By the time I met her on June 10, Natalie Gee’s campaign headquarters in the Sunset was under deconstruction. In one corner of the room was a box of plastic street signs that read “Natalie Gee’s Sunset.” Elsewhere lay paperwork and boxes of snacks, the last bits of evidence of an energetic and exhausting election run.
Gee was the only one in the office that afternoon, flitting around to fix and clean a million different things before officially closing the literal door on her campaign.
Incumbent District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong, an appointee of Mayor Daniel Lurie, soundly defeated Gee in the June 2 election. Gee’s campaign may have touted more charisma and bonafide grassroots excitement, but it wasn’t enough to overcome a big money opponent and the city’s political tradewinds.
A few weeks have passed since, and Gee has already announced she will not run again against Wong in the November election to decide who will be the Sunset’s supervisor through 2030. Gee, who has lived in the Sunset since 2021 and grew up attending the district’s Lowell High School, is returning to work as a legislative aide for District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton.
We sat down over a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos (“I hope you don’t mind, I haven’t had the chance to eat lunch,” she explained) to reflect on the biggest takeaways of her supervisor run and what comes next, including a potential collab with Connie Chan.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What’s your biggest takeaway from the campaign?
We probably ran the best campaign in terms of field work. We door-knocked the entire district more than four times — I think we hit 70,000 doors total. We ran a robust phone-banking program. I’ve been doing campaign work for more than 10 years, and we did everything a good campaign should.
But the reality is, we were up against so much money and the odds were stacked against us. The scales were not level. The mayor basically put his entire weight on the scales.
As in, Daniel Lurie’s wealthy allies formed a PAC pushing for his appointee Alan Wong and funding attack mailers on you. So did the centrist group GrowSF, which is also aligned with the mayor.
Yeah. It was like people were voting for Lurie rather than considering the specific candidates. Across the city, the mayor has 70 percent approval. This is like a vibe-check election... and it helps when you have a million dollars of your own money to put into PR.
The dark money issue has really made things worse. It’s not in good faith, and it makes the race really not about the candidates’ campaigns. Alan [could’ve been] a stand-up guy, maybe who was like, “Wow, you guys are spending a lot of money against her, let’s just run this based on our merits.” That didn’t happen because the money benefited him.
Hawaii gives me hope because the state was able to overturn Citizens United. I don’t want what happened to me to discourage any other young person from running. Even those I grew up with in the political sphere, they’re like, “I don’t want to run. Why would I put myself through everything you experienced? Why subject myself to all these attacks?”
I ran a campaign where I was uncompromising, and I still am uncompromised. I ran a campaign on integrity. GrowSF reached out for a potential endorsement and I filled out a very long questionnaire. In the end, I decided not to submit it. I didn’t want the endorsement because of the toxicity they bring, including in the last election cycle.
You must’ve expected some of that. What made you want to run in the first place?
I came into this not wanting to run. If you had asked me in January 2025, I would’ve said, “No, I’m not going to run because I’m great at what I do behind the scenes.” But I saw so much turmoil, so much divisiveness in the Sunset and I had the skills to [create] change. And I’m not going away; I’ve built an infrastructure that I’m going to keep building on.
You were considered to the political left of Wong, but being a progressive can be a tricky sell sometimes, especially to older Asian Americans.
It’s not about being “progressive,” right? Because when you get down to it, it’s all about working-class folks. I’ve been seeing this a lot on the campaign trail: It doesn’t really matter where you stand on that political spectrum. When it comes to affordability, safety, pedestrian safety, healthcare, education, these issues affect everyone, and that’s what I was targeting in my campaign.
I feel like a flaw with the progressive movement is that there's a lot of litmus tests: “You support this person, then you’re not a true progressive.” I look at the YIMBY movement, which outside of San Francisco is considered very progressive. Inside San Francisco, there are so many nuances about whether [YIMBYs] are just aligned with developers or whatnot, and there’s a disconnect.
I am in favor of social housing. We’ve seen it work in other cities around the world. But we absolutely have a housing crisis here. It doesn’t make sense to have a one-bedroom median price of $4,000. People argue rent control is the problem, but it’s the only thing keeping the [market] affordable for many people. However, we also need the supply. I would love to see more home ownership opportunities here, especially for young people. A lot of my friends have moved out of SF because they can't afford it anymore.
What’s something that city residents might not know is a priority for the Sunset moving forward?
Having spaces for young people so that they can have opportunities to learn leadership or get into employment or internships. It’s lacking in District 4, and I think people don’t realize the Sunset has a lot of young people. There’s a lot of youth services in other parts of the city, mostly concentrated on the east side. So young people might commute to the Richmond for the Community Youth Center or commute to Chinatown, but it’s lacking out here.
Speaking of the Richmond, Supervisor Connie Chan endorsed you. Anything you can say about how you might get involved with her congressional run?
Not yet, because I’m not entirely sure. But I know that I’ve grown a bit of a following on social media, and making content was really fun for me during this campaign. I have so much content I wasn’t even able to edit. It’s something I’m going to continue to do.
How do you feel now that the run is over?
I came into this race with the mindset of, whether I win or lose, I'm still going to be in a better place, I'm still going to make an impact and drive the conversation.
When I told my mom I was going to run, she was very much against it. Very Asian mom. “Why are you doing this? Sticking your neck out, opening yourself up to attacks, it’s crazy.” I didn’t talk to her about it for a whole month. It wasn’t until Thanksgiving when she told me she had been reading articles about me. “I saw you on Chinese TV!” And I thought, “Oh, shit.” (Laughs) But she’s really proud.
