Every major tech donor to San Francisco's June 3 primary walked away a winner. The same week Tom Steyer spent $200 million to come in third in the governor's race, the city's billionaire class went 100% on local ballot measures and supervisor contests.

The results confirm what The Dissent's pre-election reporting tracked: the SF tech-money network — Chris Larsen, Sergey Brin, Michael Moritz, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco — deployed millions to defeat the "Overpaid CEO" tax and elect favored candidates, and it all worked. But political consultants who ran the races say the decisive variable wasn't the spending itself. It was Mayor Daniel Lurie, whose endorsements produced a zero-loss record from top to bottom of the ballot. The money won. And the money had the mayor's blessing.

The numbers are striking. Larsen, the crypto billionaire who led all SF donors at roughly $700,000, helped kill Prop D (the "Overpaid CEO" tax) and push through Prop A (the earthquake bond) and Prop B (term limits). Moritz, the venture capitalist who chairs the San Francisco Standard, put in $625,000 against Prop D and $250,000 for Alan Wong in District 4 — all wins. Sergey Brin, whose out-of-state donations to SF races this paper reported in May, added another $500,000 to the anti-D campaign. Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, the realtor- and tech-backed PAC, deployed $860,000 into killing the CEO tax.

According to Mission Local's post-election analysis, every donor who reached the top-20 list in the SF primary backed a winning outcome. The lone exception among high-dollar spenders was Saikat Chakrabarti, whose $10-million-plus congressional campaign against Connie Chan collapsed — he drew just 18 percent to her 30 percent.

The statewide contrast is sharp. Steyer's self-funded governor's campaign reportedly topped $200 million and landed him third. Moritz himself poured $3 million into Silicon Valley-backed San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan's bid, which fell to sixth. The same names who couldn't move the needle statewide swept their SF contests clean.

Political consultants point to one variable that separates those outcomes: Mayor Daniel Lurie. Every candidate and measure the mayor endorsed won in June. That perfect record isn't coincidence, multiple consultants say — it's causation, and big money has already figured that out.

"The mayor single-handedly took down D," David Ho, who ran the pro-Prop D campaign, told Mission Local. The "Yes on C, No on D" campaign "didn't even have a strategy, until the mayor fell onto their lap," Ho said.

Catie Stewart, a political consultant and former communications director for state Sen. Scott Wiener, described money as a necessary but not sufficient condition. "Money goes really far and it buys name ID and it can totally sway public opinion," she said. "But it's not the be all and end all." What closed the deal in race after race was the Lurie endorsement — which came with campaign infrastructure and cash from the mayor-aligned SF Believes PAC, which put more than $1 million into the June cycle.

Lurie's political standing appears unusually durable for a first-term mayor. Consultant David Ho, who was on the losing side of the CEO tax fight, noted the rarity: "I've never seen a mayor not have a sophomore slump." That durability makes Lurie a force multiplier for donors — their dollars go further when they're flowing in the direction he's already pointed.

The dynamic has implications for November. Consultant Todd David, who worked on Sen. Scott Wiener's campaign, framed the question plainly: "Does he continue to play it safe, or does he really go for some big reforms in the city?"

For SF's donor class, the answer matters enormously. In the June election, every major bet they made paid off. But the winning formula wasn't raw capital deployment alone — it was alignment with a mayor whose honeymoon shows no sign of ending. The question going into the fall cycle is whether that honeymoon is an asset the city will use, or a blank check the money will keep cashing.