A spokesman for Manny Yekutiel — the candidate who dropped his embattled campaign for San Francisco supervisor earlier this month after three people accused him of sexual assault — now works at the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic.
Connor Skelly, the former Yekutiel spokesman who has long ties to local politics, is the latest San Francisco political mover to join either Anthropic or OpenAI in their frenzied race to become the world’s prevailing AI overlords. Mission Local knows of at least six San Francisco operatives and ex-city workers to bring their locally-forged talents to companies that aim to sell government agencies on the value of their products.
Skelly most recently fielded communications for Yekutiel’s campaign, though he left in July, a source familiar with the matter said. That was shortly after political activist Brad Chapin accused Yekutiel of violent and unwanted sexual grabbing and several months before two more accusers came forward, prompting a wave of political leaders that included Mayor Daniel Lurie to withdraw their endorsements.
Yekutiel dropped out of the race Oct. 1.
Skelly joined Anthropic in September to work on “Special Projects,” according to his LinkedIn page. He’s been involved with a handful of local organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, and sat on San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Citizens’ Advisory Council for three years, but did not respond to requests for comment about his new gig.
While several of the locals came from lobbyist or political backgrounds, two also did more technical governance work: Ann O’Leary, a former deputy city attorney now leads OpenAI’s efforts on global AI policy, and Laura Bisesto, an assistant district attorney who now reports to an OpenAI C-suite.
Both have different amounts of distance in their resumes between their time at the city and their current AI company employer.
Political strategists around town say some motivators are obvious: San Francisco is the AI industry’s backyard, and yet it’s been historically hard for OpenAI, despite the company’s resources, to get tax breaks at City Hall, as the San Francisco Standard reported in 2024.
Locals are also joining these companies to work on issues outside of the city. One individual who recently applied to several AI firms, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the companies are generally looking for people with local San Francisco relationships that overlap with state connections.
Then there is pay. Salaries for certain roles — for example, “helping state and local government agencies understand the value of Claude and paint the vision on how they can successfully integrate and deploy Claude” — can range from $200,000 to $400,000.
San Francisco’s tight geography and contradictory political environment, strategists say, breeds a specific type of political mind well-adapted for the role.
“It is very valuable for an AI company to have the political knowledge and relationships that inhabit San Francisco’s 49 square miles,” said Sam Singer, the go-to “master of disaster” PR crisis professional for a certain slice of the Bay Area.
Singer represented OpenAI when Elon Musk unsuccessfully sued the company over its restructuring from a charity to a for-profit company. OpenAI prevailed in the case in May — and Singer announced it from the courthouse steps.
“It’s hard to go to lunch and not bump into someone you know,” Singer said. “It’s an advantage and occasional disadvantage.”
Michael Lai, the founder of a daycare startup that crashed and burned several years ago and who failed in 2024 to win a supervisor seat in District 11, is among those also working at Anthropic. His job, according to online company postings, is to “make government better with Claude” by showing agencies the value of the company’s product.
Lai got the Anthropic job in May 2025, several months after his unsuccessful candidacy. On the campaign trail, he said he met Anthropic President and co-founder Daniela Amodei and explained how citizens don’t feel heard through examples like red tape for new housing and a “$100B high-speed rail to nowhere.”
Lai, who did not respond to a request for comment, is also a member of the San Francisco Democratic Party, a seat he won during the party’s 2024 moderate takeover, with the support of chair Nancy Tung, state Sen. Scott Wiener, and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan.
“Why does an AI company need that type of guy — a failed candidate for supervisor? A DCCC guy?” said Daniel Anderson, a progressive political consultant. “Maybe he is the right person. This feels like a pretty classic thing folks here would want to do — make a bunch of money but say you’re on the better side of it.”
Other AI picks were more deeply embedded in city government and public services. O’Leary, named OpenAI’s vice president of global policy in January, served as a deputy city attorney from 2006 to 2008 and later chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom from 2019 through 2021 when he served as governor.
Before joining OpenAI in January, she worked as a partner at Jenner & Block, specializing in government controversies and public policy litigation practice. O’Leary and OpenAI founder Sam Altman were part of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s transition team following Lurie’s election in 2024.
More than a decade before Bisesto was named chief of staff to OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, in August 2024, she had been an assistant district attorney in the San Francisco DA’s office from 2011 to 2015.
Many corporate leadership jobs filled her resume in between those positions: She led public policy for Lyft, Verizon, and Nextdoor, among other roles. Bisesto was also in the room for talks between Lurie and Friar during a June 18 meeting, in which Lurie sought OpenAI to become involved in a new city initiative, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Longtime city lobbyist Alex Tourk, who worked in the Willie Brown and Newsom mayoral administrations, lobbied for both OpenAI and Anthropic despite the companies’ storied rivalry. Anthropic paid Tourk $80,000 to meet with the mayor’s office and other officials to get a Claude partnership, according to lobbyist disclosures that year. In 2024, OpenAI had Tourk lobby city officials for changes to city business taxes.
“San Francisco-based operatives certainly have a leg up for many of the new AI public affairs jobs,” said Jason Galisatus, a political strategist and principal of Galisatus Public Affairs.
Locally, AI firms are looking at major issues around taxation, land use, public agency use of AI tools, and in some cases key industry infrastructure like data centers, he added.
“That said, the real policy fights that are existential for their core business are really happening at the state and federal level,” Galisatus said. “We see a much bigger lobbying boom there, but certainly these companies recognize the need to maintain good relationships in the city they call home, and they’re staffing up appropriately.”