San Francisco mayor steered backup power to daughter’s Nutcracker show during massive blackout
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie pushed to get power back at the city’s Opera House — where his daughter was performing the lead role in the Nutcracker ballet as her dad’s constituents endured days of darkness just before Christmas.
Lurie, the wealthy heir to the Levi Strauss jean fortune and fixture in SF’s high society set, “requested” PG&E send emergency generators to the San Francisco Opera House as the blackout blanketed huge swaths of the city, CEO Sumeet Singh said at a hearing at the Board of Supervisors — a claim a company representative later walked back, according to reports.
Mayor Daniel Lurie was closely involved in the call to send scarce power to the ballet, per records. ZUMAPRESS.com
Lurie’s daughter was playing the lead role of Clara in the Nutcracker, he boasted on Instagram. San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Records obtained by The Post show the mayor was “directly” involved in the call to redirect scarce backup power to the Nutcracker ballet — a holiday tradition for the city’s posh upper crust.
“I would like to personally recognize both the Department of Emergency Management and the Mayor himself-who has been very engaged with us directly- we have succeeded in getting PGE to relocate two massive generators from another site to the Opera House. See photo,” bragged Kate Sofis, director of the War Memorial Opera House, in a Dec. 21 email.
The same day, PG&E rep Jake Zigelman assured the mayor in a text that he was “working feverishly” to restore power to the ballet after Lurie demanded an update on restoring power in Civic Center, which is home to the opulent War Memorial and Davies Symphony Hall — as an estimated 20,000 homes and businesses were still in the dark.
A text message from PG&E rep Jake Zigelman said he was working “feverishly” after Lurie demanded an update on the area.
The despised utility shared a tone-deaf X post that day boasting that the 2 p.m. Nutcracker performance — where Lurie’s daughter performed as Clara — was “ON using its backup generator” and it was working to “secure temporary generation” for the 7 p.m. show.
The company was torched for prioritizing the ballet while much of the low-income Tenderloin and residential Richmond neighborhoods languished without power for up to 48 hours.
“The show must go on, but f–k the residents who live in the area,” Richard Bullock chimed in.
“The self appointed elites in SF need their nutcracker while other people are 24+ hours without power having to throw away an entire fridge of spoiled food, can’t cook, have no heat,” another resident fumed.
A Dec. 21 email from War Memorial Director Kate Sofis bragged that the mayor helped get 2 “massive” generators to the Nutcracker shows.
Singh said the decision to reallocate resources to the Opera House wasn’t his company’s alone.
“We did not make that decision on our own accord,” he told supervisors at the Thursday night hearing. “We were requested by the mayor to provide temporary generation to that specific location and we responded to that and by that time we had about 90% of our customers restored.”
PG&E did not respond to a request for comment by deadline but walked back Singh’s statement, according to the San Francisco Standard.
PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh testified that Lurie asked for backup power at the ballet — but later walked back the claim. AP
The catastrophic outage caused millions in damages and losses for San Francisco small businesses. AP
One-third of San Francisco was plunged into darkness five days before Christmas when a fire at a San Francisco substation caused “significant and extensive damage” to PG&E equipment. The blackout caused widespread havoc on streets as traffic lights went out and Waymos stalled.
The company has still not identified the cause of the fire.
Lurie’s office denied that he “directed any PG&E employee” to provide power at the ballet.
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“The holiday season is an especially critical period for our major venues and cultural institutions, supporting small businesses and generating significant revenue for the city, so of course city leaders were communicating directly with those institutions and PG&E to help scheduled performances for tens of thousands of attendees proceed,” Lurie’s spokesperson said in a statement.
The city’s Department of Emergency Management said it “passed along a request from the War Memorial Opera House leadership to PG&E” for emergency generators at the ballet.
“This was one of many discussions about how to best utilize City resources during the outage and one of many requests we escalated with PG&E, including additional resources for Civic Center residents impacted by the outage,” spokesperson Jackie Thornhill said.
San Francisco small business owners filed a class-action lawsuit this month aiming to recoup losses from the outage — which cost some shops more than $100,000 in spoiled food and lost revenue, according to the complaint.
Lurie, who defeated former San Francisco mayor London Breed in 2024, is known for posting incessantly on Instagram and TikTok about the city’s attractions and spending nearly $1 million last year on a small army of private PR consultants.
Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie is a fixture in San Francisco’s high society party circuit. San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Lurie was “fired up” about his daughter’s ballet performance, according to a December video. Instagram/thesfwarmemorial
A December video posted by the War Memorial shows the 48-year-old father of two “fired up” about his daughter’s appearance in the ballet.
“Alright everybody, it’s that time of year — the Nutcracker!” he said in the Dec. 7 Instagram video. “My daughter is in the Nutcracker. I’m so fired up.”
Text messages obtained in a public records request show Lurie repeatedly asking his staff to post selfie video updates he filmed about the status of the December PG&E outage.
