View the San Francisco for Thursday, June 27, 2024
Hugo Santana is owner of Red Rooster Taqueria and The Greyhound bar and beer garden at The Crossing at East Cut.Mark Farrell’s mayoral campaign committee reported in a disclosure Thursday that it is sharing expenses with a committee he formed to support a pair of initiatives on the November ballot.
San Francisco mayoral candidate Mark Farrell’s opponents say he is leveraging a pair of November ballot measures to boost his profile with major contributions from wealthy benefactors that would otherwise exceed contribution limits.formed to run for mayor in the same election, according to a disclosure filed with The City’s Ethics Commission on Thursday and first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle last week. The promotion offered by a ballot-measure committee comes without the shackles of a candidate’s own campaign committee and its contribution limits. The latter is subject to a $500 limit on individual contributions; the former is not. San Francisco law attempts to limit the influence of big money in local politics, but Farrell’s opponents question whether he’s found a loophole to tap into it. Farrell’s campaign argues that this setup is legal and that Farrell is genuinely — and strongly — advocating for the government-reform measure his campaign was formed to support. But Farrell’s opponents say they believe he is testing the bounds of what is ethical, if not legal, by plainly using a ballot-measure committee to share expenses with the candidate committee without divulging details. It also further demonstrates the deep connections between Farrell and a network of wealthy patrons looking to upend San Francisco politics. “We need bold reforms to our commissions and governance systems because it is holding us back from making the progress our residents, businesses, and visitors deserve and expect to see,” Farrell said in a statement to The Examiner. Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin — who is also running for mayor — described Farrell’s approach as legally dubious and called for Farrell to be denied access to public financing for his mayoral campaign. Joe Arellano, campaign spokesman for Mayor London Breed, argued in a statement that Farrell is “using a loophole to skirt campaign finance limits and receive endless amounts of cash for his campaign.”Farrell’s ballot-measure committee accepted a $45,000 donation from billionaire William Oberndorf’s company, Oberndorf Enterprises LLC, on June 2, according to a disclosure that covers the first two weeks of June. Oberndorf is the major financial backer of Neighbors for a Better SF, a political organization that has previously been scrutinized for its close ties to Farrell’s campaign. In April, The San Francisco Standard reported that Jesse “Jay” Cheng, executive director of Neighbors for a Better SF, facilitated theIn total, Farrell’s ballot-measure committee reported $64,915 in expenses — or 80% of all of its expenses — in May and June that were shared with. The report lists shared expenses for payroll, office space, insurance and a contractor, and does not delve into any specifics. The Examiner asked for more details, such as which staff members work for both campaigns. Farrell’s campaign declined to provide any further details and maintained that the disclosure includes what is legally required of it. Farrell’s mayoral campaign also promised that the ballot-measure committee has not and will not be used to directly fund the mayoral committee, which would be illegal. Farrell, a former two-term supervisor who brieflyThis isn’t the first time his campaign finances have been called into question. Farrell was fined $191,000 by The City’s Ethics Commission — an amount later lowered to $25,000 under the terms of a settlement — for campaign-finance violations duringUnder the terms of the settlement, The Ethics Commission acknowledged that Farrell was not directly aware of — and did not authorize — the activity that resulted in campaign finance violations. However, Farrell did accept “ultimate responsibility” for the actions of his campaign. Farrell formed the ballot-measure committee in March to support two initiatives spearheaded by the political organization TogetherSF Action — one to broaden mayoral power, and another to reduce the number of commissions in San Francisco government. Peskin has floated a competing measure that would also look to curtail The City’s use of commissions, but do so in a way he argues is more transparent. Farrell disagrees. “It is especially important to pass this measure because Supervisor Peskin has introduced, and is likely to qualify, his ineffective, poison-pill countermeasure,” Farrell said. “Voters need to be informed about the initiative that will deliver real reforms, so that they aren’t fooled by Peskin’s petty political ploy, and choose the better policy for our city.” Peskin countered that TogetherSF’s ballot measure was cooked up in a back room without public input, and that Farrell’s committee supporting the proposal has little to do with improving San Francisco government. “This is all about politics, and none of it’s about public policy,” Peskin said. “It is totally a vehicle for his campaign.”According to Farrell’s campaign, the ballot-measure committee has paid dozens of canvassers to spread the word about the ballot measure. If so, this canvassing is occurring before the measure qualifies for the ballot and more than four months before the election. The ballot-measure committee — named Mayor Mark Farrell for the We Need SF to Work Initiative and Cut the Dysfunctional Bureaucracy Initiative — has raised $372,800 to date. Contributors include Oberndorf; billionaire investor John Pritzker, who chipped in $100,000 in April; and investor Alex Slusky and wife Danna Slusky, each of whom dropped $50,000 to support the cause.established committees this year to boost three successful measures she placed directly on the March primary election ballot. One forced people seeking welfare payments toBallot-measure campaigns can provide exposure for candidates if they’re closely tied to the efforts, in addition to boosting the ballot measures themselves, indirectly benefiting those candidates. In Breed’s case, she starred in television advertisements for the March ballot measures centered on public safety, effectively portraying her as a leader taking on an issue of top concern for voters. Breed’s ballot-measure committees did not list expenses as “shared” with Breed’s mayoral campaign, but campaign filings show similarities between the two. They reported payments totaling $591,000 to KMM Strategies, a political consulting firm that also works for her mayoral campaign. The committee paid Joe Arellano Communications $67,500. Arellano now serves as spokesperson for her mayoral campaign. Eric Kingsbury, who earned $33,500 working for the ballot measures, now works as Breed’s mayoral campaign manager. However, Breed’s mayoral campaign maintains that the work for the ballot measures was followed by the work for her mayoral reelection bid, and that the two tasks were kept separate. Both Arellano and Kingsbury were announced as joining the Breed mayoral campaign after the spring primary election, however, and filed disclosures with The City