The anti-recall effort was a lot of things, but it wasn’t cost-effective.
Despite raising three times the money of the recallers, last week 63 percent of District 4 voters decided to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio.
And, while “it’s always easier to be against something than to be for something,” as political strategist David Ho put it, it turns out it was much, much cheaper to be against Engardio, too.
The recall supporters spent just $368,180 to get rid of Engardio, $124,658 less than it took to elect him in the first place, back in 2022. That spend — $27.61 per vote — was also about a quarter of what the anti-recall side spent per vote failing to convince voters to keep Engardio on.
“The money didn’t matter at that point: It had shifted from a political campaign to a movement,” said Jim Ross, a veteran political consultant. “No amount of money could have stopped that.”
The recall was successful in part because Engardio had alienated his base by championing Prop. K to close the Great Highway, and that created an angry and energized electorate — a movement.
“You don’t need millions of dollars to run a district campaign,” said Eric Jaye, a political consultant. “The energy you need can easily be generated if the underlying issue is vital enough to people in that district.”
To that point, this recall’s smashing success makes it all the more likely that more recalls could happen.
“Without a doubt, it’s a message to every elected official in San Francisco: You can ignore the will of the voters, but you do so at your own peril,” said Jaye.
Here are some data takeaways from the recall election results.
1. Recall campaign spent 1/4 as much per vote as Engardio did
The anti-recall campaign spent $105.16 per vote, whereas the recall campaign spent just $27.16 per vote.
That $105.16 outlay was driven by a handful of wealthy tech donors, including Chris Larsen (who contributed $200,000), Jeremy Stoppelman (who contributed $175,000) and John Wolthius (who contributed $100,000). Those big donations bolstered the anti-recall efforts.
Overall, the anti-recall campaign raised a total of $829,099, whereas the recall camp relied on smaller donations and gathered a total of $257,090.
What the recall campaign lacked in money, it made up for in volunteers and field operations. Even on election day, the recall side had far more volunteers getting out the vote across the district.
The anti-recall campaign chose not to put people into the field after a pre-dawn literature drop, leaving Engardio to knock on doors on his own.
Likewise, the 2022 campaign to elect Engardio ran a higher bill than the recall: about $36 per vote. Still, around the same number of people voted for Engardio as did for the recall. In 2022, 13,643 people ranked Engardio as their first choice; this year, 13,332 supported the recall.
That’s despite District 4 turnout being higher in 2022, at 50.80 percent for the supervisor race. For the 2025 recall, only 42.2 percent of the electorate turned out.
2. A majority of voters in every single District 4 precinct voted to oust Engardio
When the Department of Elections published the preliminary recall election results at 8:45 p.m. last Tuesday, they were decisive. Even with 27 percent of the ballots outstanding, there wasn’t a statistical chance Engardio could make up the difference.
In every precinct, at least 50 percent of voters supported the recall.
3. Almost as many D4 voters supported the recall as supported Prop. K
In November 2024, 13,360 District 4 voters voted for Prop. K (23,480 voted against it).
In 2025, 13,332 voters opted to oust Engardio.
But the key factor here, once again, is wildly variant turnout. In November last year, overall turnout reached 74.2 percent, whereas for the recall election, it was only 42.2 percent.
4. The precincts that most supported the recall were Engardio’s home base
The precincts spanning Lakeshore and Merced Manor, the southernmost areas of the district, were the most supportive of the recall. In one of them, a whopping 80 percent of voters supported the recall.
Those precincts also happen to represent Engardio’s home base — and the precincts that got him elected in the first place. Those precincts were grafted into District 4 when the city’s political map was redistricted in 2022. So was Engardio; he lives there.
Correction: We’ve updated the totals in this piece to reflect money spent rather than money raised.
mmm…democracy in action. Gotta love it.
Engardio sucks, sure, driving your car all the time in San Francisco also sucks. I admit that muni in d4 also also sucks. I think that fixing muni in d4 is the only long term solution to crappy d4 commutes. Don’t know how that can be accomplished technically. My two cents
Closing major thoroughfares doesn’t help anyone. People are going to drive because they have places to go that MUNI doesn’t go, period. You can be upset about the existence of cars if you want but you’re wasting your mind on something that will be there long after you’re transplanted somewhere else. Trying to force public transportation by fiat is stupid. If it worked as advertised, people would be using it on that basis. It’s also a massive source of wasted revenue in the City compared to other major cities, because we have a culture of rewarding incompetence and goldbricking at City Hall that Breed and Ed Lee exacerbated rather than fixing. The fact that we’re only now getting rid of Tumlin after he lied repeatedly on the job is absolutely gobsmacking. “Fixing” MUNI means being realistic, not religious. That means cuts where it’s not working and shoring up where it does, not “anything goes” and we have to charge $5 fares to make it up. The status quo is not sustainable and the divisiveness of YIMBY tools pushing road closures and other BS for faux-environmentalism only adds to the frustrations of everyday residents going about their lives. We don’t support their religion as the God they worship is Developer $, not pragmatism.
