Ten days ago, Joel Engardio was ousted from office as the supervisor for District 4 by an unprecedented recall of a sitting San Francisco supervisor.
When we spoke on the eve of the vote tally, Engardio sounded uncertain and exhausted. Following the results, he put down his phone and bailed for Lake Tahoe with his husband Lionel Hsu, seeking solace in pine and water.
While he was away, the emails kept coming, and coming. Returning to his desk, he was bowled over by the messages: Some hateful, some gloating, but many offering condolences, as well as thanks.
“It’s been really moving to read all of them. People taking the time to write to me, especially about Sunset Dunes and other work I did that mattered to them. It just really helps,” Engardio told me.
His voice brightens as he describes how several people reached out to say the park has become a regular source of joy for elderly and disabled family members who cannot venture far from home: “Like, that is like the best any public servant can ask for. To have an impact of that scale on someone's actual life.”
Engardio beat out predecessor Gordon Mar by a sliver in 2022, and a key factor in that race was that Engardio, unlike Mar, threw his weight behind the recalls of District Attorney Chesa Boudin and a trio of school board members, in what amounted to an anti-progressive political coup. Those recalls were supported by a large swath of District 4’s more conservative Asian-American demographic, which rallied around accusations the city was ignoring assaults on Asian people and their pathways to prosperity.
There is considerable irony that the same demographic fought for Engardio’s recall this year, once again for backing the “wrong” side of a contentious issue. Time is a flat circle in politics. Nonetheless, Engardio wants to move forward.
I spoke to the former supervisor earlier this week about how he’ll do that. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What has life been like in the last week? Curious how you’re recovering from weeks and weeks of campaigning.
We’re still fixing problems for people. My staff is still working full-time. We’re going to finish what we started as long as I’m a supervisor. Which is, I think, until October 10 or so. We’re going to be fixing things right until the end.
And we’ve got the big night market this Friday, Sunset After Dark. It’s not the official Sunset Night Market, different branding, but it’s a wonderful event that the merchants, especially Smokin’ D’s on Irving Street, really spearheaded to make happen. I’m proud of my staff for doing outreach and trying to get vendors, especially monolingual Chinese business owners, to participate.
I may have been recalled, but the community is still going to have a great time being out on Irving.
What does it feel like, being out and about — does it feel weird?
For better and worse, my name ID and recognition is just through the roof now. We supervisors tend to have big egos and think we’re more famous than we are. In truth, there are a lot of residents who don’t even know who their supervisor is, right? That may have been the case for me a year ago, but now it’s not.
When I was knocking on doors in the final weeks before the recall election, there were a lot of people driving by recognizing me. You would think they’d all be yelling expletives out the window at me, but a lot of the time if someone was honking or shouting, it was support. I appreciated that.
Hearing that external support so organically, when you’re literally just walking down the street, felt good. But to not see it match with the voting results was disappointing.
But I’m still out all the time. I shop at Lucky grocery store and can barely make it down an aisle before a constituent asks me a question. I run at Sunset Dunes, and I get stopped all the time by people with questions. I like that.
There appears to be a quorum to create a “Recalled Officials Club of San Francisco” now after the last few years. Do you have any interest in getting together with Chesa Boudin and Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga?
(Laughs) Well, here’s an interesting story from the final weeks of campaigning.
I’m just walking down the street, having knocked on doors, kind of ending my shift as it’s getting to dusk. Then I hear someone call out my name and I look over. It’s a typical Sunset neighborhood block, attached homes with garages, and I see a group of people, a few adults and kids hanging out.
I jog over to say hi, and it’s none other than Chesa Boudin.
His group had just come back from Sunset Dunes and they all told me how much they loved the park. And also, they apparently opposed my recall.
So Chesa isn’t holding a grudge about you wanting him recalled?
No, no. It was a real nice moment, really. Chesa opposed the recall and it was good to see that, you know, folks who disagreed on policy issues and solutions can find other common ground. I think that’s kind of the best we can hope for in society, especially in this moment of time.
Was being a supervisor what you thought it would be? How do you look back on your expectations versus what the job actually demanded, whether in terms of constituents, City Hall, or yourself?
As a journalist myself, having covered City Hall, I was very eyes-wide-open about the job and what it entails, including the negative attention. I think the biggest surprise for me was, when you’re a journalist or a candidate, you often talk about what’s broken in City Hall and how electeds can’t get it right. You have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder.
But when you get there, you discover that, for all its faults, there are so many amazing people working here. There are departments firing on all cylinders and you think, ‘Wow, okay, there’s a glimmer of hope because if we can just replicate these people everywhere, the city will be amazing.’ It is wonderful to discover them and work with them. That’s what I’ll miss, just the camaraderie when you find your like-minded folks in City Hall and keep working together on the problems.
I think that’s why it’s doubly frustrating to see the kind of bureaucratic roadblocks and corruption that exist in city governance and prevent progress. Having seen contrasts, how do you take these lessons you got as supervisor into your future work, whatever it is?
Well, I think of one of my predecessors, Carmen Chu, who was the supervisor for the Sunset, became city assessor, and is now the city administrator. She’s the gold standard as far as, you know, turning things around. She turned it around at both of those offices, and I’m talking to her and looking forward to helping as much as possible, even as a private citizen.
Katy Tang, another predecessor of mine in D4, now runs the Office of Small Business. That’s a backbone of our city, so I want to do whatever I can to help on that front and have been in communication regularly. So I don’t know specifically what I’ll do next, but I have the energy to contribute. I guess the first thing I’ll say is we’re going to fight like hell to save Sunset Dunes. We can’t let that slip away.
I guess that’s a good segue to ask, what really is the immediate role of the former public servant? How do you transition?
The healthiest way to approach this job is to not make it your identity, right? You have to think about why you’re doing it. It’s not for any particular perk or accolade or celebrity. If that’s what you’re doing it for, you’re going to be disappointed. You need a vision for the city or to want to improve the lives of people for good.
If those are the true motivations, those interests don’t leave the minute you don’t have a city government job title. It’s still with me. Before I was supervisor, I was doing a lot with my newsletter and my Politics 101 lecture series, moving people on the issues. So I’ll keep doing that, and as doors close and open, I’ll go through them with curiosity.
And given you’ve been in Lakeshore for a while, unless you’re redistricted again, I assume you’re going to be a D4 lifer?
Going on 12 years, yeah. My husband and I want to retire here. Politicians come and go, but I look forward to being in old age, in retirement, sitting at Sunset Dunes with my husband and enjoying the view.
