Mark Ewoldt Farrell (born March 15, 1974)[1] is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 44th Mayor of San Francisco from January 23 to July 11, 2018.

[9][non-primary source needed] Farrell practiced law as a corporate and securities attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Silicon Valley, then joined Thomas Weisel Partners as an investment banker.

[16] After his election to the Board of Supervisors, Farrell ushered through a two-year city budget that reformed the way San Francisco paid for retiree health care benefits and passed small business tax credit legislation so the city's small businesses could hire more employees and create more local jobs.

[17] Farrell was an advocate for the passage of Laura's Law, which established a program to compel mentally ill people to seek treatment, both voluntarily and through court-mandate.

[18] Farrell introduced an ordinance in 2015 that required gun store owners to video record all transactions and give weekly updates on ammunition sales to the police department.

"[19] In June 2016, Farrell was ordered to repay $191,000[20] in unlawful campaign funding after the City ethics panel voted, 5-0, to uphold the original 2014 decision of the San Francisco Ethics Commission that he should have to forfeit back to the City the amount raised from just two donors and used late in the 2010 election by Common Sense Voters,[21][22][23] an independent expenditure committee, with improper communications from a campaign consultant.

Farrell was exonerated by the California Fair Political Practices Commission, although the campaign consultant Chris Lee and Common Sense Voters were found to be in violation of federal campaign finance laws, but a further complaint was filed with the City commission by Janet Reilly, who lost to Farrell by 256 votes.

[28] Three weeks after Lee's death, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to remove Breed and appoint Mark Farrell as acting mayor.

[32] Farrell signed into law an ordinance which prohibited court fines and fees from being exclusively levied on those who had previously been incarcerated.

[33][34] As supervisor and mayor, Farrell acted as an intermediary for $882,500 in "behested payments"—donations from private entities that he passed along to the San Francisco Parks Alliance.

[36][37] Farrell also helped facilitate $35,000 in behested payments to the Parks Alliance on behalf of Recology, the trash collection company later involved in bribing Nuru[35] An Ethics Commission report from 2020 noted that some of the behested payments Farrell made were timed closely to lobbyist contacts he had with companies like AT&T, Facebook and the San Francisco Realtors Association.

[16][40] Heather Knight of The New York Times, in February 2024, called Farrell the "most rightward leaning" of the challengers that had entered the mayoral race against Breed.

[16] Farrell pledged a "zero-tolerance approach and policy for all crime in San Francisco," promising to fire Bill Scott from his post as the city's police chief.

He pledged to eliminate recent budget increase for community health and welfare programs and instead allocate that money for public safety and the hiring of additional police officers.

Farrell accepted full responsibility for the mistakes and said that the problems were caused by an "accounting error" and a dispute over staff time allocation.

[45][46][47][48] Farrell lost the election, coming in fourth behind the winner Daniel Lurie, incumbent Mayor London Breed, and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.