Can Sunset District Supervisor Joel Engardio beat back September’s recall election? Sure. It’s possible.
Can the Giants win the National League West? Sure. It’s possible.
Your humble narrator’s overarching memory of living out in District 4 was hearing broadcaster Dave Flemming announce on the radio that it was “a great day for baseball” at Pacific Bell Park while it was gray and rainy out on 37th Avenue. Yes, the Sunset is often enshrouded in fog. But, sometimes, you can see things clearly enough.
Engardio backers tell me that the polling they have in hand isn’t as lopsided as you might think. But polling on a district-wide level is notoriously erratic. And it’s notable that a middling deficit has been taken as a positive sign. Sure, Engardio (and, for that matter, the Giants) could turn things around. But little would appear to be pointing that way.
To start with, the structure of the recall puts any incumbent in a pickle. Nobody wants to run against themselves in an up or down contest. That’s especially the case when you’re a ranked-choice candidate who eked out a victory over the incumbent, Gordon Mar, by 469 votes.
For Engardio specifically, the setup gets worse: He got on the wrong side of his voters by introducing and championing Proposition K to close the Great Highway. While it passed citywide, nearly two-thirds of District 4 voters were against it.
But 77 percent of the voters in the three conservative precincts grafted into District 4 — along with Engardio — voted against Prop. K.
In 2022, these voters literally provided Engardio with his margin of victory; they were his base. In 2025, they would appear to be the angriest people in District 4.
Recall backers have griped about the diversion of Great Highway traffic to Sunset District surface streets. Recall ballots will be mailed to District 4 voters on Aug. 18. So it’s unfortunate timing for Engardio that the setup and breakdown for Outside Lands bookend that date. Additional road closures and traffic snarls for Westside drivers are not what Engardio needs right now.
Precincts that supported Joel Engardio the most strongly opposed Prop. K
Precincts added to
District 4 in 2022
Percentage of District 4 voters who voted
against Prop. K in November 2024.
Percentage of first-choice votes Joel Engardio
received in the 2022 District 4 supervisor race.
Precincts added to
District 4 in 2022
Percentage of first-choice votes Joel Engardio
received in the 2022 District 4 supervisor race.
Percentage of District 4 voters who voted
against Prop. K in November 2024.
Chart by Kelly Waldron. Data from the San Francisco Department of Elections. Basemap from Mapbox.
What Engardio could use right now is a barrage of material from the capital-d Democratic Party, bankrolled by the bottomless pit of tech wealth, and excoriating the recall effort. He’s not getting it.
The local Democratic Party, jarringly, called off its July special meeting to weigh in on the recall. We’re told that not enough votes could be whipped to support “no position,” and the Dems won’t reconvene until late August. By that time, recall voting in District 4 will have been ongoing for nearly two weeks.
Even if the San Francisco Dems next month inveigh against the recall, thereby allowing the party to become a conduit for billionaire donations and launching a thousand mailers, valuable time will have been wasted. And that “no” vote is no sure thing.
Engardio’s hope for salvation is that this is a strange, off-season and low-turnout election. Some 11,000 people signed the recall papers, but the percentage of them who know that the forthcoming election is on Sept. 16 could probably fit comfortably in an L-Taraval train.
Unlike November’s “persuasion” election, this is a “turnout” election. It’s the difference between making your case to surefire voters vs. getting people to vote at all.
But even here, Engardio would figure to be at a disadvantage. Angry people tend to be more motivated voters than happy people. And this is a recall fueled by anger. Even in the foggy Sunset, this much is clear.
Anger about the demise of the Great Highway knows no denomination. Conservatives are angry. Progressives are angry. Prop. K, and the manner in which it was placed on the ballot, angered a good many District 4 residents.
So it’s not surprising that “strange bedfellows” in the world of San Francisco politics would be aligned here. Considering both politics and human nature, it’s also not surprising that a good many progressives — voters who may well have been opposed to some or all of the recent recalls pushed by Engardio et al. — are supportive of this one.
