2024 San Francisco mayoral campaign
In February 2024, Farrell launched a campaign for mayor, seeking to unseat Breed. [41] Farrell was regarded as the most conservative of the candidates in the election. [16] [40] Heather Knight of The New York Times , in February 2024, called Farrell the "most rightward leaning" of the challengers that had entered the mayoral race against Breed. [40] Dustin Gardiner and Lara Korte of Politico described Farrell as running on a platform of "centrist and business-friendly proposals," calling his platform, "strikingly conservative for San Francisco — the liberal bastion that has shaped the direction of the national Democratic Party for decades." Having good name recognition, Farrell was regarded to be a major candidate in the election. [16]
Farrell pledged a "zero-tolerance approach and policy for all crime in San Francisco," promising to fire Bill Scott from his post as the city's police chief. [42] He also promised that he would increase the number of recruits in the city's police academy and "massively" increase the size of the city's police force. [42] [40] He pledged to mandate having anyone that is administered Narcan by city employees detained and then directed into drug rehabilitation programs. He pledged to eliminate recent budget increase for community health and welfare programs and instead allocate that money for public safety and the hiring of additional police officers. He characterized the community health and welfare programs as "hav[ing] nothing to show" for the funding that the city has allocated to them. [16]
Farrell proposed creating an exemption from local taxes for small businesses whose gross revenues are smaller than $5 million. [16] He also called for re-introducing cars to Market Street, which currently serves as a pedestrian-only corridor in downtown San Francisco. [41]
On expanding housing supply in San Francisco, Farrell said during his campaign, "I do not believe that we need to upzone every single neighborhood in San Francisco." [43] His position to focus dense housing in an already-dense neighborhoods was criticized by pro-housing advocates. [44]
Farrell pledged to remove all large tent homeless encampments in the city within his first year. [16] He described his homeless plan as a move from a “housing-first” to a “shelter-first” approach which would focus on establishing temporary beds rather than providing permanent housing to the homeless. [40] He stated that he does not believe the city has the resources to find permanent housing for all its citizens. He also proposed establishing a central intake location that would be open at all hours to guide homeless into shelters. [16]
In November 2024, Farrell consented to pay an ethics penalty of $108,179. Farrell violated the city's $500 cap on individual campaign contributions by inappropriately channeling roughly $93,000 from a political action committee (PAC) he set up to support Proposition D into his mayoral campaign, according to the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Farrell accepted full responsibility for the mistakes and said that the problems were caused by an "accounting error" and a dispute over staff time allocation. Investigators did note, however, that Farrell's contacts pointed to a more intentional blending of campaign finances. The penalty was the largest ever imposed by the ethics commission. [45] [46] [47] [48]
Farrell lost the election, coming in fourth behind the winner Daniel Lurie, incumbent Mayor London Breed, and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. [49]
