It’s been months since PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh said during astonishing public testimony at a Board of Supervisors hearing that Mayor Daniel Lurie personally directed the utility to prioritize restoring power at the War Memorial Opera House during the December blackout, which plunged a large swath of the city into darkness for days. Singh quickly recanted his statement as The Standard reported on his testimony, chalking it up to a “misunderstanding,” and the mayor’s office denied the remarks. 

But questions remain about how that memorable (not in a good way) holiday weekend unfolded. As a reminder: Lurie received an “opera house update (opens in new tab)” text message from Jake Zigelman, PG&E’s Bay Region vice president, on Dec. 21 —  the same day the mayor’s daughter was set to perform as Clara in “The Nutcracker” at the venue. Through a public records request, The Standard obtained that iMessage, which shows undisclosed correspondence above and below the text. The Standard has repeatedly pushed the mayor’s office to provide those additional messages, but Lurie’s team maintains that it has disclosed everything in its possession. 

Power Play’s Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler filed a complaint in April with the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, a local body that enforces the city’s open-government laws, seeking those records. 

During a hearing Tuesday, a subcommittee of the task force ruled in favor of The Standard in a 4-0 vote after Greschler, who came to the meeting with a large poster board showing the Dec. 21 text, argued that the public has a right to know what fully “happened between the mayor and the utility while the city sat without power.” 

“In addition to requesting all messages from Dec. 21 based on this thread you see, we have also asked for text messages from Dec. 20, the day the blackout first began,” Greschler told the task force. “It is hard to believe that the mayor and a VP at PG&E were not in conversation on this date, too, when one of the biggest blackouts in decades hit San Francisco.”

In a response to the complaint, the mayor’s office said Greschler was “using both the complaint and the Task Force to promote the false narrative” that Lurie was directly involved in getting PG&E to prioritize power at the opera house. Dexter Darmali, the legislative and ethics secretary at the mayor’s office, repeatedly said throughout the hearing that it had produced all responsive documents.

But task force members remained skeptical. 

“[Greschler] has been continuously asking for PG&E records, and he’s been very clear about what he wants, and then he had to file the request again, but it sort of seems like [the mayor’s office is] deliberately hiding some information and not sharing it with the petitioner,” said member Ankita Kumar. 

Another member, Saul Sugarman, said the ordeal “seems slightly fishy.” 

Task force members did acknowledge that Lurie has at least been disclosing texts — a marked departure from his predecessor, London Breed, who was accused of hiding such correspondence.

The complaint will now move to a vote before the full task force, which has limited enforcement powers. It can rule that agencies or public officials violated public records law, order the disclosure of documents, and refer especially egregious cases to the Ethics Commission for potential discipline. 

The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the ruling. 

“The mayor’s office is claiming we want to ‘promote a false narrative,’” Greschler said. “Let’s get these documents released and clear up whatever truth arises.” — Hannah Wiley

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BIG TECH BECERRA?: Critics of former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra blasted a $950,000 donation (opens in new tab) from Meta to an independent committee supporting his gubernatorial bid. The funding came Tuesday, a day before the company laid off thousands of workers, and comes amid the legislative fight to crack down on the industry amid concerns over AI and youth social media use. 

Becerra appears increasingly likely to survive the June 2 primary (opens in new tab) over fellow Democrats such as billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter — and interest groups have noticed his rise.

“Meta is laying off thousands of workers while investing nearly $1 million in Xavier Becerra, and that’s because Becerra is their best bet to protect their profits regardless of the human cost,” Steyer spokesperson Kevin Liao said in a statement. 

Campaign mudslinging aside, the donation has generated alarm within parent advocacy groups pushing for greater oversight of tech products. 

“I’m incredibly disappointed and afraid of what this means and what Meta thinks it’s going to get out of this,” said Julianna Arnold, who founded the group Parents Rise after her teenage daughter fatally overdosed on a counterfeit fentanyl pill purchased on Instagram (opens in new tab). 

Arnold said she was particularly concerned that the donation coincides with California’s legal battles against social media companies over claims that their products are designed to addict children (opens in new tab).  

