SF Mayoral Candidate Mark Farrell to Pay Largest Ethics Fine in City’s History

Mayoral candidate Mark Farrell has agreed to pay the largest campaign finance ethics fine in San Francisco’s history over allegations that he double-dipped by using money meant for a city ballot measure campaign.

Farrell, a former interim mayor and supervisor, will pay nearly $108,000 to settle eight counts of campaign finance violations, according to the San Francisco Ethics Commission. The settlement was announced on the eve of Election Day and comes on the heels of a tight race that has been studded with ethics complaints against Farrell.

“This record penalty reflects the serious harm that was done to the public’s right to have timely and accurate information about how campaigns are funded in San Francisco,” Enforcement Director Olabisi Matthews said in a statement. “It also reflects the severity of violating the $500 contribution limit, which is one of the most basic rules that all candidates have to follow.”

For months, Farrell’s opponents and critics — including three former San Francisco mayors — alleged that Farrell’s campaign had skirted campaign finance rules by taking advantage of contributions to a political action committee Farrell created to support Proposition D.

Individual campaign contributions to candidates are capped at $500. However, the same limits don’t apply to ballot measures, and Proposition D — which aims to cut the number of city commissions in half and cap it at 65 — has raked in millions of dollars from billionaires like venture capitalist Michael Moritz.

The commission alleges that Farrell’s mayoral campaign took $93,000 in contributions from his Proposition D PAC without refunding it.

“Investigators calculate the outstanding payments from the Ballot Measure Committee to account for approximately 50% of all staff salary, canvassers, rent, insurance, utility, contractor, and food and drink expenses for the Mayoral Committee between April and September,” a letter from the Ethics Commission reads.

Farrell attributed the issue to an accounting error from earlier this summer that was previously resolved.

“We agreed to a settlement for an accounting error that we corrected and publicly disclosed months ago and over a disagreement about staff time allocation during the campaign, which led us to terminate our prior legal counsel for this matter,” Farrell said in a statement. “As the person responsible for both campaigns, I take full ownership of these issues — this is the kind of accountability I am modeling for my children.”

It’s not the first time Farrell, or his leading opponents for mayor, have faced campaign finance questions or fines.

Farrell was similarly fined $191,000 — which would have been the largest ethics violation fine in the city’s history — after being accused of illegally coordinating with a PAC during his campaign for supervisor in 2010. In 2016, he agreed to settle the case and paid $25,000.

In 2021, incumbent Mayor London Breed paid $22,000 in fines related to ethics violations for using her official title for personal gain during her tenure. In 2018, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, now a candidate for mayor, faced an $8,000 fine for ads placed in Chinese-language newspapers during his 2015 campaign for supervisor.

Farrell, meanwhile, said he is calling on the Ethics Commission to create better guidelines around the issue, saying “the public deserves certainty and transparency.”

Some political watchdogs questioned the timing of the commission’s announcement, one day before polls close.

“Since the allegations at issue have been widely reported and the facts and legal issues are complex and contested, it does not appear to me that the Ethics Commission should have expedited this case toward a pre-election announcement, which could influence the voters,” Dan Schnur, former chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said in a statement.

Matthews disagreed, saying that the Ethics Commission “did everything in its power to publicly resolve this case prior to Election Day so that the public would have information about these violations when it matters most.”

The Ethics Commission will vote on the settlement at its meeting on Friday.