Editor’s note — These are the views of Susan Dyer Reynolds, not necessarily the views of The Marina Times.
I laughed out loud when mayoral candidate and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie’s political strategist Max Szabo sent out an Oct. 7 press release about former mayors and city officials “asking District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and Attorney General Rob Bonta to launch a criminal probe into Mark Farrell.”
First of all, Szabo called it “a bombshell” when it turns out the entire desperate ploy was set up in typical Szabo fashion. I am very familiar with Szabo’s methods from his time as former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón’s spokesman, where he tried to feed me stories for the Marina Times to make Gascón look good, and his critics look bad. Szabo wasn’t above lying, and even I fell for it once. I wrote a piece about auto burglaries in the Marina going down when in reality they were up. The data he gave me, straight from Gascón’s office, was manipulated. Someone from a Marina neighborhood association reached out and informed me that they had been trying to get the real data from Szabo for months, and when they couldn’t, they took it up themselves to do the digging.
When Gascón didn’t run for a third term, Szabo followed his self-described mentor to Los Angeles to run his winning campaign for district attorney there. Now he’s looking for a way back to a six-figure job at San Francisco City Hall — and it sure won’t be with current District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. Should Lurie win the mayoral race, Szabo will likely get a position in his administration, which is fairly customary in politics.
Early in Lurie’s campaign, I expressed concern about his choice of Szabo as a strategist. Gascón was the coauthor of the controversial Proposition 47, which Szabo has openly supported (Prop. 36, on this month’s ballot, would undo much of 47 and looks to be headed for a landslide win).
Szabo has made personal political contributions to Chesa Boudin for District Attorney, No on H: Friends of Chesa Boudin Opposing the Recall, Re-Elect District Attorney George Gascón 2019, Aaron Peskin for Supervisor 2020, and Hillary Ronen for Democratic County Central Committee 2020. Szabo has been outspoken about his disdain for the police, both on social media and during interviews. In one episode of the Davis Vanguard podcast “Everyday Injustice,” Szabo defends Gascón and Boudin while crowing about his work with the far-left Prosecutor’s Alliance on “criminal justice reform.”
While Szabo’s left-of-progressive views on the justice system seem ill-fitting for Lurie, who is running as a law-and-order moderate, my biggest qualm with Szabo is his penchant for dirty politics. This past February, Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami, a 15-year veteran of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, filed a legal claim against Gascón, Los Angeles County, and Szabo for defamation, libel, racial discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
I also know I’m not the only reporter Szabo has relentlessly pitched over the years. Lately, he has been sidling up to the mainstream media, who happily (if lazily) rewrite his press releases in a most unironic way. The Oct. 7 email appears to be a coordinated effort between Szabo, the former officials he lined up to sign “the letter,” and three publications: The San Francisco Chronicle, The Standard, and The Information. The reporter for The Information, Josh Koehn, formerly wrote for The Standard about Farrell, as well as about Assemblyman Matt Haney taking tickets to 49er games. Koehn is also a former staffer for Silicon Valley politician Evan Low, who, on the very day Koehn’s paywalled piece on Farrell came out, was hit with a second federal elections complaint. (Low also took plenty of tickets to 49er games.) Each publication rolled out its reports over the weekend or Monday morning in perfect concert with Szabo’s email, which was splashed with Lurie’s official campaign logo.
“The alleged criminal conduct should be investigated by either the California Attorney General [Rob Bonta] or San Francisco District Attorney [Brooke Jenkins],” Szabo got former mayors Art Agnos, Willie Brown and Frank Jordan, as well as former City Attorney Louise Renne, to write in the letter, along with “prominent civil and criminal defense attorneys.” If you follow my work, you know that Bonta is facing his own ethics questions. In a teaser for the Farrell article, Standard writer Han Li used Szabo’s exact phrasing — bombshell! — and went on to say that each of the mayors who signed the letter were supporting other candidates. “Three former mayors, Willie Brown (London Breed supporter), Frank Jordan (Daniel Lurie supporter), and Art Agnos (Aaron Peskin supporter) acted in solidarity against Mark Farrell,” Li posted on X.
What struck me the most, however, was the cojones of Brown, Godfather of the San Francisco City Family, and mentor to former San Francisco Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission head Harlan Kelly (both serving prison sentences for fraud); Kelly’s wife, Naomi (who stepped down from her job as city administrator when Harlan was arrested); Dwayne Jones (a friend and advisor to Lurie now facing 59 counts of fraud); and incumbent Mayor London Breed, who has overseen more cronyism in her six years as mayor than any mayor before her — including her guru, Brown, who has cleverly managed to evade authorities for decades.
Part of his secret may lie in one of his most infamous Willie’s World columns for the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he explained his distaste for email to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger:
These days, Schwarzenegger appears to be more into tech than politics. Do I do Twitter? he eagerly asked me. Do I do e-mail?
‘No, no, no,’ I said. ‘Let me remind you of something, governor. Do you know what that ‘E’ in e-mail stands for?’
‘No.’
‘Evidence.’
In a column opining about his protégés going to prison, Brown said, “… never, ever do you abuse your power for personal gain. The reasons are twofold. One, it’s wrong. And two, you’re going to get caught.” Anyone who has followed Brown’s career knows he didn’t follow his own rules, but was smarter (or luckier) than his minions.
Perhaps out of guilt, Brown also helped pay for Nuru’s legal defense. “I’m being picked at now because Mohammed Nuru was charged with fraud … He’s got a criminal defense; I am contributing to his criminal defense budget,” Brown told the Nob Hill Gazette in an April 4, 2020, profile.
This wasn’t Nuru’s first fraud rodeo, either. In a March 30, 2004, article in The San Francisco Chronicle, Nuru supporters — led by Supervisor Aaron Peskin — said they wanted to raise money so he could hire John Keker, one of the country’s most prominent criminal defense lawyers. By the way, the “prominent criminal defense attorney” involved in that letter against Farrell was none other than Keker (you can’t make this stuff up).
Both veteran political reporter Phil Matier and I immediately recognized the players, and sources later confirmed what we knew all along — but what other media either didn’t know or purposely ignored. The letter, written by Keker and sent in a press release from Szabo, was purposefully blasted to media and law enforcement officials a little over an hour before a planned press conference by Farrell to announce his ranked-choice strategy, and request that his supporters leave Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Aaron Peskin off of their ballots.
As Lurie and his team obsess over Farrell and spend millions of Lurie’s family fortune on a 24/7 assault “alleging corruption,” they have barely mentioned the gargantuan grift and cronyism that Breed and her fellow City Family members have perpetrated, been complicit in, or overlooked.
Either Lurie truly believes Farrell is his only competition — meaning he doesn’t see Breed as a credible opponent — or he is simply not concerned with the ethics concerns that have plagued San Francisco for over a decade, turning a once great city into an international punching bag. Lurie adviser Max Szabo may think his vendetta against Farrell is pushing Lurie into the mayor’s seat, but the only candidate he’s really helping is Breed.
Follow Susan and the Marina Times on X: @SusanDReynolds and @TheMarinaTimes.
