See how they run: Breed and Farrell’s attacks overshadow mayoral debate

Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor's race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: Mark Farrell. Read earlier dispatches here .

Outside the cavernous Mission headquarters of the public radio giant KQED on Thursday night, a usually sleepy corner was overtaken with some 20 volunteers holding campaign signs. Inside 2601 Mariposa St., perhaps the most anticipated mayoral debate of the election season and likely the last to feature every major candidate was soon to kick off.

Campaign staffers for London Breed and Daniel Lurie stood on opposite corners, waving campaign signs while cars passed by and honked. Alongside them stood another 20 disgruntled journalists with KQED itself, rallying to protest what they allege is illegal outsourcing and centralizing of television engineering jobs. The some 170 attendants streamed between the two jostling crowds.

The temperature was similarly high indoors.

The five candidates — Breed, Lurie, Mark Farrell, Ahsha Safaí and Aaron Peskin — have been seeking to differentiate themselves from one another for months, but as the Nov. 5 election grows near, they are turning increasingly aggressive and they did not hesitate to point fingers at one another on Thursday.

The main point of contention at Thursday's debate, jointly hosted by KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle? Corruption — and several candidates brought their own baggage.

Each of the candidates received tailored questions, and Breed was the first to come under fire. Moderator Marisa Lagos, a longtime KQED political correspondent, asked why it had taken media probes to reveal several corruption scandals during her time in office, including recent revelations around misspending in the Dreamkeeper Initiative.

Breed sought to distance herself from the scandals, which involved her longtime friend Sheryl Davis, and a program that Breed herself shepherded into existence. The Dreamkeeper Initiative was a post-George Floyd effort to invest tens of millions annually into San Francisco's Black community created by Breed and District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, and Davis has been a Breed ally for years.

Yet on Thursday, while accepting that the buck stops with her, Breed sought to make the corruption allegations seem an inevitable part of municipal management.

"San Francisco has 34,000 employees and from time to time we have had challenges with some of them," said Breed. "And I want to be very clear, I have held myself accountable. I immediately asked for and received her resignation."

Peskin, who spoke after Breed, used those allegations to promote his own policy: Proposition C, which would create an inspector general to root out corruption in San Francisco.

Despite the wide opening for criticism, Peskin was the only one to take advantage and directly attack Breed for the recent scandals. "Listen, Marissa. While these guys are busy playing the blame game and pointing fingers at each other, I am the only candidate on this stage that has consistently done the work around public corruption," said Peskin.

Mark Farrell also faced a fair share of criticism for his own ethics dilemmas.

"You've been accused of playing fast and loose with campaign finance rules . It's all related to raising money from your wealthy friends," said Lagos, alluding to numerous allegations that have come forward during this election season: Farrell using funds from his ballot measure committee as a way to subsidize his mayoral campaign in an end-run around donation limits, Farrell's history of soliciting donations to connected nonprofits from entities with business before City Hall , Farrell's past ethics fines for campaign finance violations .

"Why should voters trust you to clean house?" Lagos asked.

Farrell defaulted to his usual response: "Because every single thing that I've ever done with my campaigns has been approved, vetted by, and signed off by my attorneys," he said.

That "doesn't mean it's necessarily legal, though," Lagos interrupted, laughing along with the audience. Legal advice is not the final word, she added.

Lagos brought up the $191,000 fine Farrell received in 2016 for misconduct during his 2010 supervisor campaign — at the time the largest fine the Ethics Commission had ever meted out.

Farrell countered that after years of investigation, he was exonerated at the state level, and his local fine was knocked down to $25,000. "To me it's important to follow the rules," said Farrell.

Instead of addressing the other allegations, Farrell shifted gears and started criticizing Breed. "It's nice to see Mayor Breed finally at a debate after she's been ducking them for the past two weeks," he said, before listing a number of ills he attributes to the current administration, such as "record level crime" and rising homelessness.

The reality on homelessness is mixed: While homelessness overall did rise 7 percent since 2022, according to a point-in-time count released earlier this year , street homelessness was down 13 percent — the city's lowest rate in a decade.

Farrell was dead wrong on crime: It decreased last year after a post-pandemic bump, and it is down another 32 percent since the beginning of 2024. In San Francisco like in most American cities, reported crime is far lower than in past decades.

In her rebuttal, Breed mentioned this and hit hard against the statistics during Farrell's own brief tenure as mayor in 2018: "Property crime was 70 percent higher when Mark was temporary mayor. Car break-ins were 150 percent higher when he was temporary mayor, and violent crime was almost 40 percent higher. Tent encampments were over 60 percent higher," she said.

"We are seeing our city bounce back and he is trying to take us backwards, and we are not going back," Breed added, repeating a well-worn sense of recovery she has used time and again during this campaign, and employing a subtle reference to a tagline Vice President Kamala Harris repeated during the presidential contest against Donald Trump.

But two candidates took the position that statistics do not matter or are false — and even that citing them is an insult. Farrell said that "If you believe those stats, I got a bridge to sell you," while Safaí told Breed that "to consistently tell people crime is down is gaslighting ... We've got to stop gaslighting the hardworking people of San Francisco, Mayor Breed."

Those attacks in the first round of responses set the pattern for the hour-long debate: Breed and Farrell repeatedly attacked one another, and sometimes took swipes at Daniel Lurie; Peskin and Safaí, who rank fourth and fifth in most polls, were second thoughts.

The rules also gave Farrell and Breed an advantage: When a candidate was targeted by name, they received 30 seconds to give a rebuttal, meaning those who targeted their rivals got more chances to speak. Contenders like Peskin and Safaí, who spoke more to their records and policy, received noticeably less air time.

As the debate went on, those attacks became more pointed.

Breed complained about Farrell saying "the same thing over and over again," while Safaí criticized Breed for going to Las Vegas during the city's flooding emergency in December 2022. Peskin called his opponents "tough talkers who don't get the job done," but mostly avoided the fray; he said that unlike his opponents, he has a plan for middle income and affordable housing.

When Lagos questioned Lurie, the Levi Strauss heir who has vastly outraised all his opponents largely by self-financing to the tune of $5 million, Breed took the opportunity to bitterly admonish him.

"You've said Mayor Breed has run San Francisco into the ground, but she also led the city through the Covid pandemic ... how would you have handled the crisis differently?" said Lagos, addressing Lurie.

"We actually talked during Covid. I offered my support to this mayor. I thought she did a very good job in the early months of it. But we stayed shut down for far too long," Lurie responded, referring to his outreach; Lurie is the founder of Tipping Point, an anti-poverty nonprofit.

"Daniel Lurie is probably one of the most dangerous people on this stage, so we definitely should be scared," countered Breed. "He hasn't even been employed for the past five years. What does he know?" she added. "Not to mention, I don't even remember that phone call."

Farrell, for his part, touted his record during the six months he served as interim mayor in 2018, as he often does during the campaign, saying his time in Room 200 gives him the requisite experience to run the city.

Lagos too, brought his tenure up, this time using it to put him on his back foot. When 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot last month at Union Square, Farrell was quick to put the blame on Breed; Lagos said that during his time as mayor, there were 18 homicides in San Francisco and 2,700 robberies and assaults. "Is it fair to blame you for those crimes since you were in charge at that time?" asked Lagos. "And if not, do you owe Mayor Breed an apology?"

"Absolutely not," Farrell said, brooking no responsibility. "Mayor Breed owes the city of San Francisco an apology."