NOVEMBER 2024 VOTER GUIDE
MAYOR OF
SAN FRANCISCO
What is the Mayor?
The mayor is the top executive of the city, representing every San Franciscan
Every city department head reports to the mayor
The mayor is responsible for building and managing the city's multi-billion-dollar budget
The mayor can serve two consecutive terms of four years
The base salary for mayor from 2024-25 will be $383,760
San Francisco’s mayor is among the highest-compensated in the country and the highest in California
Why You Should Care
San Francisco needs a reboot. Yes, we all love the parks and the beautiful views and our sports teams. But the city averaged over two drug overdose deaths per day last year. Homelessness is up seven percent since 2022, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the problem. Residents who interact with city government find dysfunction and corruption atypical of a city famous for its innovative spirit. While San Francisco is finally moving up from dead last on the list of US city economies recovering from the pandemic, the slow pace has been painful for downtown. And we have yet to feel the effects of the impending $800 million city budget deficit.
Our Vision for the Mayor
We need a mayor who can deliver that reboot. A good mayor will have the right combination of management experience, political experience, past policy wins, and great future policy proposals. They will be a firm leader, decisive manager, and a savvy politician.
How We’re Evaluating Candidates’ Records
😍 Perfect 😃 Great! 😐 Fine or not enough info 🤔 Questionable 😩 Quite bad
When making endorsements, we judge candidates based on their political experience, managerial experience, and dedication to our issue areas. We came to our endorsement decisions after conducting interviews with candidates, deeply researching their records, and collecting our community’s input.
Why he's our first choice: A lifelong San Franciscan and Democrat born to union leader parents, Mark Farrell is now raising his own children here. Farrell is a decisive leader with more effective public and private sector experience than anyone else in the mayor’s race. In addition to serving as Interim Mayor of San Francisco and District 2 Supervisor, Farrell has had a 20+ year career in the private sector as an attorney, in finance, and running a small investment firm. He has a proven policy track record and the budget acumen our city sorely needs as it faces down a massive budget deficit. Farrell’s campaign platform shows that he is committed to fixing San Francisco’s structural problems, not just their symptoms. He has the political and managerial experience to navigate City Hall’s bureaucracy. We’re ranking Farrell first because he’s the candidate with the best track record of implementing and executing good, effective policy in San Francisco.
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MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE 😍
Effective in the public and private sector
Ninety percent of the mayor’s job is keeping city departments accountable, aligned, and working toward the same goals, and Farrell proved he was up to the task in his trial run as San Francisco’s interim mayor in 2018. As supervisor, Farrell took on politically powerful developer TODCO, introducing legislation to prevent the organization from using income from subsidized affordable housing for political and personal interests. That took courage—we need a mayor who will pursue legislation that our city sorely needs instead of following the herd and maintaining the status quo. Farrell has had a successful career for over two decades as an attorney, in finance, and running a small investment firm, giving him a different perspective than a career politician. In both the public and private sector, Farrell has shown the kind of leadership needed to guide San Francisco going forward.POLITICAL EXPERIENCE 😃
Eschewing an “all-or-nothing” mindset to get things done
Farrell is well-suited to hit the ground running as mayor, with two terms as District 2 Supervisor and six months as Interim Mayor of San Francisco under his belt. He knows how to navigate City Hall and pass legislation, avoiding the pitfalls that can trip up less experienced elected officials. In 2016, he compromised with Supervisor Aaron Peskin and then-Supervisor Scott Wiener (two legislators with very different ideas on building homes in San Francisco) that merged their dueling measures into one piece of legislation to encourage more housing. For a city that’s almost entirely made up of Democratic voters, San Francisco has deep political divisions—Farrell has proven he can bring people together to urgently address San Francisco’s most pressing issues.PAST POLICY 😍
A proven policy track record
Farrell has a proven track record of enacting policies that actually move the needle on San Francisco’s most important issues. As a supervisor, Farrell authored and advocated for the passage of Laura's Law, which established a program to compel those with severe mental illness and no ability to care for themselves into treatment. As interim mayor, Farrell set out a vision for how he’d handle the job full-time. He moved to increase police staffing by over 20 percent, launched initiatives to combat property crime, funded enormous new citywide cleanup efforts, and founded a first-in-the-nation street medicine team to help unhoused people with substance use disorder. Farrell is a savvy, effective legislator who finds the root of a problem, and works to solve the underlying issues.PROPOSED POLICY 😃
An understanding of San Franciscans’ priorities, and the experience to deliver on them
Farrell cares about what San Franciscans care about, proposing detailed plans to fully staff and fund the SFPD, coordinate departments to end the drug crisis, ensure funding to combat homelessness leads to real outcomes, and build more housing at all income levels. Perhaps most importantly, he has the budget acumen we sorely need. San Francisco faces an $800 million budget deficit—our next mayor will need to work out a budget that preserves essential city services without jeopardizing San Francisco’s future fiscal health. As supervisor, Farrell served as the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee and as interim mayor, Farrell authored a balanced $11 billion budget that increased funding for supportive homeless services, the Homeward Bound program, SFPD, and criminal justice reform measures. In the private sector, he’s overseen consistent, long-term growth at Thayer Ventures—a solid indication he’ll be able to navigate San Francisco’s budget crisis.Don't Forget
Farrell has also kept a finger on the pulse of San Franciscans’ values when it comes to national issues. Gun violence is a plague in the US. One reason why? It’s way too easy to get a gun. You can thank Mark Farrell for closing the last gun store in San Francisco—as supervisor, he passed a law requiring video records of all transactions and weekly updates on ammunition sales be sent to the police department. And when President Trump’s administration was removing federal guardrails to gender-based employment discrimination, Farrell authored legislation that helped close the gender pay gap in San Francisco.Our Ranked Choice Voting Strategy
San Francisco uses ranked choice voting to decide mayoral elections, which can lead to some unexpected outcomes on Election Day if you don’t understand the system.