reflecting their appointments in April.That committee paid campaign consultant Thematic Campaigns $594,000, while Lurie’s mayoral campaign also paid Thematic Campaigns. However, those payments were labeled separately and not listed as “shared expenses” on campaign filings, as in the case of Farrell’s ballot-measure campaign. The legality of shared activity between campaign committees is complex. It is impossible to know, based on the filings, what “share” of staffing or office space is paid for by Farrell’s mayoral committee or ballot-measure committee because the disclosures filed up to this point do not specify. Farrell’s midyear mayoral campaign finance report, due by July 31, will likely provide more insight into his mayoral campaign’s spending.Editor’s note: This story was updated to include more detail about the settlement between The City and Mark Farrell over his 2010 supervisor campaign’s alleged campaign finance violations.Supervisor and mayoral candidate Ahsha Safai: “We have, at the end of the day, the vast, vast resources to marshal toward this epidemic, this crisis. We’re not doing it.” It wasn’t long ago that overdose-prevention sites were a cornerstone of San Francisco’s plan to combat the fentanyl crisis. But as mayoral candidates address The City’s dramatic rise in opioid-related deaths on the campaign trail, few are willing to even raise the subject of overdose-prevention centers, let alone outline how they’d open one, and such facilities have only received a passing mention in the first two mayoral debates. Only Supervisor Ahsha Safai — who to this point has trailed the race’s leading candidates in voter polls — supports quickly opening an overdose-prevention center. His position separates Safai on the issue from a field of candidates with reservations for varying reasons. Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and Mayor London Breed both ostensibly support overdose-prevention centers, but they have said they believe the current legal risks are too great. Daniel Lurie contends that the lethality of fentanyl has “changed the game” and that he will not support such a facility, while former interim Mayor Mark Farrell has outright blasted “harm reduction” as a philosophy and The City’s overreliance on it in addressing the fentanyl crisis. The Examiner asked Safai how he would pursue opening The City’s first official overdose-prevention centers, which despite their fervent supporters, remain shrouded in legal and political controversy. “You have to build the support, you have to go out there and work with the district supervisor, and you have to be bold,” Safai said. The centers, also sometimes referred to as supervised-consumption sites or safe-injection sites, are places where people with addictions can use drugs under the watch of professionals trained in overdose reversal. The practice is one of several methods routinely supported by public-health experts to combat overdose deaths. They fall under the umbrella of “harm reduction” — a term that has become a political insult as candidates support abstinence-only recovery and, which the Department of Public Health drafted in 2022 and earned Board of Supervisors approval. The City operated a de facto overdose-prevention center inside the Tenderloin Center after Breed and the Board of Supervisors declared a state of emergency in the neighborhood in 2022, but Breed ordered it shuttered after less than a year.in that state approved a measure in 2020 that decriminalized possession of small amounts of hard drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine, and called for state investment in addiction treatment. Breed, who is seeking a second full term in office, was an early supporter of overdose prevention sites, but now expresses hesitation about the potential legal repercussions ofSuch sites remain illegal under federal law, though no federal legal action has been taken against two sites open and operating in New York City since 2021. A bill passed by the California legislature in 2022 would have allowed San Francisco to pilot an overdose-prevention center, butAsked about safe-consumption sites directly by The New York Times’ Heather Knight in a debate earlier this month, Breed cited state law and expressed concern that city attorneys could even face disbarment for facilitating the launch of an overdose prevention center. “There is no other mayor in any major city in this country that is doing what I am doing with the various services that we are doing in order to help combat this issue, and we are seeing improvements in our city,” Breed said. Safai counters that similar arguments were made when same-sex marriage remained illegal under federal law, but San Francisco moved ahead anyway under then-Mayor Newsom. “You could cross out the word prevention and put in the words ‘gay marriage,’ and those were the exact same arguments that were made,” Safai said. Peskin said he remains a supporter of overdose-prevention centers in theory, but he diverges from Safai in legal interpretation and puts his faith in the city attorneys who have warned against opening one in San Francisco. There is also the question of the November presidential election, and how a Justice Department overseen by Donald Trump would look at cities such as San Francisco operating overdose-prevention centers. “It is worth waiting until November before we engage in that conversation, because I’m not going to subject nurses at San Francisco medical facilities to criminal charges,” Peskin said. Breed, meanwhile, has distanced herself from harm reduction as a methodology, garnering headlines when she said at a rally earlier this year that the harm-reduction approach The City has developed during her time in office is “making things worse.”to address the fentanyl crisis if elected mayor, with Lurie claiming that his would enable “rapid deployment of his comprehensive behavioral health plan.Safai said he’s supportive of prosecuting drug dealers, as well as a broad spectrum of treatment that includes abstinence-based options. But he also advocates for San Francisco to pursue the same model used in New York City, and for The City to fundraise on behalf of a The center would, in theory, provide more than overdose-prevention services, offering a “whole gamut” of other addiction-related services as well. Safai estimates that, to start, San Francisco needs four such facilities. “I don’t think there’s any question that the Tenderloin has to have an OPC, South of Market has to have an OPC — that’s where a lot of the overdoses are happening,” Safai said. “But you have to choose the right facility, and you have to build neighborhood support.” Even the words used to describe the program matter, Safai insists. He is adamant that they be described as “overdose-prevention centers,” and not “safe-injection sites” or “consumption sites.” His argument to win over a skeptical public is that “people aren’t in tents, not sitting on a corner, not sitting on the sidewalk using drugs and dying.” “We have an almost $16 billion budget,” Safai said. “We have, at the end of the day, the vast, vast resources to marshal toward this epidemic, this crisis. We’re not doing it.”Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. 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