Surely there are people who, given the choice to dump a candidate they did not support via a process they do not support, will remain ideologically consistent and reject the recall. Recalled district attorney Chesa Boudin, a District 4 resident and Engardio constituent, told us back in December that he was opposed to the recall on principle.
Voters would likely tell you they value ideological consistency — until an elected official disagrees with them. Given the opportunity, most of us will likely vote to recall a candidate we don’t like, possibly never liked, and worry little about the process or the precedent. What an irony it is that Engardio and his backers, who worked to hound Boudin out of office, are now wishing that more District 4 residents were like him.
But this recall also resonates well beyond the borders of District 4, and among city residents who do not care one whit about a windswept highway on the edge of the city or its ardent adherents. Make no mistake: This is a shot across the bow of every other elected official in San Francisco.
This is what can happen to them when they push positions that diverge from those of a good many or most of their constituents. Our supervisors will soon be taking a vote regarding a citywide upzoning plan. Lectures about supply and demand and density and abundance will be met with very real and very fervent opposition from denizens of the city’s most neighborhoody neighborhoods, who don’t want to hear it.
They will be angry. And we know what voters now do — are now enabled to do, and perhaps even expected to do — when they’re angry. This has been normalized. And, it turns out, you don’t even require a cadre of wealthy donors to do it.
And you can, in part, thank Engardio for all this. He rose to political prominence via recalls — first of three school board members, and then Boudin. He used his support for the recalls as a differentiator in his race vs. Mar, even though that has little to nothing to do with the task of a district supervisor.
And now he’s being recalled. You’ve seen this movie: All the smarties in “Jurassic Park” were eaten by their own dinosaurs; Dr. Moreau was ripped to shreds by the monsters of his own creation.
But maybe the most fitting cinematic reference is the dark and chilling closing scene from “The Unforgiven.” Gene Hackman’s immoral Little Bill Daggett is bleeding out on the saloon floor, and Clint Eastwood’s amoral William Munny is looming over him with a rifle.
“I don’t deserve this,” says Daggett, “to die like this. I was building a house.”
“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it,” Munny growls. And that’s that.
We’re well past questions of whether Engardio deserves to be recalled. His means of ascent was to foment anger among the city’s angriest. But now they’re angry at him. Deserve’s got nothing to do with it. And that’s that.
Joel made his own bed.
Engardio is a liar. Period. He deserves the recall that he rode into office calling for.
No other elected official has as much contempt for their electorate as Joel.
Billionaire backed liars got to go.
“Billionaire backed liars got to go. That’s why I want our billionaire mayor to appoint Joel’s replacement!”
No, he’d appoint a temporary. Voters would then ratify that person if they 1, did their jobs and 2, didn’t outright and deiberately lie to them. If Lurie was damfool enough to appoint another Engardio-esque developer’s pet with forked tongue, understand now that this Sunset district would be not only recalling THEM next, but carving Lurie out of their future possible ballot choices for life. We don’t play ball with liars. Ed Jew had more respect for the district than Engardio, and that’s saying something.
Where to begin with the spineless person that is poor, poor pitiful Joel Engardio? Joel is a 3 time loser who ran (and lost) for district supervisor in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Joel’s 2022 win likely and largely had to do with COVID lockdown fever when a sour D4 electorate was more easily manipulated by his campaign, who channelled voter fear and rage into a win. In this vein, his campaign weaponized Joel’s full throated and rabid support of the recalls of Chesa Boudin and SFUSD board members. Equally impactful, in the 2022, D4 was controversially gerrymandered to Engardio’s advantage (and Gordon Mar’s loss). Engardio barely won by a mere 469 votes. In 2022, the now infamous Astroturf groups YIMBY Action, GROWSF and Neighbors for a Better SF dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund (Gordon Mar’s defeat and) an Engardio win. And, finally and IMHO most despicably, in an RCV strategy, Engardio endorsed and hitched his wagon to the unhinged, toxic, and racist candidate Leanna Louie. D4 candidate Louie made vile, racist and anti Semitic comments against journalist Joe Eskenazi, and was ultimately removed from the ballot because of questions to do with her home residency and fiscal improprieties. Why should any of this matter? Because it reveals a long (over a decade) and consistent history of Engardio’s feeble judgment and a lack of policy vision for an elected officeholder. Don’t despair though Joel:?Nabes for a Better SF’s newest iteration Blueprint is hiring. Maybe Scotty party zone Jacobs has a spot for you once D4 purges you.
