John Whitehurst, chief strategist at BMWL and Partners and guitar enthusiast, breaking for a jam session at his office in Oakland.
Craig Lee
From Jerry Brown to Willie Brown, and from Supervisor Otto Lee in Santa Clara County to Supervisor Catherine Stefani in San Francisco, John Whitehurst has helped tell their stories. The chief strategist has led more than 200 public affairs, outreach or communications campaigns over the last three decades.
Since heading west by way of Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential run, there’s hardly a corner of the Bay Area political scene that Whitehurst hasn’t touched. He launched Whitehurst Campaigns in 1990, making a splash with Jerry Brown’s successful 1999 mayoral run in Oakland. Even as Whitehurst’s star ascended, the decidedly less sexy ballot campaigns for infrastructure projects often moved him most. “I did the first earthquake safety bond in San Francisco for unreinforced masonry buildings,” he says. “Sounds nerdy, but it was super important.”
Whitehurst started the next millennium by cofounding Oakland-based BMWL and Partners with fellow principals Mark Mosher, Sam Lauter and Robert Barnes, who passed away in 2002. Business partner Jill Nelson Golub joined several years later.
Suffice to say, Whitehurst hasn’t had the same day twice, from helping to create the Water Emergency Transportation Authority to driving 13 K–12 ballot measures for San Francisco to working with big-name clients like Pixar, UCSF Medical and Juul. While the latter may have been controversial, Whitehurst maintains that BMWL was trying to establish good law. “People may have hated who was trying to deliver it — the messenger — but the content was good,” he says.
This cycle, BMWL is working with, among others, Supervisor Stefani as a reelection consultant, though Whitehurst’s team helped make her so strong politically that she is running unopposed in November. “I trust them with my career, with my thoughts and my values,” says Stefani, who also worked with BMWL on the passage of Proposition D, her June ballot measure that in part makes San Francisco the first city in the country to provide free legal counsel to victims of domestic violence.
We caught up with Whitehurst on a recent day during this busy on-season — the three months preceding an election.
6:30 a.m.: Whitehurst jumpstarts most days with an hour of weights or a swim at the Claremont Club in Berkeley.
8:00 a.m.: Back home in Oakland, he takes a weekly meeting with Mosher, Golub and labor leaders from five unions who are campaigning with independent expenditures in various races around the Bay Area.
9:30 a.m.: In the office, a thrice-weekly in-person staff meeting gets underway to review the BMWL client list, which currently includes Google and Uber. “Each staffer reports out where they are,” Whitehurst says. “I give direction or advice, or my other partners do.”
10:30 a.m.: Whitehurst heads into a jam-packed day of meetings via Zoom, starting with Bob Jonsen, who is running for sheriff in Santa Clara County. “He represents where public safety is now in the minds of most voters: pro-police, pro-reform, transparent and innovative,” Whitehurst says of taking on the long-shot campaign.
Noon: Whitehurst and Lauter meet with corporate client Cargill, as BMWL has been working on its solar salt efforts in Newark for two years. An effort to get rid of used salt has proven a complicated undertaking, involving various government agencies and rounds of approvals. “With nearly all of our clients, we use all of the tools of strategic communications,” says Whitehurst. “It’s not press releases — it’s telling the client’s story, organizing community support behind them and applying the pressure to create the change they desire.”
1:00 p.m.: Next up is a quick meeting with the campaign team for Proposition F, the Library Preservation Fund Renewal, to walk through next steps for their field operations. Whitehurst also grabs a salad in his office, where he typically tries to steal 20 or 30 minutes to practice guitar. After picking up the hobby during the pandemic, he now has a 2021 Gibson SG and 1999 Fender Stratocaster within reach.
2:30 p.m.: Time for Whitehurst, Mosher and Golub to meet with Genentech, part of the coalition for the California Life Sciences Association sponsoring No on Measure DD, with the support of the South San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and Mayor Mark Nagales, among others. “We are leading the campaign to kill that tax,” Whitehurst says of the measure that funds “unsafe, unregulated childcare,” according to his firm’s mailings. “If a tax like that succeeds there,” he adds, “it could succeed in other pockets of [the] bio community.” Proponents of the measure say it will raise teacher wages and support preschool for all in South San Francisco. (Whitehurst would rebut that the measure still won’t offer enough preschool seats or guarantee free preschool for all eligible children.)
4:00 p.m.: Whitehurst checks in with Assemblymember Alex Lee and his reelection campaign team to run through the agenda that nearly all campaigns need within 90 days of election day: media production and schedule updates, field operation weekly counts, fundraising updates, what the opposition is up to, and media opportunities.
5:30 p.m.: After Whitehurst sends a quick text to his daughter, who is studying microbiology at Tulane University, he and Golub drive to the San Jose home of Supervisor Susan Ellenberg for a dinner meeting. Since Ellenberg is also running unopposed in her reelection bid, “we use this time to plan her next set of public initiatives,” he says. “She is really an expert in children and family policy and wants to put that front and center.”
9:00 p.m.: Whitehurst unwinds with his partner off the clock, Teddy King, the mayor of Piedmont. The two plan their weekend, when they often catch live music or head to Stinson or Half Moon Bay for a beach break. “We’ve usually got to do some work,” he says, “but we try to grab the dog and go.” 
