Against the backdrop of the typical Sunset morning fog at the Ortega Branch Library, Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz, an arts and music teacher and former pet-shop owner, was sworn in on Thursday, her 29th birthday.
She is the newest San Francisco city supervisor, representing the Westside neighborhoods of District 4, including the Sunset and Parkside.
Mayor Daniel Lurie said his unconventional choice, a Sunset lifer with no political experience, would provide “accountable leadership;” she is of the Sunset, by the Sunset and for the Sunset.
Alcaraz has never worked in city government, or even been involved in a political campaign. Her first city job will be a hard one: Sunset residents recalled their prior supervisor, Joel Engardio, for his support of closing the Great Highway.
Alcaraz, who owned the Animal Connection pet shop for six years, and most recently taught art and music to children in an enrichment program, has no political baggage of the sort that sank her predecessor. She is also a nearly complete unknown among politically active San Franciscans.
“My first reaction was, ‘Who is that?’” said Jamie Hughes, the campaign manager of the Engardio recall. “People are definitely disappointed. There are lots of community leaders who did lots of work in the Sunset, who are ready to take the job.”
“Nobody knows her,” Hughes continued. “Does [Lurie] take the job of a supervisor seriously, by appointing someone with no political experience?”
It’s great, says former District 4 supervisor Gordon Mar, that Alcaraz has roots in the community and has a “big heart and love for animals and people alike.”
However, Mar called the appointment of Alcaraz, who has no prior political experience, “unusual.”
“Representing District 4 on the Board of Supervisors is a major leap for someone without experience navigating the complex and often contentious issues facing San Francisco,” Mar said.
Alcaraz, who is of Filipina-Chinese heritage, does not speak Chinese. Her voting record in San Francisco is spotty: She did not cast a ballot in last year’s Democratic primary, a loaded ballot featuring myriad state and local issues as well as the presidential contest. She also did not vote in the February 2022 election featuring the school board recall and a State Assembly contest, nor in the November 2019 municipal election featuring races for mayor, DA, school board and five ballot propositions.
A poll surveyed District 4 before the appointment to gauge Alcaraz’s favorability: District voters on Oct. 20 were queried about a woman whose background and ethnicity match Alcaraz’s, but with the pseudonym “Sarah Reyes.” It seems the woman polled well: Three weeks later, Alcaraz is supervisor.
Albert Chow, an outspoken recall supporter and hardware store owner, was also in the running for the seat and had three interviews with Lurie’s team. He says he received a call from Lurie last night informing him that he would not be appointed — but Chow said he will run for the seat in 2026 anyway.
Natalie Gee, a 40-year-old San Francisco native, fluent Chinese speaker and the chief of staff for District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, officially declared her candidacy on Oct. 28. Gee says she had never heard of Alcaraz until Lurie’s announcement: “I look forward to meeting her,” she said.
Pressing issues
Recall supporters made it clear on the campaign trail and at community meetings that they want a supervisor who will reopen the Great Highway and vote no on the mayor’s upzoning plan.
The new supervisor will need to hit the ground running on both hot-button issues. On Thursday, Alcaraz seemed ready.
“Our neighborhood isn’t impressed by who worked on what campaign or how long you’ve been in politics,” Alcaraz said today. “We want to be represented by real, down-to-earth people with community ties. People who experience life in the same way we do in a unique neighborhood full of working class, monolingual, multigenerational families.”
When it comes to the Great Highway and the mayor’s upzoning plan, she said she wants to listen.
“I don’t want people to just feel included. I want to actually include them,” she said. “As your supervisor, if that means working toward a compromise on the Great Highway, then that’s what we’ll do. If that means making an amendment to the zoning plan to strengthen it and help us maintain local control, I’m prepared to take that action.”
Undoing last year’s Prop. K and putting cars back onto what is now called Sunset Dunes, however, would require a second citywide vote — to undo a ballot measure that passed 55-45. Supporters of the park today made it clear that they consider putting cars back on the highway to be a “park closure” and not a “compromise.”
As for the upzoning plan, Alcaraz’s hypothetical proposed amendments remain unknown. But, like the mayor, she has noted that failure to pass an adequate upzoning plan will result in a state takeover and “50-story skyscrapers where they should not be.”
‘Grit and care’
Lurie described Alcaraz as someone who has the “grit and care” needed at City Hall, and said she loves the Sunset the same way he loves San Francisco.
“I see someone who is not a career politician but has spent her life in service to this community. She doesn’t owe anyone anything other than the people who live right here in the Sunset,” he said. “She has the work ethic, the small business experience, and a deep understanding of the cultural fabric of this neighborhood.”
