Dan Dillon, S.F. lobbyist who helped bring major PGA tournaments to the city, dies at 64

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 days ago

As a San Francisco hospitality industry lobbyist and City Hall insider, Dan Dillon never wrote anything down. The telephone was for arranging a meeting over drinks at one of his hangouts, and his style was so effective that his contacts put on an Irish wake for him at Original Joe's in North Beach a dozen years ago when Dillon was still alive to enjoy it.
A vintage firetruck arrived with a closed and flag-draped coffin, and pallbearers in mourning jackets carried it in as bagpiper played mournful hymns. Waiting inside to speak was the Irish consul general, former Mayor Willie Brown and Supervisor Aaron Peskin. Dillon was president of the Olympic Club, a downtown institution with an outlying golf course, and an officer in the Guardsmen nonprofit serving at-risk youths, so both of those organizations were represented. A mock death certificate had been printed and entered into the record at the moment when the lid flung open and up popped the honoree raising a bottle of Bud Light.
The wake lasted from lunch into the evening. The funeral march, including off-duty cops and firefighters, went from Original Joe's to the Northstar to Gino and Carlo to Tosca. Dillon, if reluctant to be the center of this type of attention, gamely rode along with it as the procession grew from 40 followers to 100 or more.
That event, organized to celebrate a guy who was known and loved in every old-timey bar in town, happened in 2013 and turned out to be a preview of the real wake. Dillon died July 15 at San Francisco General Hospital of renal failure, said his wife, Cara Sheean, a San Francisco attorney. He was 64.
'Dan was one of San Francisco's most colorful rascals, always with a mischievous glint in his eye,' said Peskin, who worked with Dillon on a variety of civic projects over the course of 30 years. 'He always had just a fascinating take on everything that would completely change how you would view an issue.'
Among his achievements, Dillon is credited with helping pass state legislation authored by Sen. Mark Leno in 2011 that allows alcoholic beverages infused with fruit and herbs to be served in bars and restaurants, which gave them a major boost.
'With his connections and his ability, Dan got that law done in 90 days, so bars could make cocktails the way people wanted them,'' said Brian Sheehy, owner of Bourbon and Branch, the Lark Bar and a few tiki bars, among 14 in San Francisco.
Dillon was also the point person who persuaded the Professional Golfers' Association to bring the PGA Championship, one of golf's four majors, to Harding Park, a public course in San Francisco, in May 2020. He served as event chair, and it went so well that the PGA Championship is coming back to the city in 2028. It will be followed by an even bigger event, the Ryder Cup, a team competition that has not taken place in California since 1959. When it was announced in 2017, Dillon, as president of the Olympic Club, stood between then-Mayor Ed Lee and the PGA president. Both of those events will be played on the Lake Course at the Olympic Club.
'There was nobody more connected to the world of golf than Dan Dillon,' said Brown, who found this out when Dillon personally introduced Da Mayor to Tiger Woods during the PGA Championship. Dillon also introduced Brown to voters in the west side of the city when Dillon and Sheean hosted the first house party for Brown's mayoral run in 1996. That started a partnership that did not end until Brown came to say goodbye to Dillon at San Francisco General, just days before he died.
'Dan Dillon was very much a part of San Francisco for years and years and years,' said Brown. 'He came up with multiple ideas for how to make the city really work.'
For the last 20 years, Dillon has been a partner at New Deal Advisers, a San Francisco firm that lobbies government entities for legislation, permitting and contracts on behalf of clients like the San Francisco Firefighters Union and Dominion Voting Systems. New Deal is located at Kearny and Bush, conveniently near Sam's Grill and Sam's Tavern, where Dillon 'held court,' said his partner Chris Gruwell. Over the years he also took meetings at the Washington Square Bar and Grill, Moose's in North Beach, the Buchanan Bar and Grill in the Marina, the HiDive along the Embarcadero and any number of joints in between.
'Dan was a face to face communicator who had the widest network of relationships of any person I've ever met,' said Gruwell. 'The city was his office. He was like a politician who never ran for office, so he never pissed anyone off.'
Daniel Kirk Dillon was born April 28, 1961, in Raleigh, N.C., the middle son of a Methodist minister whose wife was the church organist. Dillon was born blind in one eye and with Perthes disease, which causes bone death in children. Weakness in his right hip required him to use crutches and a wheelchair until he was 9. He always wanted to play sports, but the only one sufficiently low-impact was golf, which he took up with vigor after the family moved to Kentucky.
He attended University Breckinridge School on the campus of Moorhead State, which had its own course. According to Sheean, he won the Kentucky Junior Golf Championship in 1979 and was rewarded with a golf scholarship to attend the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He graduated in 1983 with a degree in political science. One year later he came to San Francisco for the Democratic National Convention and stayed.
A connection to Ed Moose, the publican at Washington Square, led to a campaign position as volunteer driver for Assemblyman Lou Papan in his 1986 campaign for state senator. Dillon was later hired for the staff of Supervisor Terrence Hallinan, but was fired after just one day. The next day he was on the staff of Supervisor Wendy Nelder, a job turnaround that merited mention in Herb Caen's Chronicle column. But his main contribution was outside of government, working on behalf of clients.
''Danny Boy' was a brilliant political strategist who could see the whole problem and figure out piece by piece how to get to resolution,' said Annemarie Conroy, a former supervisor who is now assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of California, using her nickname for Dillon .
In 1992, Dillon met Cara Sheean, a lawyer at Wells Fargo, at the grand opening of Johnny Love's at 1500 Broadway. Conroy introduced them, having met Dillon through his work at City Hall when she was on the fire commission. Dillon put Sheean on the spot by asking for a date in front of Conroy, where she couldn't say no. She agreed to meet for a drink back at the bar at Johnny Love's.
'I just wanted to get it over with,' recalled Sheean, 'and he charmed me.'
The drink lasted until closing, and soon enough Sheean had also agreed to use her spacious flat on Funston, near Mountain Lake Park, for political house parties. The couple were already living together when they were married Sept. 6, 1997, at the chapel in the Presidio of San Francisco with a reception at the City Club.
Conroy was in attendance, as she was recently at San Francisco General, waiting her turn to say goodbye to Dillon, in a line that included members of the fire commission, the police commission and many other city agencies.
Among those who came were officials at the Olympic Club, where Dillon could be counted on to entertain dignitaries coming to play the famous Lake Course. To honor his ambassadorship, the club is establishing a youth golf scholarship in Dillon's name, like the one he received.
'Dan was always gracious and always forthcoming, and he always did what was right for any situation,' said Malia Lyle, president of the Olympic Club. 'He didn't just have friends in the golf community. I've never known anybody who had such deep relationships in all walks of life.'