Greeny, this is one of the best comments I’ve read on ML in a while. Cheers to you!
Hilariously, I can only imagine that Lurie will replace him with someone even less sympathetic to your anti-housing, anti-transit, anti-progress belief system. Good luck!
The only ‘progress’ Joel brought was lying and taking Billionaire money.
You “transit nerd” types are all the same, you back anything.
Good to know that you find dullness, cowardice and ineptitude in a parrot like Engardio “hilarious.”’ Enjoy!
“your anti-housing, anti-transit, anti-progress belief system.”
Either we do what you say or you say that we support the thing that you think that we oppose the most.
Do you really think that Lurie would appoint someone who is “anti-housing” to the D4 seat?
Muni is in tatters, has been on the decline since Scott Wiener, the pro-transit guy, came on the scene. They’re catering to the Uber crowd. Everything Scott touches turns to shit.
Elected officials are supposed to represent their constituents.
If voters recall a supervisor who voted against their wishes, that is the sign that democracy is working.
Exactly this. In a representative democracy, those whom we elect are supposed to represent us. Joel did the opposite and thought that he knew better than his constituents what they want.
I don’t want a representative who seeks to impose his own agenda upon those who elect him. I want a representative who does what we damn well tell him to do.
And as for Chesa Boudin being opposed to recalls? I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.
Recalls are not for “I disagree with this person.” They’re for egregious acts, derelictions of duty, serious offenses that couldn’t possibly under any circumstances wait until the next election. It’s ironic that you call yourself “Democracy 101,” because you ignore the fact that, generally speaking, recall voters tend to be older, whiter, and more conservative than voters in general elections.
Re: “derelictions of duty”. It seems many in the district draw the line where an elected official puts moneyed outside corporate interests over the expressed interests of his constituents.
Exhibit A: Top “Stop the recall” campaign contributions:
Chris Larsen, Ripple CEO: $200K
Jeremy Stoppelman, Founder Twilio: $175K
John Wolthus, Co-founder Twilio: $100K
SFPOA: $50K
Nick Josefowitz: Former director SPUR: $25K
Ron Conway, Venture capitalist: $25K
Who appointed you to say why voters must or must not vote for a recall?
“I disagree with this person” is a perfectly good reason for a voter. I can’t think of a better one.
As for your racist, ageist comment, that shows who you are.
We are now in the upside-down, where pointing out a problem that disproportionately benefits white people is… racism.
What a racist you are in presuming that D4 is all white, erasing all of those Chinese Americans.
> As for your racist, ageist comment, that shows who you are.
And this comment shows who *you* are.
That is an interpretation that is not borne out in the black letter law of the California Constitution and Codes.
Exactly
The citizens of SF overwhelmingly voted to shut down this dangerous highway that was killing at least one person a year and critically injuring people monthly. That was the one good thing that happened in our election last fall. What is happening now is not democracy, it is an attempt to circumvent it. This recall is an insult to the lives and families destroyed on this dangerous poorly designed highway from the 50’s simply to shave a few seconds from entitled driver’s commutes. There should be retribution against the people who are doing this. This is cars-first politics at its worst; literally voting to kill people and continue to spill blood because of the traffic they themselves are causing. These types of people are worse than maga republicans!
They did so based on lies, and they aren’t affected – only D4 and D1 are.
Why do you think Joel dropped his proposition off at the last possible minute? Because he knows his district didn’t want it, he had lied to them about his intentions, and his Billionaire backers don’t care about us. Or you.
You are either uninformed or lying. The only person killed on the GH since Sheila Detoy was shot by SFPD (thru the window of a stolen vehicle) was an elderly dementia patient who escaped from care, last year. That’s it. You can pretend that it’s killing people but you are a liar when you do so. This is literally the safest major thoroughfare in SF, and will be again when the lawsuit forces it to be reopened to traffic.
