Mayor's Race Ads From Seemingly Made-Up Commission Paid For by Pro-Mark Farrell PAC
Here’s one way around campaign finance laws: Make up a false, non-existent agency so the laws just don’t apply to your ads, mailers, and billboards. But these ads from the apparently made-up “Citizens for Campaign Finance Transparency” are paid for by a pro-Mark Farrell PAC.
You may have received a political mailer, or seen posters plastered on walls, or maybe even a spam text message showing some gob-smacking disparities in fundraising for the SF Mayor’s race. The ads claim they’re from a “non-profit watchdog organization” called Citizens for Campaign Finance Transparency. But there’s something odd about their “transparency,” as these ads lack the legally required disclosure of who paid for them.
The figures about mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie’s very large campaign contributions are correct, and do accurately note that as of September 30, Lurie had given $5.9 million of his own vast fortune to his campaign. So in that sense, yes, Lurie has gamed his own wealth to lead the fundraising race. But the mailers and posters make candidate Mark Farrell look like a real underdog here, with only $1.5 million raised. That leaves out the very key detail that Farrell’s campaign has been using money from a separate Prop D political action committee (PAC), an unprecedented practice that has raised calls for a criminal investigation.
If you count the PAC money, Farrell’s campaign may have more than $2 million in extra contributions not being counted on these charts, and that sum could be more than $8 million. That certainly tips the scales of these ads’ cited figures.
https://sfist.com/2024/10/14/mayors-race-ads-from-seemingly-fake-commission-paid-for-by-pro-farrell-pac/