The Facts

The Ethics Commission voted 4-0 to propose three campaign finance changes: apply the city's contribution limit to other committees a candidate controls, count PAC republication of a candidate's campaign materials (e.g. using a photo or video clip from the candidate in an ad) as a contribution to that candidate, and restrict the use of committee money to pay ethics penalties.

The proposal needs eight votes at the Board of Supervisors and would take effect no earlier than January 1, 2027.

The Context

The draft ordinance counts any reuse of a candidate's campaign materials "in whole or in part" — written, graphic, audio, or video — as a contribution to that candidate, subject to the $500 limit. (A separate bill would raise the limit to $1,000.)

That language is similar to the federal republication rule, which the FEC has effectively abandoned, with commissioners warning that penalizing republication without proof of actual coordination is unlikely to survive a court challenge. San Francisco would be adopting this same abandoned rule.

In the November 2024 mayoral race, Mark Farrell paid the largest ethics fine on record, $108,000, for improperly using a candidate-controlled ballot measure committee to subsidize his mayoral campaign.

The GrowSF Take

There's one good change and two bad ones in this proposal.

First, the good: Contributions to candidate-controlled committees should absolutely be subject to the same contribution limits as candidate committees. The current rules impose a $500 limit on donations to John Smith for Mayor, but allow unlimited contributions to Yes on A, run by the same John Smith. Candidates use this loophole to plaster their face and name around the city saying things like "Yes on A, endorsed by John Smith!" These are campaign expenditures in everything but name and should be treated as such.

Now, the bad:

The republication rule invites a lawsuit. A PAC using a few seconds of publicly available campaign footage inside its own independently produced ad is not coordination, and the federal government has declined to punish the exact same conduct under the exact same rule because it doubts the rule would survive in court. San Francisco should not pick a legal fight with well-resourced groups that the city is likely to lose.

The ethics fine rule goes further than it should. Under the proposal, a candidate's committee could still pay fines for ordinary compliance mistakes, but candidates found to have acted knowingly or willfully must pay personally, and legal defense funds are barred from paying personal penalties entirely. Personal exposure to five- and six-figure fines — with the same commission that levies the fine deciding whether the violation was "willful" — will scare away all but the wealthiest candidates.

The Board should narrow this measure to the contribution limit, the one clearly good rule the Ethics Commission is proposing.