SF Ethics Audit: Farrell Campaign Violations, Probe Ongoing

The San Francisco Ethics Commission has found that Mark Farrell’s 2024 mayoral campaign committed several significant reporting violations but still “substantially complied” with campaign finance law. The case has now been referred to the commission’s enforcement division.

The audit, released Monday, examined Farrell’s campaign filings from January through December 2024. What it found was a pattern of financial reporting problems across multiple categories.

In roughly 12% of sampled expenses, totaling $698,476, the campaign failed to report costs including office supplies and campaign flyers. Auditors found the campaign had no records at all for about 9% of sampled expenses, covering $6,898 in items such as dinners, coffee, and consulting costs. Another 8.3% of expenses were logged in the wrong reporting period.

The audit also flagged incomplete donor information. About 215 contributors, or 7.6% of total donors, had filings with missing names or addresses. And the campaign paid $556,310 to advertising firm Canal Partners Media without disclosing information about the subcontractors and agencies that firm hired to run the campaign’s ads.

“These findings represent instances of noncompliance that Auditors determined to be significant,” the audit stated, citing both the frequency and dollar amounts involved.

While audits of campaigns run by Aaron Peskin and London Breed also turned up violations, Farrell’s campaign had the most “material” issues of the three.

For anyone who followed the 2024 race closely, the audit findings land on top of an already complicated history. Farrell paid $108,000 in October 2024 to settle Ethics Commission charges that he illegally shared funds between his mayoral campaign and a committee supporting Proposition D, a ballot measure on city governance. At the time, it was the largest penalty the commission had ever issued.

The settlement came after reporting revealed that the Yes on D committee was covering roughly half the rent for Farrell’s West Portal campaign headquarters, even though the office did not appear to be doing work tied to the ballot measure. The two committees also shared payroll expenses, and several Proposition D mailers read more like Farrell campaign literature than ballot measure advocacy. That overlap mattered because ballot measure committees can accept unlimited donations, while candidates for city office are capped at $500 per donor.

The settlement arrived just days before the November 2024 election. Neither the penalty nor the spending helped. Proposition D lost by 13 points, and Farrell finished fourth in the mayoral race.

Now, with the audit referral to the enforcement division, the commission’s review of the 2024 Farrell campaign is not finished. What consequences, if any, emerge from that process is an open question.

For residents and voters who follow local campaign finance rules, the audit raises a familiar concern: when violations are significant enough to trigger a referral to enforcement, what does “substantial compliance” actually mean in practice? The commission’s own language acknowledged the “frequency” and dollar significance of the problems. At the same time, the audit’s overall framing offered the campaign a degree of cover.

Campaign finance rules exist for a reason that matters in a city where money flows heavily into local elections. Disclosure requirements help voters understand who is funding candidates and how campaigns spend that money. When filings are incomplete, records are missing, or subcontractors go undisclosed, the public loses the ability to make fully informed decisions.

San Francisco has seen that dynamic play out in communities across the city, where well-funded campaigns and ballot measure committees have shaped policy on housing, policing, and development. Understanding the money behind those efforts is not a technicality. For the families and small businesses affected by those policies, it is part of the basic record of how decisions get made.

The Ethics Commission’s enforcement division will now determine what happens next with the Farrell audit findings. The commission has not announced a timeline for that process.