Alcaraz, a graduate of Holy Name School and St. Ignatius, became a Sunset pet shop owner at 22 and has long been a music teacher; she began taking lessons on the piano at age three. Being a small business owner taught her patience, she said, and made her “a problem solver and a good listener.”
Alcaraz was born and raised in the Sunset. Her family initially lived in a downstairs unit at her great aunt’s house on 45th Avenue and Lawton Street. She shared a bed with her mom and sister, while her dad slept on a cot, until her parents finally saved enough money to buy a house of their own from a neighbor across the street.
“It’s important to me that families like mine continue to be able to buy homes in this neighborhood and pass them on to their children,” she said. Now, Alcaraz still lives with her parents, but owns a home with her sister.
An unfamiliar name
For many Sunset residents and neighborhood leaders, Alcaraz is an unfamiliar name. “She’s a little bit unknown outside of her business,” said Laurance Lee, a former candidate for the school board and the Democratic Party Central Committee. “It’s going to be an effort for people to try to know anything about where she stands.”
During her seven-minute-long speech at the courtyard outside the Ortega Branch Library, Alcaraz touched on street safety and cleanliness, increasing foot traffic for small businesses, and keeping parks and playgrounds accessible. “We have to ensure that people can still drive to work and get to the doctor. That affordable housing exists for the next generation,” she added.
Alcaraz doesn’t yet have a Chinese name, nor does she speak any Chinese, said her mom, Jackie. In District 4, where many residents are monolingual Chinese-speakers, Alcaraz will need staff who can help her communicate with these constituents, community leaders agreed.
“In an ideal world, we would love somebody who speaks the language,” said Lily Wong of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District. “But what’s more important is somebody who hears the community, gets the culture and gets the interests.”
Dawn Stueckle, executive director of the nonprofit Sunset Youth Services, also felt hopeful after hearing Alcaraz’s pledge that she will listen to Sunset residents and include them in conversations.
“It’s really important for anybody who is the supervisor of this district to understand that this district consists of multiple neighborhoods,” said Stueckle, who has worked in the Sunset for decades. “It is not one giant neighborhood. There’s so many different identities and priorities. And that makes it difficult to be one supervisor with one set of policies.”
This, ostensibly, shouldn’t be news to Sunset lifer Alcaraz.
Poppy Gilman, a business owner on Noriega Street, just gave the mayor’s office a nudge earlier this week to appoint someone. While she doesn’t know anything about Alcaraz, Gilman said she is impressed that the supervisor just walked up to the mayor and recommended herself for the job.
She hopes Alcaraz, with the experience of owning a business, could push for initiatives to help small businesses in the Sunset: Cutting red tape, reducing taxes, working with the state to provide commercial tenant protections.
But Gilman is worried that with big issues such as upzoning and the Great Highway on her plate, Alcaraz won’t be able to get to any of those things — and she will soon have a campaign to run.
A birthday gift
Alcaraz will run for the seat in June 2026, to fill out the remainder of Engardio’s term. If she wins, she will run again in November 2026 for the next four-year term. The race has already started to become contentious: Gee, the District 10 legislative aide and Sunset resident, filed paperwork to run for the seat last week. Chow, the recall supporter and hardware store owner, has also said he’ll run.
Jim Ross, a longtime Bay Area political strategist, said Alcaraz is in for a test. “This would be really challenging even for a previously established person,” Ross said. “A huge challenge for someone who has never run for election before and doesn’t understand the system.”
With much still up in the air, Ross and fellow consultant David Ho both said Lurie’s pick for Alcaraz is “high risk, high reward.”
On the one hand, Alcaraz has no political base of her own, Ross explained. But if she gets re-elected, Lurie will likely “have an ally” on the Board of Supervisors for seven years. “You’re not independent until you’re elected on your own by voters,” Ross said.
On Thursday, surrounded by her family, Alcaraz stepped into the job that she lobbied the mayor for at the Sunset After Dark night market just a little over a month ago. She made a promise to some 60 audience members, including former District 4 supervisors Katy Tang and Carmen Chu, who were also appointed to the job at age 29 — albeit with years of government experience.
“Too many of these decisions have been made without us from the top down,” she said. “I believe the Sunset has shown we are ready to rally from the ground up.”
As someone born and raised in the Sunset and now raising a family in the Richmond, I hope more housing is added to the west side – which will help small businesses on Balboa, Irving, Clement, Taraval, Geary, Noriega, etc – and that Sunset Dunes remains a park. I drive and used to use the Great Highway as a nice route south to visit family, but this has been a worthwhile trade off. Move us forward Beya! Not backwards.