“Unfortunately, I think that they are doing this so they can turn the tides on the state’s direction of being the enforcers of this,” she said. 

Becerra spokesperson Jonathan Underland said the candidate “has never been bought by a check” and pointed to his experience leading California in “a multistate antitrust action against Facebook (opens in new tab) over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.” 

“That’s who Xavier Becerra is — someone who doesn’t ask how powerful an interest is, or how big their check was, before deciding to hold them accountable,” Underland said.  — H.W.

SNOOZIN’: San Francisco voters are clutching their ballots close to their vests. Turnout data (opens in new tab) shows just 7% of ballots returned so far in battleground districts 4 and 2, where incumbent Supervisors Alan Wong and Stephen Sherrill, respectively, are vying to hold onto their seats. One can almost see the tumbleweeds rollin’ through the Department of Elections. 

While each district shows roughly 3,500 ballots returned out of 47,000, Sherrill has less to worry about, insiders said. Lower turnout is “a problem for Alan,” one insider told Power Play, mostly because the mountain of cash in third-party spending (including from San Francisco Standard chairman Michael Moritz) is most likely to sway low-information voters. But in a low-turnout scenario, only the most dedicated, frequent voters show up. 

In the Sunset, part of District 4, those are voters who followed every twist and turn of the recall of Supervisor Joel Engardio and could tell you off-hand which candidates back the Great Highway reopening. Insiders said that helps candidates who either have strong local roots, like recall leader Albert Chow, or those with strong ground game, like legislative aide Natalie Gee, who is known to exhaustively door-knock and has strong support from labor groups, whose members also are known for hitting the streets in support of favored candidates. — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

PELOSI, PUH-LEAZE: Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement of Supervisor Connie Chan in the congressional race had heads spinning — some doubted the day would ever come. But few had a reaction like that of techbro political influencer and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan.

Tan openly wondered (opens in new tab) on X why Chan never followed through after he asked her to resign. (You know, after publicly including her on the list of politicians he thought should “die slow.”) 

“Last year I asked Connie Chan to resign for her role in making San Francisco unsafe for Asian Americans. This year she somehow got the endorsement from Pelosi,” he posted. “Make it make sense. You can’t.”

While Tan tries to figure out why one of the most powerful Democrats in the U.S. doesn’t give two wits about what he says about Chan, or about anything, the betting website Kalshi is showing an upswing (opens in new tab) for the progressive supervisor in at least two distinct markets (opens in new tab).

With $94,560 on the line, the first betting pool shows that Chan’s chance of a win rose from 6% to 36% in just two days after Pelosi’s announcement. Her rival Saikat Chakrabarti saw confidence drop from 20% to 8% — more than a hundred people threw down bets after Pelosi’s endorsement. A second pool, asking which of the two would advance alongside state Sen. Scott Wiener, showed Chan leap to more than 73% and Chakrabarti drop to roughly 26%, when days before they were roughly 50/50.

Pollster guru Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., told Power Play that while he thinks the prediction market stuff is generally “stupid,” this particular case “is actually an instance where Kalshi is able to respond to an event rapidly, where a poll won’t catch that for another week or more.” 

In this case, he said, “yeah, it can be used as a data point” — one that measures the weight of Pelosi’s influence. — J. F. R.

THE STANDARD AT MANNY’S: With less than two weeks until the June 2 primary, enormous sums of money continue to pour into what’s shaping up to be a historically expensive election cycle. On Wednesday, for example, Google cofounder Sergey Brin chucked in a cool half million to one of the city’s business-backed ballot measures, Proposition C. 

Breaking this all down for you are The Standard reporters Hannah Wiley and Emily Shugerman, who will talk money in politics with “Pacific Standard Time” podcast host Emily Dreyfuss on May 27 from 6 to 7 p.m. at Manny’s. The group will hash out the contest to succeed Pelosi, the California Billionaire Tax Act, and the governor’s race. University of San Francisco politics professor Keally McBride will also offer her analysis. Get tickets here (opens in new tab). — Gabriel Greschler