The sheer contempt you zealots have for working people on the west side who can’t afford to spend.3 hours a day commuting by public transit.
There was always a promenade or a pathway to the west of the roadway and then there is the beach that people actually walk on. That’s not car-first, that’s cars also.
You obviously haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. There have never been any deaths or injuries on the Great Highway in the many decades that it was open. What are you babbling on about???
It’s not “cars first” but “cars also”.
It’s worth stressing a fact that you link to in another of your stories: tech billionaire Chris Larsen dumped $200,000 into the campaign to save Engardio. With friends like these, who needs Dems?
Another headache for Joel will be when the kids start going back to school. The recent traffic surveys undoubtedly were completed during the recent months when traffic congestion is markedly reduced since kids don’t go to school during the summer. For my part, my son went to school at 25th Ave and Lake (Excellent School BTW) and I had to traverse the Sunset and surmount the Park every morning. Now, the Richmond is basically off-limits and fortunately for me, he graduated. So I am done!
So, in late August when the ballots are mailed, the traffic will return and remind Everyone of why the recall is important.
To add salt to the wound, late August and September begins to see the fog abate. I would be surprised if the Joel supports will not be at the Great Highway celebrating their victory right in the middle of a recall election. (Ouch)
To countermand the Joel supports argument that you don’t recall a person over one issue. This may be correct if the issue did not involve betrayal. Prop K was a betrayal by the means it was put onto the ballot. If a person will betray you once, that same person will do it again.
Chris if you read the traffic report from the SFMTA you woul see it was completed in the Spring not the summer months.
The belief that Joel ” promised” to keep the highway open is completely false. Thats what this recall is all about a false idea.
The biggest joke of all is calling this thing a park. Maybe we could call the parking lot at Safeway a park next. It’s about as “ beautiful “ and you could eliminate more cars.
“Eliminating cars” is both impractical physically and infeasible politically. If people want to bike around during work hours, fine, but they don’t get priority over the rest of society that tends to their every need shipped in by truckload, or the working class that delivers their poki bowls to their spacious million dollar yuppie condos. They literally pretend that closing 1 major thoroughfare after another will “force” people onto MUNI, their stated goal, as if that had ANY environmental impact in reality whatsoever. It’s a farce and these people including the “friends of” “non-“profits funded by damn BILLIONAIRE DEVELOPERS ought to be run out of town on a MUNI rail. The Breed era is over, go back to NYC with your faux-futurism and lies. Workers still have to get to work in SF and making that difficult is politically radioactive, rightly so.
Don’t forget, he just voted for new parking meters in Golden Gate Park also!
Our park needs to be a relaxing place for all, not a revenue source for the worst managed city in the country
Booooooooo. Storage of people’s personal private belongings in a shared public park, free of charge? Can I leave my drum set in the park for free for an indefinite amount of time? How about my mattress?
It’s not supposed to be a revenue source — it’s a car deterrent. 99% of America is optimized for automobile travel. I think you’ll survive if one of the most beautiful urban green spaces in the world is in the 1% that is preserved for clean air and walkability.
Actually, according to the BoS, the purpose for charging for parking in GGP is to generate revenue for the cash-strapped SFMTA.
I’m tired of hearing about “cash strapped SFMTA.” Year after year they’re claiming they’re broke and continually asking voters for more money. It never ends. Maybe if MTA actually spent their budget on improving public transit rather than managing cars and streets in the city they’d find they actually have a revenue. Julie Kirschbaum is just as incompetent as Jeffrey Tumlin was and is doing nothing differently than he did.
No it is just a revenue source; there will still be the same number of cars there, but they will paying to be there. Cities should be designed to support a wide variety of transportation options; not clear why you have so much hate for the one that so many other San Franciscans prefer.
“shared public park … it’s not supposed to be a revenue source”
You must be new here. Go there today and find out how half of GGP is being monopolized by Outside Lands, for weeks. All to generate revenue for the City and County.
Are you sure the only thing Outside Lands does is bring in revenue for APE and SF? Might it also provide civic joy for hundreds of thousands of people?
