Interim mayor says stay in office will be short
Mark Farrell told The Chronicle’s editorial board that he made no political promises before taking office and will bow out of politics when his term ends in June.
Serving as San Francisco’s mayor for the next few months will be the epilogue of Mark Farrell’s political career, as the former supervisor and venture capitalist pledged Wednesday to step away from elected office once his successor takes office in June.
“This is it,” Farrell told The Chronicle’s editorial board. “Ask my wife.”
After being elected to lead the city on a deeply controversial vote by the Board of Supervisors last week, Farrell said he now feels “the luxury of being unshackled” from political infighting and free to address some of San Francisco’s most pressing problems, including homelessness, dirty streets and public safety.
“I think that it’s a unique opportunity that not many people have in any office, and I do not want to do anything — and will not support anything — that would jeopardize that opportunity,” he said.
Farrell said he would measure his success over the next few months by his capacity to keep the wheels of city government moving, “so I can walk away knowing the city is going in the right
direction,” he said.
“This is about making sure our government continues to function and that we move forward with everything that’s been in place and putting our own stamp on it.”
He also said he would not support any effort to build a write-in campaign for the upcoming mayoral election and that he did not intend to endorse any of the candidates in the race.
Farrell, who had been rumored as a candidate for mayor in 2019, decided not to run in the June election to fill the remainder of Mayor Ed Lee’s second full term after his death on Dec. 12. He cited a desire to spend time with his family and avoid the “shotgun campaign cycle” prompted by the compressed time span.
He said he was drawn into conversations about taking the interim mayor’s job amid mounting concern that London Breed was wielding too much authority since she was serving all at once as acting mayor, president of the Board of Supervisors and District Five supervisor.
“It’s about the structural issue we have as a city, and that’s why I agreed that if this was going to happen, that I would serve in this capacity,” Farrell said. “For me, this wasn’t about cutting a deal.”
Unseating Breed, who is also running for mayor, was seen by many as a carefully orchestrated maneuver by the board’s progressive bloc to prevent her from using the power of the incumbency to her advantage during the campaign. Supervisor Jane Kim and former Supervisor Angela Alioto are also running for mayor, as is former state Sen. Mark Leno.
Farrell characterized the weeks leading up to his being voted in by the board as freighted with “an extraordinary amount of lobbying,” but that he had no “clarity” that he would become mayor until the votes were cast last week.
Despite the fact that his nomination was spearheaded by the board’s progressives, Farrell said he had made no political promises in return for their votes. He said he had conversations with “probably over 100” people in the early weeks of January, all attempting to sway his opinion on who should be appointed mayor.
One person he specifically declined to say whether he had spoken with was prominent tech investor and Breed supporter Ron Conway, who has been a major political donor in the city for years, including to Farrell.
Just before the vote at last week’s board meeting, Supervisor Hillary Ronen delivered an impassioned speech in which she took aim at “tech moguls and real estate billionaires” who had supported previous Mayors Gavin Newsom and Lee and who appeared to be coalescing behind Breed. Such undue influence over city politics, Ronen said, prompted her to support Farrell’s nomination for interim mayor.
It has been widely assumed she was referring to Conway.
“I can’t go through a laundry list and pluck out exactly whom I spoke to and whom I didn’t,” Farrell said, adding that he had not seen evidence of Conway’s fingerprints on the selection process.
“I don’t think any member of the Board of Supervisors or the mayor should be beholden to anybody,” he said.
“I member Board don’t of think of Supervisors the any or the mayor should be beholden to anybody.” Mark Farrell, interim mayor