Current supervisor and mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin doesn’t share voters' priorities, having consistently voted against public safety and housing and used his position to bully his colleagues, city staff, and even constituents. It’s imperative that he does not win.
While Farrell is our #1 pick, we’re also ranking incumbent Mayor London Breed and challenger Daniel Lurie on our ballot, because we would still prefer them over Peskin. If those of us who share Farrell, Breed, and Lurie’s priorities do not rank them all, Peskin could end up winning. The video below explains how.
Both Breed and Lurie have issues. Breed has had the role for six years and hasn’t delivered, and her late-summer flip-flop on her endorsement of Prop D indicates she isn’t serious about government reform and doing what’s best for the city. Lurie lacks management and political experience. But like Farrell, both Breed and Lurie broadly share voters’ concerns about public safety, the drug crisis, and homelessness. Rank Farrell #1, then rank Breed and Lurie in whatever order you choose, and leave Aaron Peskin off your ballot.
Why we're ranking her: Mayor London Breed has been in office for six years, but hasn’t been able to successfully address the multiple crises our city faces. That being said, she did lead the city through the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath with notably low death rates. She has taken steps to show she’s committed to improving public safety, and she’s been a committed housing advocate, working to cut through the red tape that keeps San Francisco from building much-needed developments. We’re ranking her on the ballot because it’s the best ranked choice voting plan, and Breed has policies that will be far more effective than Aaron Peskin’s.
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MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE 😐
Good on paper, but efficacy is lacking
Mayor London Breed has faced a lot of crises that are out of her direct control. The COVID-19 pandemic, the fentanyl crisis, homelessness, unaffordable housing—these are all problems that are bigger than San Francisco, and Breed has had a reasonable proposal to solve many of them. And yet the problems persist because she has not been successful at operationalizing the changes needed to address them. A perfect example was her declaration of a state of emergency for the Tenderloin in 2022. Many hoped it was a sign that her administration was serious about fixing the neighborhood’s long-standing problems. Instead, the order came and went without much noticeable change. Too often, Breed deflects blame and points the finger at others for her own administration’s failures. Still, Breed has almost two decades of experience navigating our city’s uniquely complex bureaucracy, which is valuable as we face such profound challenges.POLITICAL EXPERIENCE 😃
Would a better Board of Supervisors help?
With two terms as District 5 Supervisor and one term and change as mayor under her belt, London Breed knows her way around City Hall. She’s used that experience to bring about some truly impressive coordination between city, state, and federal authorities to disrupt drug trafficking in San Francisco. Unfortunately, she’s also been stymied by a misaligned Board of Supervisors, who too often block her good policy proposals. Take for example the issue of housing, which Breed tried multiple times to resolve at the board before resigning herself to putting it before voters in the form of November 2022’s Prop D. The supes responded by placing a competing, confusing measure on the ballot, killing both. We’re still waiting to see more housing get built, and it’s hard to truly fault Breed for that. With a more aligned board (which is within reach in November), we’re confident we’d see better results from her.PAST POLICY 🤔
Legislation that hits the mark but doesn’t deliver
Overall, Mayor London Breed’s legislation and initiatives are usually aimed in the right direction, even if they aren’t as impactful as we’d like. She’s been a pro-housing champion, fighting to cut through bureaucratic red tape to build housing throughout the city. She’s created new events and spaces to revitalize downtown after work-from-home policies gutted the district. And Mayor Breed has shown genuine leadership in coordinating city, state, and federal resources to crack down on drug trafficking. But her administration’s plans for drug treatment have lagged far behind. Mayor Breed launched an ill-conceived and ineffective safe consumption site that lasted less than a year, with no followup plan when it closed. She has created approximately 400 treatment beds over the course of her tenure, but her Department of Public Health still doesn’t know exactly how many beds are actually needed. That’s led to over 3,000 overdose deaths since 2020, and while that’s not entirely her administration’s fault, we wished there were more to show for the efforts.PROPOSED POLICY 😐
Will big plans finally see some follow through?
