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San Francisco, a city famously liberal, has been on edge lately.
Poll after poll shows residents have no confidence in their city’s future and do not support their leader, Mayor London Breed. They lament that downtowns haven’t come back as quickly as other city centers after the pandemic, that drug overdose numbers continue to skyrocket and that property crime remains a persistent problem.
But what is less clear is what kind of mayor they are trying to fix what is broken.
Mark Farrell, a venture capitalist who served as interim mayor for six months in 2018, believes he has the answer. It’s a firm style of governance that “significantly” raises police ranks, clears all homeless encampments, and detains drug overdose victims who survive and return. Drive to the main thoroughfare in the city.
He plans to test his platform on the November ballot — what he calls common sense, but which his detractors will no doubt label as too conservative for San Francisco. Farrell, the city’s 44th mayor, is expected to announce on Tuesday that he also wants to become the city’s 46th mayor.
“I’ve been watching San Francisco fall apart for the past five years,” Mr. Farrell, 49, said recently over coffee at a downtown cafe. “Public safety has never been a greater concern. Conditions on our streets are worse than ever. Our local economy has collapsed. And we are a joke across the country. I have become a target.
“This mayor has completely let us down.”
Breed’s political consultant, Maggie Muir, accused Farrell of spending the years of the pandemic working at his venture capital firm instead of helping the city get back on its feet.
“Running is easy, but leading is difficult,” Muir said. “Mayor Breed is the person who led the city through the pandemic and its aftermath, and who had to make difficult decisions, and no other mayor was found anywhere.”
Breed’s efforts are starting to pay off, she said, with downtown starting to revitalize and crime decreasing.
There’s no love lost between Farrell and Breed, also 49. When Mayor Ed Lee died of a heart attack in December 2017, Breed became acting mayor because he was chairman of the Board of Supervisors.
But the majority of her colleagues wanted to make sure she lost her incumbent position in the race to fill Mr. Lee’s seat six months later, then a supervisor representing the affluent Pacific Heights and Marina district. voted to install Mr. Farrell. , short-term leader of the city. After Breed won the race anyway, Farrell returned to her former job at Thayer Ventures, a San Francisco firm that invests in travel and transportation companies.
If Mr. Farrell succeeds in ousting Mr. Breed again – this time through the actions of voters rather than fellow politicians – it would signal San Francisco’s shift from left-wing politics to more centrist politics. Dew. That trend already appears to be evident after the recall of the city’s far-left school board members and district attorney, as well as the election of some moderate members of the Board of Supervisors.
Although Breed is a political moderate by San Francisco standards, he seems to have sensed the city’s changing political winds and has moved to the right himself. On the March ballot, she supported measures that would expand police access to surveillance cameras and drones and require welfare recipients to be tested for drug use and receive treatment if they test positive. are doing.
Mr. Breed has not yet had a challenger from the left. But Mr. Farrell’s platform, more than anyone else in the race, leans farthest to the right on San Francisco’s narrow and very blue political spectrum. All of the potential candidates, including Breed and Farrell, are Democrats.
Mr. Farrell said San Francisco’s plight — considered unjust by many residents but regularly denounced in local and national newspapers — hit home about a year ago. He said he woke up one morning to find the dining room window of his home in Jordan Park, an affluent area in the city’s north, broken. While he, his wife Liz Farrell, and their three children were sleeping, someone entered their home and stole their laptop. The thief was never caught.
Ms. Farrell was active in the campaign to remove District Attorney Chesa Boudin, but was tired of hearing so many stories from friends and neighbors about people assaulting her, so her husband decided to join San Francisco politics. He said he supports re-entering the troublesome world at such a time. Smash car windows, break into homes, and steal bicycles.
“You start thinking that’s how life is and that’s how you should live it, but that’s not really the case,” she says.
Farrell said if elected, he would fire Police Chief Bill Scott. He will also work aggressively to avoid cuts to police department budgets and add hundreds of officers to police departments.
He also said he would add more shelter beds for homeless people rather than building more permanent housing. He also called for people living in tents to move to shelters, or their tents and belongings to be confiscated.
He said anyone who received at least two doses of the drug Narcan, which reverses an overdose, will be held for 72 hours at San Francisco General Hospital. State law allows for holds for people who pose an immediate danger to themselves or others, or who have a severe disability that makes them unable to take care of themselves, but does Farrell’s plan fit that definition? It is unclear. He also said he would create a permanently staffed intake center for the homeless and drug addicts.
He also called for cars to be moved back to Market Street, the city’s main artery. In early 2020, most of the area was closed to traffic. The idea was to turn the road into a European-style promenade, but it never materialized, mainly due to the pandemic and lack of funding.
The other major candidates in the race so far are Supervisor Ayesha Safai and Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss estate who founded the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community. It’s Mr.
On Monday, both men said Farrell’s candidacy reflects broader dissatisfaction with Breed’s management of city government.
“She failed the city,” Safai said. “This is more telling than anything else.”
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