District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio was recalled in a landslide, with currently tallied votes tilted 65 percent in favor of ousting him. Engardio conceded on Tuesday night, leaving a gap in the Board of Supervisors that will be the subject of much politicking in the weeks to come.
Local post-mortems are focusing on how Engardio lost over the Upper Great Highway closure fight and his backing of policy moves to develop more real estate on the west side, but that diagnosis belies the impact of populist rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and strange political bedfellows on the recall.
To be clear: This wasn’t just about a road closure. And it wasn’t just about new zoning plans to add density to the Sunset and Richmond. This was a battle rife with conflicts around race, class, and the political history of the west side, a symbiosis that transcends conventional courting of voters on a linear “spectrum” of ideology. The Great Highway was merely the kindling; longstanding resentment about leadership in District 4 lit the spark.
Engardio was pragmatic about the situation when I spoke to him on Tuesday night as the initial results were trickling in. He admitted he was exhausted from weeks of door-knocking in his districts. Those conversations went “very differently” from the condemnation and misinformation his team saw from recall supporters on Nextdoor, WeChat, X, and Facebook, he said.
“What this recall is about is a fear of change. But I believe that San Francisco can only realize its full potential if we let ourselves do bold things,” Engardio told me.
The word “ourselves” is key. Over the past five years, residents and business owners in the Sunset and Richmond, especially from the Chinese-American community, have grown increasingly fervent about lacking a say in city business. The recall is them having that say, vitriol and all.
Their crusade against the permanent closure of the Upper Great Highway goes back to 2020, when the city announced the street would close to provide a place for recreation amid the pandemic. It opened up again the next year, but only on weekdays, with weekends remaining car-free. In 2022, the city prohibited cars on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, drawing even more backlash from a number of District 4 residents.
These transportation controversies worked hand-in-hand with the 2022 recalls of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin and members of the San Francisco Board of Education. All dealt with material concerns, whether traffic, crime, or educational access, but these concerns fused with bolder populist critiques of white outsiders — be it virtue-signaling progressives or tech-industry YIMBYs — perceived as not caring about Asian-American needs.
Longtime political strategist David Ho, who grew up in the Sunset, told me that the Engardio recall is part of a “long tail” of pandemic-era political discontent. Feelings of scarcity, loss, and fear amid hate crimes created a foundation for pushback by organizers like Chinese American Democratic Club head Josephine Zhao and District 4 resident Selena Chu, who took to apps like WeChat to convince Chinese voters that “woke-ism” and progressives are antithetical to Asian values.
“The voters were fighting against a status quo with anti-establishment vibes,” Ho remarked. “That’s why you saw progressives lose in the recalls and then [former District 4] Supervisor Gordon Mar losing to Engardio as an incumbent, and London Breed becoming the first incumbent mayor to lose re-election since Frank Jordan in 1995. And now you have Engardio out.”
Did it matter that the traffic armageddon in the Sunset and other woes predicted by anti-Prop K forces never came to fruition? Apparently not, but that didn’t help Engardio as much as he tried to communicate it to voters this summer. Instead, he became the target of an ideological fight about how to define the west side’s future.
Engardio beat out Mar by a slim margin as the more moderate, “common-sense” candidate who focused on public safety and supported the DA and school board recalls. Now sentiments have turned and Engardio’s agenda has been reframed as being for elite, wealthy forces from outside District 4. Chinese American Democratic Club organizer Wilson Chu told the Chronicle on Tuesday that Engardio “sold us out to the tech conglomerates and he sold us out to the developers.”
The now-ex-supervisor sighed when I pointed this out to him last night.
“As the months went on and Sunset Dunes park became popular and the traffic crisis never came, those two talking points became less effective,” Engardio said. “So, the recallers had to pivot to housing density and fearmongering that I was going to build ‘Miami Beach on Ocean Beach,’ as the catchphrase went.”
Joe Arellano, spokesman and strategist for the Engardio camp, was even more critical of the way public figures like ConnectedSF head (and former Trump appointee) Marie Hurabiell and conservative writer Susan Dyer Reynolds spread constant suspicion about Engardio’s intentions.
“The anatomy of misinformation online for this recall is exactly from a right-wing playbook. You essentially saw a misinformation machine working non-stop against us every day, and it took root like a weed,” Arellano told me. “We tried our hardest over the last three months to fight it.”
He pointed to claims that Engardio quietly wanted to push housing on Ocean Beach or along Sunset Boulevard: “Those were two flash points among constituents, but they’re literally protected from future development.”
Talking with Ho, he chuckled when I noted the endless blows and wild speculation driven by recall organizers like Chu and Albert Chow, a business owner who claimed Engardio wanted to kick out existing residents for new people and a “whole different set of values” — another hint that race and class was a defining element of the recall fight.
“If voters actually relied on facts like data and logic, then I think we absolutely would have a better government structure,” Ho said dryly. “People forget the Sunset is where people want to be left alone.”
As the first non-Chinese District 4 supervisor in two decades, Engardio faced an uphill battle from the start, Ho noted. The legacy in the district is of electeds like Leland Yee, Fiona Ma and Katy Tang maintaining a more conservative agenda on city matters, often falling out of step with other supervisors. There are a lot of single-family home owners in the district, and its working-class background has evolved with rising property values.
“It’s a historical pattern of D4 independence from City Hall, and people tend to forget how consistent it’s been over time,” Ho said.
But that also makes it odd that, while the recall was buoyed by conservative-leaning Asian Americans, the effort also found allies in the progressive left. Otto Pippenger, the former director of engagement for Aaron Peskin, became a key recall leader, painting the effort as a defense of community identity and a battle of agency versus corporate forces.
It didn’t help that Engardio’s campaign coffers were stuffed with tech money, including from billionaire Chris Larsen and Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman. Engardio raised more than $824,000, while the recall squad raised around $250,000. Engardio’s lead in funds, however, didn’t shield him from controversy after controversy. His detractors claimed he was manipulating Nextdoor posts, secretly back-channeling with tech guys and urbanists, and manipulating email lists, among other accusations. Meanwhile, leftist organizers cheered on the ousting of an official who had robbed the Board of Supervisors of a progressive seat.
Which is why Arellano, the strategist and spokesman for Engardio, told me that the recall amounted to a kind of “unholy alliance” rife with fiery rhetoric and unique to San Francisco politics.
“It took root among NIMBYs, progressives, conservatives, and they found an audience for the message online,” he said. “It’s a very San Francisco thing. The fight is over a road change that should easily be decided by elected officials. But it’s a bare-knuckle brawl.”
As for who should fill the empty seat? Ho suggested that “it has to be a Chinese moderate-conservative type.”
“You got to learn from the lessons of [Mayor] Ed Lee when he appointed Julie Christensen over Cindy Wu, who had the entire community rallying behind her,” he continued. “If Daniel Lurie can’t find that person, his team isn’t doing their job well and the appointee will likely lose the election next June.”
