District 4 shaping up to be San Francisco’s loudest and silliest race. As predicted. 

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On the surface, District 4 often feels like a nice, quiet little beach community — and its denizens aim to keep it nice and quiet.

The semi-attached bungalows wend their way up and down the former dunes and everything comes to rest in the bosom of the Pacific Ocean. 

Don’t believe it. Like all those quaint bed-and-breakfasts frequented by Jessica Fletcher  — where people were invariably murdered (it was right there in the title: “Murder, She Wrote”) — there is anger here looming just beneath the sand. Seething anger. And that makes June’s special election hard to predict. 

But not impossible: Thus far, our predictions have been on the money. In December, we wrote that the race for District 4’s next supervisor would be a “bruising and reductive” contest and that’s sure as hell taking shape.

The District 4 special election is on course to be the loudest and silliest political contest in recent memory in San Francisco. We predicted this as well, and, lo, it has come to pass. 

As we laid it out last year, there were three major issues fueling this race — and making it so loud and silly. They are: 

• Re-litigating the mayor’s zoning plan; 

• Re-re-litigating the city-wide ballot measure to convert the Great Highway into highway-like park; 

• A fervent preoccupation with crime in one of the city’s safest neighborhoods. 

All of this is happening. And, to boot, fantastic amounts of money are being poured into this race, which acts as a force multiplier for the loudness and silliness. 

San Francisco has long been a costly place to do business and run campaigns. But, in recent years, the wealthiest among us have realized that the table stakes for politics are far, far lower than other preoccupations of the donor class.

As we put it before, for 1 to 2 percent of the cost of a Van Gogh, a wealthy individual or consortium of wealthy individuals can have a transformative effect on this city. 

Buying a politician, either legally or illegally, remains one of the last great bargains in San Francisco.    

In December, Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed Alan Wong to the vacant District 4 seat. Following the recalled Joel Engardio and the mayor’s disastrous installation of Beya Alcaraz, that Lady Jane Grey of San Francisco, Wong was the third District 4 supe in the course of four months. 

This level of turmoil befitting a Latin American junta is, again, incongruous for a nice, quiet little beach community. But, again, don’t believe it; this is a place where odd stuff happens.

District 4 voters have managed to elect two representatives who later spent time in federal prison: Leland Yee and Ed Jew. Other than Dan White, who murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the only supes to be incarcerated have been from District 4.

And, for what it’s worth, both of them went down for on-the-job crimes.

After redistricting shifted D4’s geographic and political terrain, Gordon Mar in 2022 became the first incumbent supervisor in the era of district elections to lose a re-election bid.

Joel Engardio, who beat Mar after being grafted into D4 along with three conservative-voting precincts, then became the first supervisor to be recalled after he championed putting Sunset Dunes up for a vote.

If not for the appointments of popular supervisors Carmen Chu and Katy Tang — two highly competent and highly undramatic public servants who had no designs on political life —  who knows what strange and terrible people the voters of District 4 may have elected?

In the era of district elections, no D4 supervisor has served two full terms. No district has run through more representatives than District 4.

So, there’s wildness here in the Sunset. If it’s not clear on a day-to-day basis, it’s crystal clear over time. 

In his first days on the job, Supervisor Alan Wong provided the seventh vote for a plan to upzone much of the city, including the Westside — a plan inducing a collective eye twitch across vast swaths of his district.

Wong followed that up by failing to wrangle a fourth signature on a proposed ballot measure that would have made the city’s voters re-do the vote on the Great Highway, which demonstrated a leaden political touch. 

As we put it in December, Wong — or, more accurately, his backers — would be less likely to focus on the limited achievements of a fledgling supe and, instead “deflect from Wong’s shortcomings … by attempting to render [challenger Natalie] Gee unelectable. This is already underway via attempts to immolate Natalie Gee as an anti-police extremist.”

And it continues: Last week, a Political Action Committee tied to Mayor Lurie plastered Sunset residents’ homes with a mailer emblazoned with an unflattering photo of Gee and adorned with quotes from the police union president claiming that Gee wants to take guns away from cops. 

Sounds like a crazy idea! It would be, but Gee has confirmed that the answer in the questionnaire cited by the police union boss is not a call to disarm police but, rather, for police to use less-lethal weapons when possible in lieu of guns. She does not support banning police from carrying guns because, again, that would be crazy.

Funny thing, though: In that same 2020 questionnaire, Wong called for the police budget to be cut by 25 percent. He also did not support arming the San Francisco Police Department with Tasers. If anything, his answers on policing were more progressive than Gee’s. 

Also, once more with feeling, it’s not The Bronx 1977 redux in the Outer Sunset. It is one of the safest parts of a safe city. Even in recent years, you could skate from 19th Avenue to La Playa on broken auto glass — but, in 2026, even property crimes are way down.

So, a hyperbolic focus on public safety is reductive and silly. As is the notion that a district supervisor with a staff of four is the focal point for issues of crime, punishment and police staffing, all of which are centralized matters under the aegis of the mayor. 

Politicians’ views evolve, and there are nuanced discussions to be had about public safety. But they’re not happening here.

No matter what your feelings on the mayor’s upzoning plan, that’s a done deal. 

One could argue that Great Highway/Sunset Dunes is a relevant issue as the vast majority of District 4 residents voted in opposition to the formation of the park, and it’s likely we’ll be voting again in November after a signature-gathering drive.

But nearly 55 percent of voters approved this park not quite two years ago. It’s fanciful to think that, after thousands of voters have visited it — and gotten used to it —  that a majority of them will turn around and vote to tear it out and reinstall a windswept highway.

And yet, these are the issues getting the most play in this race: Hand-waving about a done-deal zoning plan, calling for the installation of a Great Highway on top of Great Highway and pushing distorted and hyperbolic crime narratives during a time of citywide and nationwide crime reductions.

But it gets better: All of this is being undertaken through a tsunami of third-party cash. 

Vast sums of money are flowing into the sleepy Sunset to further rile everyone up. In a sign of possible ranked-choice voting machinations to come, Wong’s opponents last week linked arms to protest what they decried as a potential million-dollar buy-in for a six-month gig (whomever wins in June must run again in November). 

The ascendant political strategy in San Francisco is to carpet-bomb even district-level elections with torrents of cash.

As you’d suspect, it is usually more beneficial to be rich and famous than poor and unknown. But big-dollar gifts from the usual suspects of wealthy donors did little to save Engardio.

The notion of Uncle Pennybags removing his spats and rolling up his striped trousers to spread his dollars in the nice, quiet little beach community of District 4 may even have been counterproductive. 

The antipathy voters felt for Engardio does not likely mirror their feelings for the newcomer Wong. So it remains to be seen if that dynamic will be repeated in June. 

That’s something to watch. How this all turns out will be, to adapt the Arte Johnson line, very interesting. But silly.