‘He had guts’: Clint Reilly, political fixer and Examiner owner, dies at 79 52%
By Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler28% Kevin Truong13%
7/20/2026, 5:14:59 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Appeal to Authority, and Framing Effect, with Halo Effect as the most egregious example at 32.2% saturation with 316 hits. Analysis detected 1,560 faulty-reasoning hits from 981 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 51.5% and a BS Rank of 52% (9,269 of 18,980 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 51.20% of the article peer group.
Clint Reilly, a jack-of-all-trades San Franciscan whose career spanned political consulting, real estate, newspaper ownership, and a bid for mayor, died Sunday at 79, his company said.
The cause of death was not announced.
The son of a milkman and a concession-stand operator, Reilly built an empire worth an estimated $400 million.
His political acumen was sought out by elected officials in San Francisco and across the state.
The oldest of 10 children, Reilly was born in Oakland and raised in San Leandro.
He attended St.
Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park for high school and college but later abandoned his plans to become a Catholic priest.
In his 20s, Reilly started an antiquities shop on the city’s waterfront.
But his career took a circuitous route, as he moved from business into politics.
In the 1970s, Reilly founded Clinton Reilly Campaigns, pioneering new methods of political consulting by bringing services like polling and TV advertising under one roof.
The lucrative operation had as clients Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, former Sens.
Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and former Mayor Frank Jordan.
A 1987 New York Times article on the booming world of political consulting firms stated that “Clinton Reilly Campaigns of San Francisco is, perhaps, the most successful.”
In addition to helping to get numerous Democrats elected, he was recruited to defend them.
Reilly fended off a 1983 recall campaign against Feinstein when she was mayor and another in 1993 against state Sen.
Pro Tem David Roberti.
Other clients included the state Democratic Party, the Democratic State Senate Campaign Committee, and the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“He didn’t invent the job of political consultant, but he very much defined it in San Francisco and in California for generations,” said Eric Jaye, who worked for Reilly beginning in the 1980s.
“He also was ahead of his time in so, so many ways.
He was an innovator in terms of trying to understand the electorate and think thoughtfully about how to deliver political outcomes that considered more than winning and losing elections but also directly confronted an even more important question: how to deliver concrete results for the people government is supposed to serve.”
As a city booster, Reilly was credited with preserving and creating two marquee institutions.
In 1992, he assisted Jordan in keeping the San Francisco Giants in the city, and in 1994, he helped pass a $52 million bond to fund the creation of the Asian Art Museum.
Mayor Daniel Lurie said Reilly “left a lasting mark on our city.”
He added, “Alongside a successful career in business and politics, Clint Reilly remained deeply committed to his community — helping promote local journalism and founding Bay Scholars to expand educational opportunities for students from low-income families.
My thoughts are with his wife, Janet, his daughters, and all who knew and loved him.”
Reilly turned from political consulting to real estate in 1995, purchasing the Merchants Exchange building from the late developer Walter Shorenstein and the Swig family.
The site holds the Julia Morgan Ballroom, a premium event space that has hosted the likes of President Barack Obama and the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
That same year, he married Janet, whom he met on Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s campaign.
A former television host for NBC Bay Area, Janet is the cofounder of Clinic by the Bay, which provides health services for uninsured San Francisco and San Mateo County residents.
She was a board member of the Presidio Trust and serves on the University of California Board of Regents.
In 1999, Reilly ran for mayor, announcing his bid on a West Portal Avenue sidewalk, criticizing how Mayor Willie Brown was running Muni.
“I am sincere in my concern for the future of this city, and I am sincere in my commitment to restoring an ethic of service to city government,” Reilly said.
“Willie Brown, who promised us leadership, has given us only showmanship, and nowhere does that failure show more than with Muni.”
Reilly’s effort to unseat Brown was unsuccessful; he came in fourth place behind the sitting mayor, Tom Ammiano, and Jordan.
The race brought up decades-old allegations that Reilly had physically assaulted a former girlfriend; Reilly denied the accusations, stating that he had a drinking problem at one point.
He acknowledged that there was an incident of domestic violence but pushed back on how it was characterized, blaming a campaign consultant of Brown’s for spreading the claims to influence voters.
He and Brown eventually smoothed over their relationship.
“He was able and dedicated,” Brown said Sunday of Reilly.
“And committed.”
In the past year, the two regularly lunched at the old-school establishment Sam’s Tavern on Bush Street.
Reilly also got deep into the world of newspapers.
His first foray was an antitrust lawsuit in 2006 against MediaNews Group, the Denver-based owner of The Mercury News, and the New York City firm Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Reilly alleged that the two companies were working to create a monopoly on local media.
The companies settled the suit in 2007, agreeing that competition would remain.
“He got unnerved about what was going on in the press world and decided to take them on,” said Joe Crotchett, an attorney who met Reilly in the late 1970s.
“I gave him a lot of credit for that.
He had guts.”
Reilly then turned to newspaper publishing, acquiring the Nob Hill Gazette in 2016 and the San Francisco Examiner in 2020.
“Our entire team is heartbroken by the loss of our owner and founder, Clint Reilly,” Brandon Heist, Clint Reilly Organization’s head of business operations, said in a statement.
Heist said the death “doesn’t change the structure of the organization or its current operations.”
Reilly is survived by his wife and daughters Jill and Ava.
Memorial services will be announced.
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