With a 7 pm Thursday night mayoral debate looming, Mayor Breed, who’s had something of a scandal-ridden week, is suddenly alleging that opponent Mark Farrell illegally pulled strings to expedite permits on a half-million-dollar renovation of his new house.

Is the October Surprise in this year’s San Francisco mayoral race actually dropping on September 19, just as the five major candidates prepare for a 7 pm mayoral debate tonight? That’s certainly what Mayor London Breed would like you to think. Because Breed went to the SF Standard and alleged in a story published Thursday morning that Farrell had improperly tried to pull strings to get permits on $455,000 worth of renovations on his luxe new Jordan Park home.  

The timing of the story, which comes straight from Breed, correlates with tonight’s 7 pm Chronicle and KQED debate. It will have all five major candidates, will be broadcast live on KQED channel 9 and KQED 88.5 FM, and also streamed live for free on the Chronicle’s website and on KQED’s site (registration required).

Mayor Breed comes into the debate with another city department spending scandal on her hands, and some serious “What did Breed know and when did she know it?” questions surrounding that scandal. And now we suddenly get this exposé, in which the Standard notes, “The accusation comes from Breed herself, shared exclusively with The Standard.”

The renovations in question are for a Jordan Park home that Farrell bought in 2020, and intended to lower the floors on the home, put in offices and a media room, plus add a new patio, relocate a bathroom, and replace a bunch of windows.  

Per the Standard, Farrell “called a staffer in Mayor London Breed’s office and asked to speed up the approvals for his housing permits.” Farrell had of course served as interim mayor not even two years before, so depending on the exact timing, this could violate ethics rules on former city officials trying to influence city decisions.

Update (3:20 pm): The Chronicle is now reporting that the Breed staffer Farrell called was her chief of staff Sean Elsbernd. Elsbernd was District 7 supervisor while Farrell was on the SF Board of Supervisors, and the Chronicle notes that "both attended Saint Ignatius College Preparatory."

“You don’t call the mayor asking for a favor like that when you’re a former mayor,” Breed told the Standard, adding that she did not feel Farrell was helpful during the transition after Breed won the June 2018 mayoral election. “This whole time I’ve not even heard from him, except when he wanted his permit expedited.”

Farrell admits to the call, but insists he was not trying to pull strings. “Let me be crystal clear: any insinuation or accusation that I called Mayor Breed’s or City staff to receive preferential treatment is a bold face lie,” Farrell told the Standard in a statement. “I explicitly told [Breed’s staffer] during that conversation not to engage in my permitting process and that I did not want any help — just information about timelines.”

But there’s another interesting detail on a personal Twitter thread of reporter Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, who wrote the article. Fitzgerald Rodriguez says in that thread that Farrell got the permits “in several days,” as opposed to a nine-month average for such permits. This information is not included in the Standard's article.

So if Farrell phoned in a favor, and actually got it, isn't that as much of a condemnation on Breed’s office for granting the favor, as it is for Farrell asking the favor? We’ll see if more information comes out on this particular detail.

Mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin actually touched on SF’s byzantine permitting process in his own recent interview with the SF Business Times that was also published Thursday morning. “I cannot figure out why. In an economy where nobody can get construction financing, it still takes three months to have a planner sign for the most mundane types of issues,” Peskin told that paper. “These are the kind of things that should go on a consent calendar that should be, you know, permitted for the price of an application.”

There is a great desire among all mayoral candidates not named London Breed to portray this as a “two-way race” between themselves and Breed. The fact that Breed is shopping dirt around on Mark Farrell indicates she sees this as mostly a two-way race between her and Farrell.

That may be, but both Breed and Farrell will have to answer for scandals that have been associated with them. So Daniel Lurie, Aaron Peskin, and Ahsha Safai have plenty to work with to try to knock those two down in Thursday night’s debate.

Note: This post has been updated with the new information that Farrell's call was to Breed's chief of staff Sean Elsbernd.

Related: Mayor Breed Yanks Her Support From Commission Reform Measure, Alleging It’s Just a Slush Fund for Mark Farrell [SFist]

Image: (Left) Office of the Mayor, (Right) Mark Farrell via Facebook