The outrage around being able to drive/park all throughout the park is just embarrassing. Park on Fulton and walk if you don’t wanna pay for the meters. Again, why should anybody be entitled to park in one of the most special places in the country, free of charge?
It’s a public park being used for private profit.
If you don’t see the problem with that, you are simple.
So I can’t store my bicycle in Golden Gate Park, locked to a rack or pole, while I’m there?
Not for a fee, standby for that!
The difference is the cost of building and maintaining car infrastructure (including tens of thousands of free parking spaces) vs the negligible cost of building and maintaining bike infrastructure and public transit.
Negligible, lol they wasted MILLIONS trying to appease the bicycle non-profit lobby mafia to zero avail. It’s not about safety, it’s not about emissions, it’s about political control of a mindless group of voters, cyclist-enthusiasts who literally believe they are “saving the world” on the daily. Hilarious is the word. Meanwhile “project zero” deaths only INCREASE to a maximum of last year. Great work, busybodies! Meanwhile everything you eat, wear and do comes to you by truckload, but enjoy the nihilism and class warfare you don’t even understand yet. Parking spaces for bicycles are everywhere, and you don’t even follow the same rules motorists do. The infrastructure you don’t want to pay for = the society you live in. Deal with it, try whining less about all other people’s necessities for a change, Streetsblog types.
I’ve grown up in the city since 1975, and what I’ve been seeing for almost a decade now are supervisors who run for office with promises to their constituents who then do a complete about-face when elected and use the platform to push their own personal agendas instead. City supervisors are elected to represent the needs and interests of their individual districts, not dupe them and then ignore their concerns once they’ve been appointed into office. If a recall is the only way to get the message across to City Hall that those of us who live and vote here are fed up being ignored, I’m all for it and I hope it becomes a continuing trend.
Our supervisors will soon be taking a vote regarding a citywide upzoning plan. Lectures about supply and demand and density and abundance will be met with very real and very fervent opposition from denizens of the city’s most neighborhoody neighborhoods — who don’t want to hear it.
===
All the neighborhood opposition in the world won’t stop people moving here to take jobs that pay well enough that they can afford to pay whatever the prices are. Change is coming, and it’s sheer insanity to pretend it won’t. Homeowners in the Sunset will set neighbors pass away and their homes going on the market because the children already live somewhere else. The homes will be bought by the people who can afford them, and the rest of the homeowners will soon be unwelcome poor people in their own neighborhoods.
People need to accept that change happens, no matter what. The best thing to do is to manage the change.
Robert, you are right. Change is inevitable. We shall take your advice and manage this change by first – Recalling Engardio – and then, Fighting the Oligarchy! 🙂
If you all proceed this way, you are going to screw the east side that’s already been upzoned one of two ways: 1) the City falls of out compliance and the builder’s remedy is imposed which will mean that it will be a more profitable free for all in the already upzoned east side and 2) the “nice” neighborhoods pressure the City into making up the difference by further upzoning the west side. (somehow my palm hitting the trackpad while I was typing submitted the comment, please do not approve it)
Either way, the east side gets screwed again by the rest of the city.
These are purely esthetic objections, the east side already manages to persevere with more of the burdens than the west side and nice neighborhoods will get upzoned for.
It is time for those who dished out the upzonings to take their own medicine. I want 500′ condo towers lining Cortland in Bernal from Mission to Bayshore.
Builder’s remedy is morw YIMBY (and Scott Weiner) pearl clutching. Unenforceable. If ya’ll are really and truly concerned about a “housing shortage” wink, wink, why don’t (won’t?) you focus on an implementable remedy? I’ll give you a choice: 1) an annually increasing vacancy tax on residential and commercial units that are help empty OR 2) a “use it or lose it” penalty on building permits so a permit expires if construction is not begun or completed within a reasonable time period. Builders remedy and the “how will my unborn fetuses buy homes in the future” are weak tea.
Greeny, nope. Already upzoned districts are the ones made ripe for the picking by the builder’s remedy. The peripheral neighborhoods will skate and such projects will be concentrated in Market Octavia and Eastern Neighborhoods where the “progressives” think that they belong.
