Willie Brown and two other former San Francisco mayors, along with six other former city officials, have filed a request for a criminal investigation into mayoral candidate Mark Farrell, citing campaign finance violations.
The letter, addressed to California Attorney General Rob Bonta and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, alleges that Farrell “appears to willfully violate election law” by “laundering significant amounts of money through a commission for unlimited ballot measures to cover the costs of his campaign. for the mayor to bypass the $500 per person limit on contributions.”
Former Mayors Brown, Art Agnos and Frank Jordan signed the letter, along with former City Attorney Louise Renne, former Supervisor Angela Alioto, former Senator Mark Leno, retired Judge Quentin Kopp and attorneys John Keker and Randy Knox.
The letter was also sent to the Fair Political Practices Commission, the San Francisco Ethics Commission, the San Francisco City Attorney, the State Bar of California and the State Bar of Arizona.
The group alleges that Farrell used “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from a City Hall reform ballot measure, which is backed by a group that also supports Farrell’s run for mayor, to pay for his own campaign.
“If you don’t act quickly, Mark Farrell will have exploited the inaction of both ethics officials and law enforcement authorities to unlawfully funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into his mayoral campaign and perhaps gain the upper hand,” the group wrote.
Farrell, who previously served as city supervisor for District 2 and interim mayor from January to July 2018, has consistently argued that his campaign was within the law.
Under San Francisco election law, campaign donations are limited to $500 for each contributor other than the candidate. The campaign is also not allowed to accept donations of more than $500.
The letter’s co-signatories point to recent reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle that an independent committee in support of Proposition D, which was drafted by Farrell, merged payments and resources with his own campaign.
The payments include costs for campaigners trained by Farrell’s campaign to educate voters about the measure, as well as rent and payroll. In further reporting, the Chronicle stated that they had seen no evidence of Prop D personnel at the site of Farrell’s campaign headquarters and that shared payments to the proposal committee appeared to cover payments incurred by the campaign for mayor.
“While candidates can use voting commissions to pay for advertisements that have the effect of increasing their visibility to voters,” the letter states, “those advertisements must actually be about the ballot measure – and not about the candidate’s qualifications for office or public policy. issues unrelated to the underlying measure.”
Fellow candidate Daniel Lurie initially declined to comment for this story, as did incumbent Mayor London Breed’s campaign.
In a press release, Lurie’s campaign adviser said: “San Francisco will not see the change it so desperately needs by replacing one corrupt City Hall insider with another… They have built and exploited a corrupt bureaucracy, and now tell they tell the voters that they are.” the only ones who can fix it don’t buy it.
Last week, Farrell and current San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safaí announced they would be working together to encourage their individual supporters to place the other in one of the top positions on the ballot in the city’s ranked choice voting.
This is a development story. More information will be added as details become available.
