His soon-to-be-second-home at City Hall is another story.
Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who was a year behind Farrell at St. Ignatius College Preparatory, said he recently walked through the grand building with his former classmate.
"He says, 'Is that the board chambers?' He'd never once in his life been inside the board chambers," Elsbernd said. "He has a totally fresh, outside-the-box perspective."
Farrell, 36, was a complete unknown in the city's political circles when he entered the race to replace termed-out District Two Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier in August 2009.
Utilizing more than 300 volunteers, including his father who practically lived outside Safeway chatting up shoppers, holding more than 100 house parties and spending $250,000 in campaign cash, Farrell shocked the political establishment with his narrow win over favorite Janet Reilly.
'Corporate raider'
Ripped during the campaign as a "corporate raider," the corporate lawyer turned investment banker turned venture capitalist is now entering another blood sport: politics. A major reason he entered the race, he said, was because of his other role as a new father.
He and his wife, Liz, a stay-at-home mom who used to be a morning TV news producer, own a four-bedroom condo in Jordan Park where they are raising Madison, 5, and Jack, 3.
The Farrells had many discussions about whether to raise their family in San Francisco (his vote) or move to Danville where Liz was raised (her vote, at least initially).
He won and said he wants to push for policies that make it easier to raise kids in the city - including neighborhood schools, keeping parking meter rates reasonable, bringing back weekly street cleaning in residential neighborhoods, and improving parks and public transit.
"Most of my friends have moved out of the city," he said. "People feel this city is trying to nickel-and-dime us to death."
Another reason he decided to run for office was seeing people he knew get laid off, but hearing city unions applauded for delaying their raises.
"I thought, 'Wow, these people are really out of touch,' " he said, adding he wants to use his financial expertise to curb city employees' fringe benefits and reform the payroll tax system.
Liz Farrell said that even though her husband's career path has been in law and business, he has always had political ambition, even running for - but losing - student body president in college.
'A unique thing'
"People always asked him on the campaign, 'Why do you want to do this - why would you ever think of running?' " she recalled. "That's a really unique thing when you honestly believe you can make a difference, and he honestly does."
Farrell intends to keep his current job as managing director in Quest Hospitality Ventures, a venture capitalism firm that invests in the hospitality and travel industry, which he co-founded in 2009. San Francisco voters in 2002 passed a ballot measure significantly boosting supervisors' pay and making the position full-time, but the city attorney's office said there's no outright ban on outside work.
Logic over intuition
Lucien Ruby, Farrell's co-founder of the venture capital firm, said Farrell is a very deliberative, methodical person who values logic above intuition or gut feelings.
"I don't know how he'll do there - he's not a backstabber," Ruby said of Farrell's new gig. "I guess if I worry about something, I worry about him expecting people to play by rules, and I don't know that they do."
Though universally described as a nice guy, Farrell does have a big competitive streak, according to his longtime friend Kamran Moghtaderi, who grew up in the same building as Farrell.
"I know Mark from playing pingpong with him when we were little kids," Moghtaderi said. "I used to beat him so badly, he wouldn't stop until he beat me."
Moghtaderi said Farrell was 6 feet tall by the time he was in fifth grade and always excelled in athletics, but was kind to everyone.
"He didn't have the ability to tease kids - it just wasn't in him," he said. "He still has the same sweet, uncomplicated character."
A popular athlete
Farrell attended grammar school at Stuart Hall before pitching for the St. Ignatius baseball team. Elsbernd described him as a very gregarious, popular jock who was also academic.
Farrell won a baseball scholarship to Loyola Marymount, where he graduated in 1996, and then earned a master's degree in politics from the University College Dublin in Ireland, where he studied the political situation in Northern Ireland. He graduated from law school at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001.
Surprised parents
He surprised his parents at their house on a recent tour of his neighborhood with a reporter and photographer in tow. "Come be in the paper!" he hollered as he walked up the front steps.
His mother, Lena Farrell, who grew up in Germany, and his father, John, a semiretired attorney, were decorating the flat for Christmas with boxes of ornaments and garlands filling the living room.
But during the campaign season, an even more beautiful sight filled their neighborhood, Lena said: Mark Farrell for Supervisor signs hung in nearly every window on the block.
This week
The Chronicle is highlighting each of the new members of the Board of Supervisors who will be sworn in Jan. 8.
Tuesday: District 10, Malia Cohen.
Thursday: District Eight, Scott Wiener.
Friday: District Six, Jane Kim.
E-mail Heather Knight at hknight@sfchronicle.com.
For more election-related news and information, visit our California Elections 2010 page.
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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