Mayor Breed’s signature vision for San Francisco’s future is her “30 by 30” initiative, which involves adding 30,000 residents and students to downtown by 2030. It’s an ambitious plan, relying on the creation of a lot of new housing and the conversion of existing office buildings to accomplish—no easy task in San Francisco. And the University of California has said since her announcement of the plan that they’re not on board. Even if they were, San Francisco would need to solve the fentanyl crisis and make downtown a lot safer than it currently is. People will not willingly move downtown just because there’s more housing if it’s not a safe, welcoming environment. There hasn’t been a lot of meaningful progress on either front, so we’re not holding our breath that it actually happens. Breed also yanked her support for government reform measure Prop D after helping guide its development, which doesn’t inspire confidence that she wants any kind of meaningful change in San Francisco, and makes us question whether she is willing to put good policy over politics. Overall, while her plans are solid, after six years, we’re going to trust her track record more than her proposals.Why we're ranking him: Daniel Lurie presents himself as an outsider (at least as much as someone with ties to one of San Francisco’s wealthiest families can be), and seems genuine in his desire to get San Francisco back on track. He’s devoted his vast resources and connections to philanthropy—his nonprofit Tipping Point Community has issued hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to numerous Bay Area nonprofits since 2005. But writing checks is where the organization’s work stops, and Tipping Point’s results haven’t always lived up to Lurie’s promises. Given the scope of the challenges facing San Francisco, we need someone who can get stuff done from day one. Lurie hasn’t had the level of management or operational experience—inside or outside of City Hall—needed for this job. We’re ranking Lurie because his proposals and fresh perspective sound good on paper (and are far better than Aaron Peskin’s), but ultimately he doesn’t have the experience to be effective in City Hall.
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MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE 🤔
Not enough experience inside or outside City Hall
Daniel Lurie founded the philanthropic, grant-making organization Tipping Point Community in 2005 to reduce poverty in the Bay Area. Under his leadership, it’s grown into a respected nonprofit, raising over $500 million to house, employ, and educate Bay Area families. Lurie’s philanthropic work is honorable, but it hasn’t given him the experience needed to be Mayor. Crucially, Tipping Point Community doesn’t work directly with clients or the community—they cut checks to the organizations that do. Governing across SF’s bureaucracy is a difficult task, requiring strength and leadership that Lurie has never had to demonstrate. And while Tipping Point Community used Lurie’s own vast wealth and connections to elite social circles to fund its nonprofit network, he has no complex fiscal experience indicating that he can navigate our city through a budgetary crisis the way Farrell could. San Francisco should not be a test case to see if Lurie has the management and leadership experience needed to right a $14 billion ship.POLITICAL EXPERIENCE 😩
Little to none
Lurie’s only real professional experience is in the grant making nonprofit world. He’s never been a public servant before or needed to work a nine-to-five, instead benefitting from his family fortune to fund his ambitions. Lurie founded the Civic Joy Fund in 2023 with Manny Yekutiel, working with community and city officials to develop a series of quick, easily-implementable revitalization projects. But being Mayor of San Francisco is more than directing money—it means getting over 30,000 city employees on the same page, negotiating with supervisors who are trying to trip you up, and jumping over hundreds of bureaucratic hurdles. His inexperience would likely make him ineffective at leading such a complex organization, and we worry he’ll never be able to catch up to his lack of experience.PAST POLICY 😐
Worthy philanthropy, but uneven results
By some metrics, Tipping Point is reporting admirable figures: the organization says it helped nearly 10,000 people escape or dodge homelessness, and the students who complete the programs they fund graduate college at the same rate as the state average. By others, they’re failing: in 2017, Lurie set out on a $100 million mission to reduce chronic homelessness in San Francisco by 50 percent over five years—instead, chronic homelessness increased from 2,138 unhoused people at the start of the initiative to 2,691 people in 2022. Of course that’s not Lurie’s fault alone, but the big question is whether Lurie’s experience sets him up for success as Mayor. His work at Tipping Point was nowhere close to the complexity needed to be San Francisco’s mayor, and the organization’s success is debatable given the lackluster results of the Chronic Homelessness Initiative.PROPOSED POLICY 😃
The right priorities for San Francisco
Lurie focuses on the right issues, and his proposals are realistic, actionable, and identify the root causes of the city’s problems. For example, Lurie’s vision for public safety includes not just fully staffing SFPD, but also building workforce housing for first responders, offering rent subsidies so police officers can live in the communities they work in, and offering child care and transportation support. To address the city’s housing crisis, he prioritizes cutting the extra bureaucracy that slows new housing production, speeding up approval times, ultimately saving time, money, and creating more homes. These kinds of holistic policy solutions are important, and are usually overlooked by lawmakers in favor of band-aid fixes. But based on his track record, we just don’t think Lurie would be able to execute these ideas if he were elected.Why you should leave him off your ballot: He may proudly wear the progressive label, but Aaron Peskin has actually been an opponent of progress in San Francisco. He has ground new housing to a halt in his district, and introduced multiple ballot measures and charter amendments that sound good to voters but actually tangle the city’s inner workings in red tape. Peskin presents himself as the person who can help San Francisco recover, when he himself laid the foundation for San Francisco’s structural problems. We know who he is, and what he’ll do as mayor. Leave Aaron Peskin off your ballot completely—he may be a household name, but therein lies the problem with this incumbent who presided over some of San Francisco’s worst policy decisions.
