Look who’s back: Mohammed Nuru has returned to San Francisco … and City Hall 29%
By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez55% Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler45% Maggie Angst37% Ezra Wallach33%
8/2/2026, 6:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Unattributed Quote, and Anecdotal, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 24.3% saturation with 307 hits. Analysis detected 1,994 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,264 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 32.5% and a BS Rank of 29% (21,258 of 29,795 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 71.30% of the article peer group.
Mr.
Clean is back.
Yes, Mohammed Nuru, the former San Francisco Public Works director whose bribery schemes graced front pages, websites, and television screens in 2020, has returned to our foggy shores after serving part of his sentence at U.S.
Penitentiary Lompoc in Santa Barbara County.
Power Play’s tipsters have spotted him about town, including under City Hall’s gilded rotunda.
Nuru is a tough man to reach — calls to his cellphone number went straight to a prerecorded survey gauging voter interest in potential presidential candidates.
J.D.
Vance, anyone?
When Power Play reached him at his house in the Bayview, he declined an interview.
In 2022, Nuru was sentenced to seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to a more than decade-long scheme to shake down city contractors.
He accepted a creative cornucopia of bribes: In addition to cash, contractors performed free construction work on his Colusa County ranch and flew him to China and South America, delivered the infamous John Deere tractor to his ranch’s front stoop, and slapped a Rolex valued at $36,000 onto his wrist.
The federal government’s inmate locator says Nuru is in the Residential Reentry Center system, more commonly known as a halfway house.
At least three sources told us the halfway house is in the Tenderloin, possibly a center on Taylor Street.
While he may be staying there, it’s also possible he’s required only to check in there and is living elsewhere.
Our sources also say Nuru has graced more familiar haunts.
One recent stop was City Hall, where Nuru was spotted attending one of the frequent weddings at the top of the grand staircase, just outside the Board of Supervisors chamber.
Pulling county clerk records, Power Play found that one person with the last name “Nuru” married July 24 at City Hall.
Nuru is also angling to see former politicos: former Mayor Willie Brown told Power Play at John’s Grill on Saturday that Nuru’s been in town for about a month, and that he plans on lunching with him at Sam’s Grill at some point.
That would make sense: Nuru’s rise through Public Works began under Brown’s administration.
Brown previously told the Nob Hill Gazette he helped pay for Nuru’s legal defense.
Lastly, we’re told Nuru is entertaining visitors at his home on Jamestown Avenue; the guest list is a mystery to us.
(Drop us an email if you’ve got the scoop.)
If Nuru is in town for good, only he can say.
The federal inmate database says he’s scheduled to remain in a reentry program through December 2027.
— Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez and Gabriel Greschler
Got tips?
Send them to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com.
OUTSIDE MONEY: The race to replace Rep.
Eric Swalwell was never expected to be close.
That hasn’t stopped special interest groups from spending like it’s a nail-biter.
State Sen.
Aisha Wahab, who holds the California Democratic Party endorsement, trounced Melissa Hernandez, the BART Board president and former Dublin mayor, by 26 points in the June special primary.
But outside groups are pouring millions into a late effort to move the needle.
In the past two weeks, PACs backing Hernandez have blanketed local feeds and airwaves with roughly $2 million in advertising, according to campaign finance filings.
The bulk of the cash comes from a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The ads focus primarily on a 2024 bill that initially proposed making it an automatic felony to solicit sex with anyone under the age of 18.
The Senate Public Safety Committee, chaired by Wahab, amended the measure so that automatic felony penalties would apply when the victim was younger than 16 or was an identified victim of human trafficking.
In an interview with Power Play this week, Wahab dismissed the ads as “misinformation,” pointing to her broader track record of sponsoring legislation designed to protect children and young adults.
“Big money is trying to manipulate this election,” she said.
“This is, in my opinion, very much election interference.”
Ajay Mohan, campaign manager for Hernandez, touted support from “police officers, firefighters, and the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.”
“Instead of answering for her own record of lowering sentences for child predators and blocking bipartisan fentanyl bills that would have held dealers accountable, Wahab is attacking the broad coalition backing Melissa,” Mohan said in a statement.
Wahab and Hernandez will square off twice in the coming months: the Aug. 18 special election to fill the remainder of Swalwell’s term and the Nov. 3 general election for a full two-year term.
Swalwell resigned from Congress in April following sexual misconduct allegations.
— Maggie Angst
DITCH DAYS: In March, the San Francisco Unified School District board voted to tack a week onto the back end of the school year — pushing the last day from June 3 to June 10 — after losing five instructional days to February’s teachers strike.
Without the extra days, SFUSD would have failed to meet the state-mandated 180 days of instruction, losing roughly $19 million in funding.
But students and families warned the district that they would not be participating in that last week of school.
And they didn’t.
After weeks of waiting for attendance records, The Standard has learned that an average of 63.7% of students turned up across the five bonus days, dropping from 69.6% on the first day to 60% on the last.
For comparison, the district’s budget filings put average daily attendance at 91.9% of enrollment for 2024-25.
Attendance remained relatively strong that week for students in the lower grades, at around 80%.
It fell sharply in middle and high school: seventh graders averaged 71.2%, eighth graders 57.8%, and ninth graders just 37.8%.
High schoolers averaged roughly 38%.
These figures would lower the district’s annual attendance rate for 2025-26 by about 0.8%, according to projections, meaning SFUSD will lose about $5 million in funding based on attendance.
— Ezra Wallach
OUT TO LUNCH: It’s the latest installment of “Where are they now?” — Board of Supervisors edition.
Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz, the 200-hour supervisor, has graced local public television’s hottest food show, “Check Please, Bay Area.”
Host Leslie Sbrocco did not mention Alcaraz’s infamous run as supervisor of the Sunset, nor the controversies surrounding her pet store: allegations of tax evasion and a freezer full of dead pets.
Instead, Sbrocco described Alcaraz as an art and music teacher — her profession before Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed her to what was probably the worst job of her life.
For those who haven’t caught the Bay Area culinary institution, “Check Please!”
invites everyday folks to apply in an open process to join as a guest.
These one-time restaurant reviewers try and rate their fellow guests’ favorite eatery, then recommend their own.
Restaurant owners usually dig the shout-out, as it can be a business boon.
One guest on Alcaraz’s episode recommended Cantina at San Benito House in Half Moon Bay, where the former supervisor enjoyed some monstrously large fish tacos.
It was a slight disappointment to Alcaraz because “my favorite thing is to go to a restaurant and then have a second meal, three hours, midnight snack, you know?”
So, considering Alcaraz was, for a week, the top politico of the Sunset, which local haunt do you want to guess she recommended?
San Tung for its famous dry fried chicken wings?
Fiorella Sunset with its handmade pasta?
Thanh Long with its tasty garlic noodles?
Nope, nope, and nope.
The former Sunset supervisor chose Buddy, in the Mission.
Go figure.
— J.F.R.
Speakers
3speakers11%attributed speech1,128writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageAjay Mohan
58 attributed words43% of attributed speech61% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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