San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie has announced his plans to tackle and prevent corruption in City Hall while accusing fellow candidate Mark Farrell of potentially skirting around ethics rules related to campaign financing.
The top candidates in the November election for mayor include Lurie, incumbent Mayor London Breed, former interim mayor Farrell, Supervisor Ahsha Safai and current Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin.
Lurie, who is the founder of an antipoverty nonprofit and an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, is the only top candidate who has not held office in local government. Even though Lurie’s opponents focus on his inexperience in government as an issue, he says that not being a “City Hall insider” will help him root out corruption.
“You can’t fix the problem when you are the problem,” he said Monday from his campaign headquarters. “We can’t trust the same people who built this broken, corrupt bureaucracy to turn it around.”
Lurie proposed requiring greater transparency in breaking down how funding is allocated between candidate-led ballot measure committees and their campaign committees. He also wants to impose a probation period that places greater oversight on elected officials and candidates with past findings of ethics misconduct.
Lurie was joined Monday by former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan and former Police Cmdr. Paul Yep, who have both endorsed Lurie. Jordan served as mayor from 1992 to 1996 as well as chief of police between 1986 and 1990 .
Yep worked in the Police Department for 27 years and was appointed as commander in 2021 before retiring in 2023.
“San Francisco’s culture of corruption has to come to an end,” Yep said. “It’s why I’m standing with Daniel Lurie today. He is not beholden to the special interests at City Hall.”
“You can’t fix the problem when you are the problem. … We can’t trust the same people who built this broken, corrupt bureaucracy to turn it around.”
Daniel Lurie, mayoral candidate
Lurie’s campaign has accused Farrell of pushing the legal limits for campaign fundraising since campaign filings show that a separate ballot measure committee established by Farrell has reimbursed his campaign committee for certain expenses.
Farrell created the ballot measure committee to support Proposition D, an initiative aimed at reforming the city’s red tape and streamlining bureaucracy by reducing the number of commissions. While ballot measure committees are not unusual for candidates to set up, sharing costs with their campaign committee is not as common.
While campaign committees have $500 contribution limits for each person, ballot measure committees can accept unlimited donations. Campaign laws prohibit donations from candidate-led ballot measure committees to fund their campaign for election.
Lurie is skeptical that donors could potentially pour money into the Prop. D ballot measure committee to indirectly raise funds toward Farrell’s campaign to become mayor.
“We need to immediately end money laundering through ballot measure committees,” Lurie said Monday. “There is a $500 campaign contribution limit for a reason to limit the influence that any person can have over a politician and ensure our elected leaders aren’t bought and paid for.”
Farrell hits back
But Farrell’s campaign defends the pooling of certain expenses that they say are covering payroll for shared staff and office space.
“These baseless accusations from and being driven by my political opponents continue to fall on deaf ears,” Farrell said. “Everything we do is vetted, approved, and signed off by legal counsel.”
While Lurie called out each of the top candidates for past ethics violations, he placed greater targets on Farrell and Breed. Recent polling has shown that Farrell and Breed appear to be the frontrunners in the race, according to a ranked-choice style poll conducted by Probolsky Research, an independent research firm.
“All of my opponents have been fined by the Ethics Commission. All of them,” said Lurie. “This includes the largest ethics fine in city history for an elected official.”
Lurie referenced a hefty fine handed down to Farrell by the Commission related to potential campaign finance violations during his run for District 2 supervisor in 2010. The fine of $191,000 was later reduced to $25,000 in a settlement agreement.
It arose out of findings that Farrell’s campaign manager at the time, Chris Lee, illegally coordinated with an independent political committee. The Ethics Commission later voted to settle the matter and cleared Farrell of any personal wrongdoing.
Farrell’s campaign stated that the other candidates are spreading misinformation about him to paint him in a negative light. They pointed that his exoneration by the California Fair Political Practices Commission in the ethics case and the settlement of $25,000 discounts Lurie’s claims of Farrell receiving the “largest ethics fine in city history for an elected official.”
“My opponents are working overtime to drag us in the mud because they are trying to distract voters from their failed leadership and inability to deliver real change for our city,” Farrell said in a statement.
‘Aggressive agenda’
Breed has also come under fire in the past for ethics misconduct. In 2021, she agreed to pay nearly $23,000 to the Commission in a series of violations such as asking former Gov. Jerry Brown to release her brother from prison and accepting excessive campaign contributions beyond the $500 limit without disclosing it.
Lurie proposed fully funding the Ethics Commission while criticizing Breed for trying to slash its funding last year.
“I’m putting forward an aggressive agenda to clean up this corruption and stop these pervasive abuses,” Lurie said. “While the current mayor attempted to defund the Ethics Commission, I commit to fully funding it.”
Lurie also introduced a plan to prevent supervisors from simultaneously sitting on the Democratic County Central Committee, which he said could lead to a “slush fund loophole” and potential conflicts of interest if they accept money through a DCCC account.
“We can’t have good government until we have clean government and that won’t happen if we continue to turn to the same politicians in search of change,” Lurie said. “We need new, accountable leadership from somebody who is not beholden to the status quo.”
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