Lurie, Pelosi emerge as early winners in San Francisco primary returns

Early San Francisco primary returns pointed to two political figures not on the ballot: Mayor Daniel Lurie and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. With 176,467 ballots counted out of 533,546 registered voters, turnout stood at 33.07 percent and about 93,300 ballots still remained, keeping the June 2 results preliminary and certification no earlier than June 25.

The clearest sign of Lurie’s reach came in the Sunset. Alan Wong, whom Lurie appointed in December 2025, was effectively claiming victory with roughly 69 percent in the latest reported returns. Wong’s campaign carried Lurie’s endorsement and benefited from heavy support from a PAC sponsored by GrowSF, giving the mayor a visible win in a district that had already been through the political churn of the 2024 recall that ousted Supervisor Joel Engardio. Stephen Sherrill was also claiming an early victory in another supervisor race, with about 70 percent of the vote.

The numbers in District 4 showed that money did not decide everything. Natalie Gee had raised the most in that race, with $390,000 in total contributions, but Wong still led the early count. For Lurie, that mattered beyond one supervisor seat: it suggested his brand of City Hall politics, built around practical governance rather than ideological fights, was resonating in a neighborhood that has been a flashpoint since the Great Highway debate and the Engardio recall.

Pelosi’s influence was just as visible, if less direct. The open House seat she is leaving behind became the city’s most spirited congressional race since 1987, when Pelosi first won the seat after Sala Burton’s death. Even before every ballot was counted, the contest underscored how deeply Pelosi’s political legacy still shapes San Francisco’s electorate, coalition-building and local power structure.

The early read also dealt a blow to two tax measures that had divided business and labor. Proposition D, the so-called Overpaid CEO Act, trailed badly. It would change the city’s Top Executive Pay Tax so it uses the pay of all employees globally, rather than just the median pay of San Francisco employees, and supporters said it could bring in about $300 million a year to help close a projected $600 million budget gap over the next two years. Proposition C, which would raise the exemption threshold for smaller businesses from $5 million to $7.5 million in gross receipts, was also trailing. Lurie had opposed both, and the early returns made that stance look like another political win.

That fits the larger shift already underway at City Hall. On February 25, Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood introduced the BUILD Act to reform transfer taxes, unlock stalled housing projects and support union jobs, with backing from the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, the North Coast States Carpenters Union, Laborers Union Local 261 and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. With elections now moved to even-numbered years under Prop H, the city’s low-turnout June primary is becoming a sharper test of who can still assemble a winning coalition in San Francisco.