Clint Reilly, who built California's most powerful political consulting firm, assembled a $400 million real estate empire, and ended his career as owner of the San Francisco Examiner, died Sunday at 79. His company did not announce a cause of death.

Reilly spent five decades moving through the interlocking worlds of San Francisco power — shaping Democratic campaigns, buying landmark buildings, suing media monopolies, and ultimately owning the press himself — making him one of the most consequential behind-the-scenes figures in modern California politics.

Clint Reilly, who built California's most powerful political consulting firm, assembled a $400 million real estate empire, and ended his career as owner of the San Francisco Examiner, died Sunday at 79. His company did not announce a cause of death.

The son of an Oakland milkman and a concession-stand operator, Reilly grew up the eldest of 10 children in San Leandro and spent his high school and college years at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, once considering the priesthood before abandoning that path. In his 20s he ran an antiquities shop on the SF waterfront. Then came politics.

In the 1970s, Reilly founded Clinton Reilly Campaigns, bundling polling, message strategy, and television advertising under one roof at a time when most campaigns outsourced those functions separately. A 1987 New York Times profile called it "perhaps, the most successful" political consulting firm in the country. His client list included Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Mayor Frank Jordan, the state Democratic Party, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

His work was as much defensive as electoral. In 1983, Reilly beat back a recall campaign against then-Mayor Feinstein; in 1993, he did the same for state Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti. On the civic ledger: he helped Mayor Jordan keep the Giants in San Francisco in 1992, and helped pass a $52 million bond to create the Asian Art Museum in 1994.

"He was an innovator in terms of trying to understand the electorate and think thoughtfully about how to deliver political outcomes that considered more than winning and losing elections," said Eric Jaye, who worked for Reilly starting in the 1980s, according to the SF Standard.

In 1995, Reilly stepped back from campaigns and purchased the Merchants Exchange building — home to the Julia Morgan Ballroom — from developer Walter Shorenstein and the Swig family. That same year he married Janet, a former NBC Bay Area television host he'd met on Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan's campaign; she later cofounded Clinic by the Bay, which provides health services to uninsured patients in San Francisco and San Mateo County, and serves on the UC Board of Regents.

In 1999, Reilly ran for mayor himself, announcing his campaign on a West Portal Avenue sidewalk and hammering Willie Brown over Muni's failures. He finished fourth, behind Brown, Tom Ammiano, and Frank Jordan. The race surfaced old allegations from a former girlfriend that Reilly had physically assaulted her; Reilly acknowledged a domestic violence incident had occurred while disputing how it was characterized, and attributed the political circulation of the story to a Brown campaign operative. The two men later reconciled, and were lunching regularly at Sam's Tavern on Bush Street as recently as this year. "He was able and dedicated," Brown said Sunday, per the SF Standard. "And committed."

After his mayoral defeat, Reilly redirected his combativeness toward the media industry. In 2006 he sued MediaNews Group and Hearst — owners of the Mercury News and the Chronicle, respectively — alleging the two companies were colluding to monopolize Bay Area news. The suit settled in 2007 with a commitment to maintain competition. He then crossed from litigant to owner, acquiring the Nob Hill Gazette in 2016 and the San Francisco Examiner in 2020.

"He got unnerved about what was going on in the press world and decided to take them on," said attorney Joe Cotchett, who met Reilly in the late 1970s, according to the SF Standard. "He had guts."

Mayor Daniel Lurie said Reilly "left a lasting mark on our city — helping promote local journalism and founding Bay Scholars to expand educational opportunities for students from low-income families." The Examiner staff called him "our owner and founder." He is survived by his wife Janet and their daughters.