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MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE 🤔
City Hall experience? Yes. Real world experience? Not so much.
Aaron Peskin is a politician through and through. He got an early start when he was a student at UC Santa Cruz, where he was the spokesman for student group the Campus Association for Responsible Development (primary accomplishment: suing UCSC to prevent the school from building more student housing). From there, he’s served as San Francisco supervisor, served on the DCCC, and has been president of the neighborhood NIMBY group The Telegraph Hill Dwellers. He knows how to get things done politically, but has never had to deal with leading a large, complex organization with 30,000+ employees.POLITICAL EXPERIENCE 🤔
The architect of San Francisco’s gridlocked government
Peskin definitely knows his way around city government—he’s been a San Francisco Supervisor for 16 years, and he’s mastered working the levers of power. For example, he fast-tracked police critic (and his ally) Cindy Elias’ reappointment to the Police Commission months before she was up for reappointment, and installed himself as the President of the Board of Supervisors last year after engineering a series of 17 deadlocked votes. Peskin has passed more legislation than anyone else on the Board of Supervisors—we just wish that legislation wasn’t so actively harmful to the city’s health.PAST POLICY 😩
Peskin’s misguided policy created San Francisco’s current crisis
Peskin authored the ballot measure that created the Historic Preservation Commission, which has kept entire neighborhoods from being able to build much-needed housing. He’s voted or otherwise worked to stop new developments that collectively would have built thousands of new homes over the years. He co-authored Proposition E in 2022 which sounded good on paper, but would have actually made building new affordable housing in San Francisco almost impossible (thankfully, it didn’t pass). He’s hamstrung the SFPD with harsh technology restrictions and removed police staffing minimums from the city charter. And he’s introduced multiple ballot measures and charter amendments that have gridlocked city government.PROPOSED POLICY 😩
Don’t give Peskin the keys to the city
Aaron Peskin is a savvy politician—he knows how to craft legislation that sounds good to voters, while disguising its true effects. Just this year, he massively reduced the amount of new housing that could be built in his North Beach district under the guise of “historic preservation.” In 2007, he tried to gut the Department of the Environment after the department’s director disagreed with Peskin’s plan to build a new fossil fuel power plant in Potrero Hill. The budget for the Department of the Environment is largely funded by grants, not the city budget, but Peskin still spun his legislation as “good government reform,” saying the department’s work was duplicative.Don't Forget
Aaron Peskin has truly earned his nickname, the “Tyrant of Telegraph Hill.” In 2018, he tried to micromanage the fire department, telling them how to douse a raging North Beach fire while firefighters were still inside the burning building. He publicly belittled his co-workers, calling former supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier a “whiny brat” and former mayor Ed Lee a “puppet.” He threatened to fire Port of San Francisco employees because they disagreed with his legislation to limit building heights on the waterfront. Oh, and he effectively bullied a woman out of her own home when the Telegraph Hill Dwellers filed numerous complaints over her home renovations—with Peskin’s parents somehow purchasing that same home for about half the market value when it sold a year later after the complaints, then transferring it to Peskin.Honestly, there are way too many examples to fit in a short paragraph. Rather than winning friends and influencing people, Peskin has opted to create a system in which he is the ultimate decider, and everything has to go through him.
Paid for by TogetherSF Action (tsfaction.org). Not authorized by any candidate or committee controlled by a candidate. Financial disclosures are available at sfethics.org.