But that fake, park has added traffic, to the side streets. When it comes up for a ballot to remove it, let the residences, of that area, vote on it, since it impacts, their lives.
And reduced safety in the district, all via a pack of lies.
The courts will have to take up the skipping of CEQA and the lies told that resulted in Billionaire dark PAC money being funneled into a quasi-illegal proposition that was intentionally dishonest in every single advertised aspect.
So you’re not a daily commuter impacted by the closure really, and you buy into YIMBY propaganda about adding top of market rate housing and displacing long existing family housing that is affordable and already paid for by long term sunset residents and family businesses is somehow going to make things better for said businesses…
Forwards means knowing WTF you’re even headed toward, and you do not.
Her voting record alone should disqualify her.
A non-voter named a supervisor is not a comforting thought.
Exactly
Highlighting the perils of not passing a plan is code for, after the sturm and drang of amendments, she’ll sign the Mayor’s upzoning plan. Offering the “No on K” folks another chance to lose at the ballot box costs nothing and will be a salve when her voting aligns with the Mayor.
K will be struck judicially. You don’t pick and choose which laws you follow.
Non, mon frère. Judicial record and challenges to propositions subjected to voter determination has demonstrated — without fail — that the courts pay great deference to the majority vote.
K was sanctioned and endorsed by the CA Coastal Commission and their legal counsel as a means to advance coastal access. A judicial invalidation of K is a fallacy perpetuated by Peskin-for-Mayor and Open the Great Highway allies.
“I shall sculpt her in my image.”
I am happy she’s open to listening and compromise despite zero experience, but the latter is going to get her steamrolled either into lockstep or oblivion. Lurie picked her for a reason but did anyone get him on the record of what that reason IS? Seriously who were his other top contenders? His process was vague and opaque and doesn’t even… really make a ton of sense unless there’s a hidden pretext we don’t see. Does she have friends in his administration?
Muckrakers we need some muck raked pronto.
That upzoning will likely pass come hell or high water, and it’s unlikely that Sunset Dunes will budge. No one in the Sunset wants to be holding the bag when that comes down, and the fact she expressed interest in the role in the immediate time horizon may have been enough.
The Great Highway removal was not legal as it required CEQA review and it’s actually a State planning concern. Upzoning may pass but it’s unlikely to actually take place at the scale to meet the arbitrary 82,000 number. The entire thing is academic politics pushed by a monied agenda for profit of same. Her expressed interest in listening is not nearly enough. Sunset will not take less than representation and a fighter for the west side’s rights.
” met her at a night market and promoted her to D4 supe.” Lurie is either lying, and hiding his pretext, or (worse) admitting to extreme thoughtlessness and really terrible strategy. I’m pretty sure it’s the former, and Lurie is lying about the pretext: she has no record, he can sculpt her in his image, and if she’s a sacrificial candidate for his Rich Family Zoning Plan, and loses to the established candidate, Natalie Gee, in June or November, oh well, she wasn’t a politico anyways, no big deal.
My guess is Lurie needed a sacrifice to case some unpopular votes, lose in June, and then the oligarchy machine can put forward their REAL candidate for November, pump them full of money, and try and win the next term against Natalie Gee, even if it’s without the benefit of incumbency.
Weird for the mayor to meet some rando and a market and appoint them to such an important position. Seems like Lurie is just trying to be cool like Mamdani but just doesn’t have the swagger.
But Lurie is even richer than Mamdani.
I think this is a bold and innovative choice for Supe, and I hope that she can help drive the Board, which has become much more reasonable and moderate of late.
Being from a rich family ain’t bad if you can be a class traitor. Also, Mamdani isn’t “rich,” it’s a ridic comparison, Lurie is a freaking OLIGARCH. If you wanna be fair you could stretch and call Zo “cultural elite” as he’s the child of a filmmaker and an academic. But in 2025, when 1 in 4 new yorkers live in poverty, financial stability is mistaken for “wealth.” Don’t get it twisted.
PS, moderates lose to fascists, every time, — which was the story of 2024– because they offer no alternative to the fascists’ empty promise of right-wing populism. The chess moves have been played and the pendulum is swinging, watch your head.
It’s the new Jessica Ho!
Good! He picked someone that is a native of that area. Also, when the prop. comes on ballot, or should I say they have a special election, to undo that fake park, that none of the Sunset or even the Richmond district residents wanted, let the people from that, area/district vote on it.