series of political scandals in city departments and nonprofits in recent years.
Lurie had the advantage of his family’s vast wealth from the Levi Strauss fortune to buoy his campaign and strengthen his name recognition. He showered his campaign with more than $8 million of his own money.
His mother, Miriam Haas, contributed more than $1 million to an independent committee backing his mayoral bid. She married her second husband, Lurie’s stepfather Peter Haas, when Lurie was a young boy. Peter Haas, now deceased, was the great-grandnephew of the Levi’s founder and a longtime executive at the company.
Breed frequently characterized Lurie as an inexperienced leader who relied on his family’s money to get ahead.
Lurie responded by touting his role as founder of Tipping Point, a San Francisco nonprofit that funds efforts to lift people out of poverty, to highlight his commitment to solving intractable problems. He said the organization has funneled $500 million to Bay Area organizations focused on early childhood education, school scholarships, housing and job training since its founding nearly two decades ago.
Mayoral candidate Mark Farrell marketed himself as the candidate whose blend of political and business experience made him most qualified to get San Francisco back on track.
(Hannah Wiley / Los Angeles)
Farrell entered the race amid fanfare from supporters garnered during his seven years as a supervisor and six months as interim mayor before Breed was elected in 2018. He marketed himself as the candidate whose blend of political and business experience made him most qualified to get San Francisco back on track.
But his campaign was clouded by ethical concerns. This week, Farrell agreed to pay a fine of $108,000 following an investigation by city officials that determined he had illegally financed his mayoral campaign with money poured into a separate ballot measure committee he sponsored to reduce the number of government commissions in San Francisco.
Peskin, a longtime supervisor well-known in local politics, organized a robust grassroots campaign that openly embraced a liberal agenda. He frequently contrasted his working-class donors with the massive influx of tech money flowing to Lurie, Farrell and Breed. He focused his campaign on traditional San Francisco ideals, such as making the city affordable for nurses, teachers and the artists and bohemians who have long made the city a creative hub.
WASHINGTON — The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee said some members would support a presidential pardon for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her assistance in the committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
But good luck getting any of them to admit it.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Politico on Wednesday that “a lot of people” support the idea of Maxwell receiving a pardon from President Trump in exchange for her cooperation in the committee’s investigation.
Although Comer said he opposed a pardon himself — “other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell” — he offered that his committee was “split” on the issue.
Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the top Democrat on his committee, condemned the idea of a Maxwell pardon and said Democrats on the committee uniformly oppose it.
“It’s outrageous that Republicans on the Oversight Committee are considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell,” Garcia said in a statement. “She is a sexual abuser who facilitated the rape of women and children.”
The Times reached out to all 26 Republicans on the committee to see who, if anyone, supported the idea of a pardon.
Although most didn’t respond, the few who did expressed outrage at the idea.
“I am absolutely not supporting a pardon for her nor have I heard that from anyone else,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said.
“Never in a thousand years,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said.
Maxwell declined to answer the committee’s questions during a video deposition in February from the Texas federal prison where she is serving her 20-year sentence.
She still is challenging her 2021 conviction on five counts related to the sex trafficking of minors for her role in recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse. She was accused at trial of also participating in the abuse of one victim.
At the time of her February deposition, Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said she would offer the “unfiltered truth” if granted clemency by Trump.
Attorneys who have represented victims abused by Epstein and Maxwell strongly opposed the idea of a pardon.
“This is a woman who belongs behind bars for the rest of her life for what she did to women,” said Spencer Kuvin, who has represented numerous Epstein victims.
Sigrid McCawley, a managing partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, questioned the value of information Maxwell could provide.
“Ghislaine Maxwell is a proven self-serving liar,” McCawley said in a statement. “There is nothing credible that she will offer the government, and the assertion that she would provide information is simply a smoke screen.”
Trump has not said he is considering a pardon, but when asked by reporters he has declined to rule it out.
Epstein abused more than 1,000 girls and young women over the span of decades. He negotiated a lenient deal nearly two decades ago with federal prosecutors in south Florida that allowed him to serve 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed to come and go freely, to settle claims that he had abused dozens of high school girls.
Following investigative reporting on that deal by the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York brought new sex charges against Epstein in July 2019. He died in federal custody one month later.
Epstein and Maxwell counted members of the British royal family, multiple presidents and business titans among their friends. They have been accused of forcing victims to have sex with some of those men. Maxwell is the only other person who has been charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes.
The committee has deposed numerous people who knew Epstein, including Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who hired Epstein to manage his finances, and former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The committee has not, however, deposed Trump, who once famously called Epstein a “terrific guy” and said “I just wish her well” when told of Maxwell’s arrest in 2020.
The Department of Justice has released millions of pages of documents from its investigations in response to the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last year.
The release led to criminal inquiries in the United Kingdom into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, and Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, over allegations that they provided secret government information to Epstein.
So far, the files have not led to any publicly known criminal investigations in the United States.
