SAN FRANCISCO — Daniel Lurie still won’t say Donald Trump’s name. But on Thursday, that deliberate omission — a strategy ridiculed by progressives in his liberal city — appeared to spare San Francisco from the president’s wrath.
Trump’s about-face — calling off a “surge” of federal agents here after a late-night call with Lurie, when Trump said the San Francisco mayor “asked very nicely” that he back down — marked a major departure from Trump’s smashmouth approach to America’s big, blue cities.
It was also a monumentally validating moment for Lurie, a first-term mayor and moderate Democrat whose painstaking effort to avoid provoking Trump ran in contrast to a field of high-profile Democrats who have assailed the president. Unlike the Gavin Newsoms or JB Pritzkers or Brandon Johnsons of the party, Lurie has taken a less confrontational route.
An heir to the billion-dollar Levi Strauss fortune, he has fewer political imperatives to brawl with Trump — with the progressive wing of his party out of power in San Francisco and any prospects of running for higher office, which he has downplayed, further out on the horizon. But in Trump’s reversal, he delivered a rare victory for Democrats in the minority in Washington and besieged by the GOP in cities across the map.
In San Francisco on Thursday — where residents had braced for what many saw as an impending act of federal aggression — what was left from his armistice with Trump was a sense of temporary relief.
Lurie’s allies cast Trump’s standing down as an affirmation that his more measured approach — focusing on public safety statistics and avoiding partisan saber rattling — may have saved San Francisco from a chaotic and dangerous moment. They said it also underscored Lurie’s ability to leverage relationships with prominent CEOs who have direct access to Trump. The president said his call with the mayor came after San Francisco tech titans — including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff — implored him not to move forward.
“You can’t argue with success,” said Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, a leader of City Hall’s moderate Democratic majority. “People are second guessing him, but I’m seeing success. The mayor has been walking this tightrope.”
Mandelman said Lurie’s team had enlisted prominent tech CEOs to reach out to Trump in recent days, as more than 100 federal agents purportedly amassed at a U.S. Coast Guard base across the Bay. The supervisor said he initially thought the Hail Mary effort had fizzled, until he heard news of Lurie’s call with the president.
Lurie declined to share many details of the call, instead touting the city’s post-pandemic recovery, improving crime rates and his willingness to work with federal authorities to target a fentanyl-addiction crisis that is still ravaging the city’s core.
“Having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” Lurie told reporters on Thursday.
Dan Newman, a veteran consultant and Lurie ally, said the mayor’s pragmatic approach and focus on quality-of-life issues is what San Francisco voters wanted last year when they ousted an incumbent mayor in favor of Lurie, a first-time candidate who previously was on the sidelines of Democratic politics.
“There’s no posturing, no strutting — just getting things done,” Newman said of the mayor. “It validates everything about who he is with a leader.”
Even Democrats far from San Francisco took notice. Austin Beutner, a former schools chief seeking to oust Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in that city’s mayoral election, said, “If you take care of your own business, it leaves less opportunity for others to assert that they can do a better job of taking care of your business.”
It’s unclear how long the peace between San Francisco and the White House will last. And some California Democrats, while praising Lurie, rejected the notion the mayor had cracked the code to placating Trump. Newsom’s spokesperson, Bob Salladay, congratulated Lurie and said the governor was glad the mayor had defused the situation.
But Salladay said that would not change the governor’s approach. Newsom earlier this year adopted a conciliatory stance toward Trump as he pursued goals like wildfire relief. But the relationship reverted to mutual animosity, inflamed when Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles and California sued to block Trump priorities like tariffs.
“People are obsessed with this idea that if you kiss Trump’s ass you’ll get what you want,” Salladay said. “No one has worked more with Trump than Gavin Newsom — and yet the president insists on attacking California, attacking the governor, attacking the people of this state for his own aggrandizement.”
While Trump credited tech figures with persuading him to stand down, Newsom has decried Silicon Valley leaders for trying to ingratiate themselves with the White House. On Wednesday, Newsom derided Trump’s moves to acquire equity shares in various companies as a form of “crony capitalism,” invoking Nvidia and joking about selling knee pads on the “Patriot” website he set up to parody the president for executives who were “bending the knee.”
The reprieve for San Francisco was stunning coming from a president who has a history of sparring with California’s big-city mayors. Bass is a frequent target. During his first term, Trump often attacked then-Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, even floating the possibility of prosecuting her after she informed residents of a pending immigration raid.
Schaaf commended Lurie in an interview and said the mayor, who has yet to serve a full year in office, may have benefited from having a fairly clean slate with the president, whereas she had “an acrimonious relationship” with Trump before he took office. But Schaaf argued Lurie had effectively defended his city by rebutting Trump’s claims about unchecked crime.
“I wasn’t going to let anyone paint an untrue picture of my city,” Schaaf said. “He did the same, just more politely.”
While local progressive leaders also cheered Lurie’s breakthrough with Trump, anxiety lingered among some of them, who questioned the sincerity of Trump’s pledge. Others noted that aggressive enforcement tactics have been underway in the city for months and will likely continue.
“This approach is just a temporary halt, and that does not mean it’s a sustainable approach,” said Supervisor Connie Chan, a leader of the city’s progressives. “You cannot trust it. I will not and am not.”
Progressive supervisors responded by proposing the city set aside an additional $3.5 million for immigration legal services to assist those facing deportation. Several said they’re skeptical of Lurie’s offer to partner with federal agencies on fentanyl operations, which they said could open the door to cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Trump himself left the door open Thursday to greater federal intervention if he doesn’t see enough progress. He suggested the city could address its problems with crime faster with federal agents on the ground.
“I wish them luck, but we could do it so much faster,” Trump said during a White House briefing. “And if it doesn’t work out, we’ll do it for you very quickly.”
Blake Jones and Chase DiFeliciantonio contributed to this report.