From hklaw {dot} com /en/insights/publications/2024/09/california-legislature-passes-major-reforms-for
Assembly Bill (AB) 1893 replaces the “free-for-all” approach to Builder’s Remedy. Starting Jan. 1, 2025, new Builder’s Remedy projects must comply with site restrictions, density limits, certain objective local standards and other mandated requirements. In exchange for these new restrictions, AB 1893 eases certain affordability requirements and offers Builder’s Remedy applicants more explicit protection from common tactics used by opponents of Builder’s Remedy projects.
You need to pay attention better, read more, spout less.
Lurie specifically called for taller denser buildings to REPLACE the existing apartments in the Sunset, and there will be a rent-control to market-rate jump for each and every single displaced working class tenant because THERE ARE NO PROTECTIONS AGAINST IT, and in fact what few there were have been stripped out by Engardio personally. It’s a sellout to development that benefits Billionaire PE scumbags and displaces real SF west side locals. Pretending it’s only going to happen along already gentrified corridors is laughably mistaken to the point of being deliberate misinformation. Read better.
the street is t big enough for that kind of development.
I used to cycle along the Great Highway. Now it has street furniture, stupid sculptures, and pedestrians wandering all over the place and, worst of all, deep drifts of blown sand. Meanwhile walkers have abandoned the perfectly good walkway alongside the road. I now cycle along the Avenues, putting up with the frequent stop signs…. This is progress????
such a waste of money for a position that the district will vote for next year. tsk tsk.
Money is already spent. So you either waste it by not completing the recall, or you get the liar out of office and we get another year of possibly actually having a rep.
What happens if next year the mayor proposes another round of budget cuts? Will the mayoral appointee occupying the D4 seat stand up for critical Sunset programs?
They would reflect poorly on themselves and on the Mayor if they didn’t represent their district appropriately, so I’d imagine Lurie isn’t a complete idiot and understands that he’d need to find a balance if they would want to win a full election the next year.
You think keeping a corrupt liar in place is “better” than someone Lurie would pick, knowing that pick reflects on him politically down the road? I understand not trusting Lurie, but you are defacto putting trust in a known liar ‘instead’ in ‘defending’ Engardio from the will of his own constituency.
If they vote to remove him, and I think it’s very close but he’ll probably squeak by on last minute Billionaire-funded PR and puffery, but if they cut through all his BS and Sam Singering you can’t deny that they know what they’re doing. It’s about respect, and Engardio has none for the Sunset, or people who follow his statements and grade them wholly true or baldfaced lies. He is literally a gaslighter beholden to Billionaire masters. The Sunset wasn’t happy with Mar, but this was a manchurian candidate and the ones with two gray cells to rub together can see it plainly. He’s a trojan whorse. ANYONE Lurie picks will have a year to make or break their tenure there. ANYONE will do a better job than Engardio.
recalling someone 32 months into a 48 month term? talk about waste!
The recall supporters have become rude and and act like vigilantes. This is beyond policy, it is deeply personal against Engardio, who is up for election next year. It has torn apart neighbors and cost millions of dollars.
My “principle” is this: whoever insists on leaving junk propaganda on my property earns my enmity. The recall ladies rang my doorbell…I told them to leave nothing. They left, leaving nothing. We were not present when the Joel folks came; they left a leaflet.
My principle is my principle in this race.
eh, I am not sure I understand the hand-wringing tone of this article. Recalls have long been part of our democratic process and are useful when elected officials get way out of step with their constituents. That is what happened with the school board, the DA and now the supervisor. It is just a normal part of the political process and not some sort of ominous shot across the bow.
Came for the angry No on K people in the comments, and was not disappointed!! Even if Joel gets recalled, you will still be stuck with the beautiful park! Sucks to suck!
Actually, reading your other comments here, I’d say you’re the one who sounds angry.
The beach path always existed, tourist transplant celebrating corruption.
I wonder if doing the racism of siting drug and psych treatment Permanent Supportive Housing on top of Marshall Elementary and its at risk student population will bloody the water sufficiently to attract the deep pocketed SFUSD recallers’ attention.