Breed backer Conway invests in Farrell’s firm
One reason progressive supervisors gave for terminating London Breed as San Francisco’s acting mayor was that she was too close to tech billionaires like Ron Conway — so it’s interesting to note that Breed’s replacement, Mark Farrell, has counted Conway as an investor in his venture capital firm since 2011.
A spokesman for Conway confirmed he’s an investor in Thayer Ventures, where Farrell was a managing director until his swearing-in as mayor Jan. 23.
Thayer Ventures’ website describes it as an investment fund specializing in technology companies that work with travel and hospitality firms.
Neither Conway’s spokesman nor a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, Deirdre Hussey, would comment on the Farrell-Conway business ties. However, we learned from sources that Conway initially invested $100,000 in the firm’s Quest Hospitality Ventures fund. According to Thayer’s website, the fund has 11 companies in its portfolio, and it closed to new investors on June 30, 2011 — six months after Farrell was sworn in as the supervisor from District Two.
In 2012, Conway bought into a second Quest fund featuring 13 companies, we’re told, although the amount of money he invested is unknown. (Conway is also on the nominating committee of the Chronicle’s Visionary of the Year award.)
Under the City Charter, mayors are barred from engaging in outside business. To comply, Farrell signed papers late Friday declaring he is “on full leave of absence” from Thayer Ventures and will have no role in company decision-making while he is mayor. He’s not a candidate in the June 5 election.
Breed, of course, is a candidate. Conway has contributed to her supervisorial campaigns, which was enough for progressive supervisors to vote her out of Room 200.
Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Hillary Ronen were especially vocal about their desire to oust Breed, the first African American woman to serve as mayor, and install Farrell. Peskin said the vote was “not so much about elevating one white man as sending a message to another white man — a tech titan billionaire named Ron Conway — that San Francisco can’t be bought.”
Ronen called Conway the city’s version of the Koch brothers — someone who “throws his billions of dollars around to threaten candidates.”
“Is there hypocrisy? Yes,” Ronen said Friday of her vote for Farrell.
She said she would have preferred a different interim mayor, but that her “biggest priority” was the long game — ensuring that Breed didn’t have the advantage of incumbency going into the election.
Ronen, who has not endorsed anyone in the June contest, said the city needs someone “who is independent — not only from Ron Conway, but from people who have had undue influence over the policy direction of the city for the last two or three mayoral administrations.”
So sue: Retired UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff is being dragged into a legal fight over comments he made about possible Russian influence on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Lakoff was slapped with a libel and slander suit by Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze — a Georgian American businessman who attended a highly scrutinized Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 between members of Trump’s inner circle and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. She was allegedly dangling dirt to Team Trump about Hillary Clinton.
The suit Kaveladze filed last week in Orange County Superior Court stemmed from an interview Lakoff gave to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, in which Lakoff called Kaveladze “the major person who has been responsible for money laundering from Russia and other post-Soviet countries.”
Kaveladze’s suit calls that accusation “baseless and scurrilous.”
Kaveladzes’ legal team includes Scott Balber, who represented Trump in a suit he filed against Bill Maher in 2013 after the comedian promised to give $5 million to charity if Trump could prove he wasn’t “the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan.” Trump eventually dropped the suit.
Lakoff ’s lawyer, Travis LeBlanc, promised a vigorous defense, saying California’s free-speech laws “protect individuals like Dr. Lakoff from being forced to engage in costly litigation of frivolous claims.”
Safety alert: Look for sparks to fly at Tuesday’s Oakland City Council meeting, when some of Councilwoman Desley Brooks’ colleagues intend to take action that her allies see as retaliation for that pricey shove she delivered to former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown.
The 74-year-old Brown sued over the 2015 incident at a barbecue restaurant, claiming elder abuse, and a jury agreed — leveling a $3.75 million judgment against the city last month.
On Tuesday, Councilwomen Annie Campbell Washington and Lynette Gibson McElhaney — both of whom have had their share of run-ins with Brooks — will seek a rule change to give council President Larry Reid the authority to make committee assignment changes at will.
McElhaney says it’s something she has long pushed for, but others believe the real intent is to remove Brooks from her plum assignment as chair of the Public Safety Committee. Reid has signed on as a co-sponsor.
“They asked me to,” he said.
Brooks’ allies, led by Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb, are expected to pack the chambers to fight the proposal. Cobb did not respond to our requests for comment.
“It’s going to get ugly,” Reid predicted.