Concluding the game show-like process to name the next Sunset supervisor, Mayor Daniel Lurie will hand his rose to Alan Wong.
Wong will be the third District 4 supervisor since October, following the recall of Joel Engardio and the one-week tenure of Engarido’s replacement, Beya Alcaraz.
He is a native of the Sunset and previously served as a legislative aide to District 4 supervisor Gordon Mar. Wong was elected to the City College board of trustees in both 2020 and 2024 with backing from labor and progressive organizations.
Wong, 38, has 15 years of military experience and presently serves as a first lieutenant in the California National Guard. In the event President Donald Trump deploys the guard to Wong’s own city, he has said he would ask to be spared from the mission “as a matter of conscience.”
“I’m stepping up to be District 4 supervisor because I believe the Sunset, and San Francisco, can thrive again,” he said in a statement on Sunday. “This is my home. This community invested in me, and I’m ready to invest everything back into it.”
After growing up in District 4, Wong purportedly moved back into the district in recent months. As he did not live in the district during the September recall election, he did not vote in it.
The Sunday announcement crowns a lengthy and awkward process brought about by the overwhelming recall of Engardio, who got on the wrong side of two-thirds of his constituents by spearheading Proposition K, which transformed the Upper Great Highway into an oceanfront park.
While Engardio’s recall was widely anticipated, Lurie did not have a successor at hand. Nineteen days after Engardio left office, the mayor jolted the city on Nov. 6 by naming an unknown, Alcaraz, to the position.
Alcaraz’s occupation as the former owner of the Animal Connection pet store was the crux of her public life, and allegations soon emerged in the San Francisco Standard of appalling conditions there and teetering finances.
Alcaraz resigned hours after Mission Local published an article Nov. 13 in which she texted about paying workers “under the table,” skimping on taxes and writing off nights on the town as a business expense.
Following the confidential process that resulted in Alcaraz’s appointment sans key vetting, the mayor’s office shifted to a highly public, even game show-like process in which five so-called “finalists” were given public tasks and made to participate in public events.
Those finalists were Natalie Gee, Supervisor Shamann Walton’s chief of staff; Wong; Albert Chow, a hardware store owner; Ike Kwon, the former chief operating officer at the California Academy of Sciences; and Wannong “Tiffany” Deng, who sits on the city’s Asian Art Commission.
The vetting process was, in large part, transferred to the public and the media. Deng was out of the running shortly after Mission Local noted that she was, until 2022, a registered Republican — and failed to vote in nine consecutive municipal elections.
Mission Local published an article yesterday in which Chow admitted he “plain forgot” to file tax returns multiple years for his nonprofit.
Sources had told Mission Local earlier this week that Kwon and Gee were no longer in the running. Gee’s participation in the process was always confusing. She is a staunch labor progressive with views that clash with Lurie’s on key issues, and her ties to labor would be problematic for the mayor heading into a likely series of budget clashes.
Wong’s list of endorsees from his most recent City College board run also indicates broad labor support. In City College board races, however, organized labor tends to fall in line behind the candidate preferred by AFT Local 2121, the union representing City College workers.
This renders Wong’s future relationship with the spectrum of city labor — on the cusp of what promises to be a series of budget battles between labor and the mayor’s office — difficult to predict.
It is unknown how Wong feels about the CEO tax presently favored by labor and city progressives. In a 2020 questionnaire, Wong favored a prior iteration of the CEO tax, and also called for reallocating 25 percent of the San Francisco Police Department budget.
Wong has been coy on whether he wishes to put the Great Highway back on the ballot, but has admitted that he personally voted no on Prop. K to transform the highway into Sunset Dunes Park.
While Wong’s position on the mayor’s upzoning plan is not fully known, back-of-the-envelope math would indicate that Lurie has already garnered his requisite six votes to pass the legislation.
If Wong were to be spared a vote on the upzoning plan, it would figure to enhance his electability in District 4. Wong will have to run again for the seat in June 2026. Gee and former Assembly hopeful David Lee are among a handful of declared candidates.
“From the very beginning, I’ve been clear about the kind of Supervisor District 4 needs: Someone who lives and breathes the district, and someone who can build bridges within it,” Lurie said in a statement. “Alan Wong is that person, and I am proud to appoint him as the new District 4 supervisor.”
He will be sworn in on Monday.
He was probably the safest option. Progressive on a number of issues, but also able to work with the current Mayor and Board. Hopefully not a performance artist who will hold press conferences for dead cats (RIP KitKat) while real human death and misery unfolds a block away.
Once it was discovered the other guy didn’t pay taxes on his NONPROFIT for 6 years, it was over.
There are more than 5 people qualified for the job in the Sunset.
Lurie looked at a handful and didn’t even vet them multiple times.
This is just embarrassing. Wong has already sworn fealty to gentrification.
He claims he’ll use amendments to protect his district. Total neophyte.
The shtshow continues.
So if the National Guard is deployed to San Francisco and Wong’s request to be exempted from being deployed “as a matter of conscience” is denied, will he resign his commission or follow whatever orders he is given?
“If Wong were to be spared a vote on the upzoning plan, it would figure to enhance his electability in District 4.”
That’s not what the job is. You don’t get to dodge that vote. It’s important.
Sir or madam —
If Lurie has six votes lined up, forcing that seventh vote is a choice. You think Nancy Pelosi made everyone vote on every damaging bit of legislation when she had the votes to win? Or did she think ahead?
JE
Supervisors HAVE to vote yes or no on every agenda item unless they’re excused from a conflict or from the meeting.
Remember when the supes were voting on whether to include gender conforming surgery in the City’s health plan back in the day and the Sheriffs had to practically pry Gerardo Sandoval from his office to vote?
Marcos —
Being given leeway to vote no is what I’m talking about.
Best,
JE
“If Lurie has six votes lined up, forcing that seventh vote is a choice.”
Oh I fully understood that, though I doubt he’d be “forced” quite as it’s a choice once he’s appointed. I don’t think Wong should be allowed, politically speaking as far as constituents holding him to account down the line, to abstain from having and voting his position on this. He purportedly represents the Sunset and this is a major, major change to the district that is more or less being forced from the outside in, top down. I think any Sunset representative has to take a position on this plan, or they’re not actually doing that job. My $0.02, and I understand the political calculus that says it’s easier to avoid a tough stance than to stand up for what is right, or against what is wrong. Given the recent political trajectory of this candidate in particular, I think the decision will be made as defensively self-serving and face-saving as is possible and he will ride both sides of that fence as long as is possible. That’s politics. The Sunset is rather sick of that type, IMO.
I do appreciate you for exposing the question and the ramifications both political and physical for our fair Sunset.
Sir or madam —
You can’t abstain from a vote but you can be given dispensation by your appointing authority to vote one way or another.
JE
Yes. I realize. I was unclear on that.
The mayor appointed someone who just moved to the district in October?!?! Such a slap in the face
Nothing to see here folks – just some run-of-the-mill Nativist NIMBY Nonsense™.
^ The heck is this YIMBY trying to insult people?
If you have nothing to say, say nothing.