U.S. military forces stopped and boarded a second sanctioned tanker carrying oil from Iran in the Indian Ocean, the Pentagon said on Thursday, ramping up pressure on Tehran as the Trump administration seeks to resume negotiations to end the war.
A naval boarding team roped down from hovering helicopters and fanned out on the vessel, the M/T Majestic X, according to a Pentagon statement that included a 17-second video of the operation.
The military said the boarding was part of a “global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate.”
Earlier this week, Navy SEALS boarded another ship in the Indian Ocean, the M/T Tifani, after the Pentagon said it was carrying oil from Iran.
Navy destroyers are also shadowing several other Iranian vessels, including the Dorena and Sevin, which had left from the Iranian port of Chabahar before the U.S.-imposed blockade began on April 13, a U.S. military official said. The Navy is directing those ships to return to an Iranian port, the official said.
With the M/T Tifani and M/T Majestic X now at least temporarily in the custody of the military, a U.S. military official said it was up to the White House to decide what to do with the sanctioned vessels and their cargo. The administration previously seized several tankers carrying illicit oil from Venezuela after a U.S. commando raid there in January that seized Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president.
“International waters cannot be used as a shield by sanctioned actors,” the Pentagon said in its statement on Thursday, adding that the department would “continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted last week that the U.S. military would likely commence boarding operations like the ones this week. He said that U.S. military commanders elsewhere in the world, and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.”
The U.S. Navy has turned back at least 31 ships trying to enter or exit Iranian ports since an American blockade outside the contested Strait of Hormuz began about a week ago, U.S. Central Command said late Wednesday.
Last Sunday, a Navy destroyer disabled and seized the Touska, an Iranian cargo ship, after it tried to evade the blockade. It was the first time a vessel was reported to have tried to evade the U.S.-imposed blockade on any ship entering or exiting Iranian ports since it took effect last week.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained why President Donald Trump does not consider Iran’s seizure of two ships in the Strait of Hormuz a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
Leavitt made the statement during an interview with Fox News’ Martha McCallum on Wednesday just hours after Iran captured the Greek and Mediterranean-flagged vessels.
“Does the seizure of two ships — as we said, they were Greek and Mediterranean-owned ships with cargo on them, and the reports are that Iran basically seized them and then moved them into Iranian waters. We don’t know what’s going to happen to these crews. We’re not sure where all of this is going. Does the president view that as a violation of the ceasefire?” McCallum asked.
“No, because these were not U.S. ships. These were not Israeli ships. These were two international vessels,” Leavitt responded.
US FORCES ATTEMPTING TO BOARD SANCTIONED RUSSIAN-FLAGGED OIL TANKER IN NORTH ATLANTIC, SOURCES SAY
Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, conducts a press briefing. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“And for the American media, who are sort of blowing this out of proportion to discredit the president’s facts that he has completely obliterated Iran’s conventional Navy, these two ships were taken by speedy gunboats. Iran has gone from having the most lethal Navy in the Middle East to now acting like a bunch of pirates. They don’t have control over the strait,” she continued.
“This is piracy that we are seeing on display. And the naval blockade that the United States has imposed continues to be incredibly effective. And, to be clear, the blockade is on ships going to and from Iranian ports. And the point of this is the economic leverage that we maintain over Iran now. While there’s a ceasefire with respect to the military and kinetic strikes, Operation Economic Fury continues, and the crux of that is this naval blockade,” she added.
The Iranian made ‘Seraj’ a high-speed missile-launching assault boat on display in Tehran on August 23, 2010, as Iran kicked off mass production of two high-speed missile-launching assault boats the ‘Seraj’ (Lamp) and ‘Zolfaqar’ (named after Shiite Imam Ali’s sword) speedboats which will be manufactured at the marine industries complex of the ministry of defense. (YALDA MOAIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said the vessels, identified as the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas, were operating without proper authorization and had tampered with navigation systems, accusations that could not be independently verified. The ships had earlier reported coming under fire near the strait, underscoring the increasingly volatile conditions in one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes.
US ‘LOCKED AND LOADED’ TO DESTROY IRAN’S ‘CROWN JEWEL’ ‘IF WE WANT,’ TRUMP WARNS
The Guard attacked a third ship, identified as the Euphoria, which had become “stranded” on the Iranian coast, Iranian media reported. It did not seize that vessel.
Ships and tankers in the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Musandam, Oman, April 18, 2026. (Reuters)
Both the U.S. and Iranian sides have targeted commercial and cargo vessels as part of a broader pressure campaign tied to stalled negotiations. U.S. forces have also moved to seize at least one Iranian-linked vessel in the region, with each side accusing the other of violating the terms of a fragile ceasefire.
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The Strait of Hormuz is a vital artery for global oil shipments, with roughly 20% of the world’s supply passing through it. Traffic has slowed dramatically as ships reroute or avoid the area amid gunfire, seizures and conflicting directives from both militaries.
Fox News’ Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
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