Oh no I wasted my mind! Fiddle sticks!
I lived right over there at 47th until god granted me the opportunity to move away. If I needed to drive south I took sunset. If I needed to go north I took chain of lakes. Not a big deal in my experience. Difference with great highway was like 10 or 15 minutes tops.
Since we’re bringing Lee/breed/teal into it who is going to fix city hall then? The hardware store guy?
Citywide vote, that road is now a park. Might get changed back but I wouldn’t take that bet.
It’s cool if you’re native to the city but anyone with a valid voter registration gets a vote, and you know what? We voted!
No, the Highway is a State concern. You voted on a misleading pack of lies that bypassed CEQA illegally and you know what? If we voted as a City to turn the Castro into a Zoo, that alone wouldn’t make it legal.
You don’t understand, it’s ok. If convincing urbanist yuppies that YIMBY scams and lies weren’t in their best interest was a requirement of democracy, democracy would fail. Their heads are just wedged too tight up in there to understand how the world actually works.
I absolutely trust “the hardware store guy” over LIAR JOEL ENGARDIO and his Billionaire-backed YIMBY TOOL BAG.
Any day. For starters, Chow has yet to lie to our faces.
That puts him heads and shoulders over your choice.
A citywide vote based on lies that violates State law is not actually the unimpeachable bulletproof referendum you seem to think it is. Ask Joel about chutzpah when you see him in the unemployment line..
No WE voted, and Liar Joel is gone, and now the illegal CEQA-bypassing is being examined in court and will be overturned, FTFY.
You can vote that the Sun is actually a moon all you like, but that doesn’t mean it will stand in the light of day.
God “grants you the opportunity” again… anytime.
Shilling for liars isn’t God’s work.
Thank you, LPE. If only the City’s transit first leaders would focus on making Muni financially solvent, consistently clean, safe and efficient (express service would help D4) – instead of punishing automobile users, we would actually be improving life in the city for all residents. What a concept. Yep – 1st class transit and smart, strategic cycling infrastructure can be pursued alongside tolerance of auto use. But this all requires meeting the world where it is – and tossing the urban planning playbook into the bay.
The YIMBY transplants don’t believe you have a right to personal transportation – they want to control your life because they think they know better than you how it should be lived.
This is one reason why America absolutely loathes YIMBY tools.
God I love the fact that the liar got his butt kicked. We need more of that.
Extremely satisfying for Democracy.
Long live the Sunset – suffer no fools or liars! Dan Lurie take note, we are WATCHING.
Yeah watching the mayor like you watch your parking spot, I’m sure he’s quaking with fear
He’s elected by voters, we are voters, we showed our power and kicked your lying sniveling Billionaire boyfriend to the curb. Sorry!
Our votes will be heard long after your whining moves away.
It’s pretty simple, even for a YIMBY tool to understand:
If he wants to keep his job he’ll listen to his constituents.
Joel stans forgot that part.
(You may continue your anti-car blathering now, says the 1st Amendment.)
I see, so you’re one of the anti-car hippies who whine all day long.
Noted.
No, we’re watching the Mayor to see if he lives up to his campaign promises and rhetoric, which the last one failed to do.
Nothing you’d be interested in as a mindless zealot, of course.
I applaud Mayor Lurie for recognizing that voters in this town feel certain city leaders have been enacting policy on them – not with them. This is the essence of why we recalled Engardio. This is essentially what needs to change city-wide.
Item: Leland Yee
Item: Ed Jew
Item: Joel Engardio
Item: Scott Wiener
Item: Daniel Lurie
Item: London Breed
I am glad that D4 recalled Engardio. But D4 needs to sit down for a moment and think about their electoral actions over the past couple of decades before getting all high and mighty, reading the riot act to the rest of the City that has been and is being subjected to D4’s sketchy electoral will.
I don’t see anyone in the Sunset calling for big changes in districts that aren’t the Sunset district, as if we’d override other districts own self-representation and determinations. That’s exactly what I’m NOT hearing out of D4.
What we want is respect for our district’s choices and way of life, not being relegated to a playground for daytripping yuppies from elsewhere or a political football for urbanist YIMBY operations.
Breed treated us like a joke, Engardio followed. Well who laughs last?
I’m lovin the fact that the gerrymandered districts that were Engardio’s margin of victory ended up flipping on him decisively, brutally.