SF firefighters back Farrell with coveted endorsement

Locked in a close mayoral race against incumbent London Breed, former interim San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell won a key endorsement from The City’s firefighters union Thursday.

San Francisco Firefighters Local 798 announced that its members voted to endorse Farrell as their top choice over Breed and other challengers like Daniel Lurie, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, and Supervisor Ahsha Safai.

Candidates cherish the firefighters' endorsement for reasons both monetary and priceless. In a moment when San Franciscans hold a negative view of their government, the firefighters are seen as having robust support and high favorability by San Francisco residents.

Though the union declined to publicly release the results of the vote, Local 798 President Floyd K. Rollins II said the support for Farrell was “overwhelming.” Following a candidate debate they hosted last month, union members voted for a single candidate and did not rank their choices.

“Our members have been very vocal about the situations going on with the budget here in The City, with the conditions on the streets, with the conditions with the things happening within the department,” Rollins said at a press conference announcing the endorsement on Thursday.

The union’s backing is unquestionably a coup for Farrell, who served two terms on the Board of Supervisors before serving less than a year as mayor in 2018 following Mayor Ed Lee’s death.

“This endorsement means a lot to me,” Farrell said. “I have always had our firefighters’ backs, our first responders’ backs in City Hall, and I always will.”

It’s also a blow to Breed, who won election in 2018 in part thanks to the firefighters’ backing. In 2018, the firefighters established an influential independent-expenditure committee to support Breed’s bid.

The committee ultimately spent $1 million on the race , far more than any other independent expenditure committee.

Rollins confirmed Thursday that the firefighters would not be forming an independent-expenditure committee in support of Farrell’s campaign.

Recent polls have consistently shown Breed and Farrell locked neck-and-neck atop the race , with Lurie, the anti-poverty nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir, and Peskin, who has served four terms on the Board of Supervisors, trailing behind the two leaders.

But it’s not just spending cash that makes the fighters a political heavyweight — it’s their on-the-ground organizing. Firefighters will already be mobilizing to advocate for a ballot measure that would improve their retirement benefits this November, and they are currently in talks around how they’ll support Farrell, Rollins said.

Rollins highlighted members’ concerns over issues like homelessness that Farrell has pledged to swiftly address if elected.

“Our members work on the streets every day dealing with homelessness, small outside fires, businesses that have been vandalized, and just trying to keep up and stabilize the situation that’s going on in our streets,” Rollins said.

Farrell painted a dire picture of San Francisco, noting its struggles with drug-overdose deaths , tent encampments , and a lackluster economy.

“[Firefighters] are grappling with the consequences of failed leadership inside of City Hall for the past six years,” Farrell said.

The relationship between firefighters and Breed had evidently soured between 2018 and 2024.

The administration clashed with the union when the former strictly implemented vaccine requirements for department employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. The union went to bat for the tiny fraction of firefighters — 17 in total — who held out.

The firefighters have long seen parity with the Police Officers Association in their respective contract negotiations, but that ended last year when the cops’ new contract included hiring and retention bonuses that firefighters did not win.

The City’s argument amounted to a basic description of supply and demand; it’s desperately looking to hire more police officers, but has a long waitlist of prospective firefighters.

Breed also sat on the sidelines this summer as the Board of Supervisors advanced proposed charter reforms that will appear on the November ballot and would lower the retirement age for firefighters from 58 to 55 . Firefighters have pushed hard for the retirement reforms, arguing that their members suffer high rates of cancer due to the materials they are exposed to on the job.

The measure was unanimously backed by supervisors, but the mayor came out against it this week, arguing that enhancing retirement benefits for a single department when The City is facing a massive budget deficit would be fiscally irresponsible.

“Time and again, I have delivered for firefighters, and they know it. But it’s no secret that my opponents are making promises to the firefighters for just about anything, including support for an irresponsible ballot measure that would cost San Franciscans millions every year, while weakening emergency response,” Breed said in a statement to The Chronicle, which first reported the firefighters’ endorsement.