After two years of road rage in the Outer Sunset, the Great Highway is starting to take a back seat.
At Thursday night’s District 4 debate, hosted by Mission Local in the Outer Sunset, the aim of most candidates was clear: Bring the incumbent supervisor, Alan Wong, down a peg or two just about a month till the June 2 election.
At multiple points in the night, candidates criticized Wong for taking stances unpopular with the Sunset, like supporting Mayor Daniel Lurie’s upzoning plan.
When Mission Local reporter and moderator Junyao Yang asked each candidate how they would amend Lurie’s upzoning plan now that it has passed, some used it as an opportunity to attack Wong.
“I was disappointed when the Family Zoning Plan was voted in approval by our appointed supervisor on his second day,” said David Lee, an educator.
Small-business owner and the initiator of the Engardio recall Albert Chow, and City Hall and legislative aide Natalie Gee, wore their stances against the plan as a badge of honor: Both said they told Lurie, when he was considering who to appoint for the seat left vacant by Joel Engardio, that they would have voted against the upzoning plan if appointed.
“But that’s also why I didn’t get the job,” Gee said, drawing a laugh from the audience.
“You and me both,” Chow chimed in.
School administrator Jeremy Greco, too, used his time for the upzoning question to accuse Wong of failing to protect duplexes — which are commonplace in the Sunset — and failing to support low-income housing.
“I voted on my second day to support the family zoning plan,” Wong said sternly. Two days after being appointed by Mayor Lurie, he joined six other supervisors to pass the plan. “I believe that was the practical and responsible vote to take,” Wong said.
Because four of the five candidates, including Wong, agree that the Great Highway should reopen to cars, other points carried through much of the evening.
In fact, when Yang asked in the first question of the night whether candidates would “continue pushing this issue” if voters again decide to keep the Great Highway closed to cars, most said they would let sleeping dogs lie.
This hypothetical may well play out: Chow, Lee, Gee, and Wong support re-opening the road to weekday traffic — they call it a “compromise” — and an effort including all four to do just that is mounting. But on Thursday, none said they would move to put the question of Great Highway traffic back on the ballot again if this effort fails.
“We have a lot of things that we need to work on” besides the Great Highway, said Gee, an apparent softening on the issue: She had just, days earlier, said she was not so sure.
“What changed?” Yang asked. Gee said the district had other priorities and should, if dealt a defeat, move on from an issue that has divided the neighborhood for the last two years.
At least one thing has changed for Gee: Sunset Dunes stalwart Lucas Lux, who attended Mission Local’s forum, endorsed her in a surprise move, citing her stance on other issues like pedestrian safety and transit.
Even Chow, who started the recall after Engardio championed the ballot measure that created Sunset Dunes, and was a chief proponent of keeping the Great Highway open to cars, said he would not relitigate the issue if it lost at the ballot box.
The 90-minute forum, held by Mission Local at the Ortega Branch Library in the Outer Sunset, was the latest of some half-dozen debates the five candidates have participated in, and one of the last before the June 2 primary.
The race is largely between Gee and Wong, and money has flocked to both: Each has raised roughly $120,000 from individual donors, but Wong is also backed by some $540,000 in PAC money, about half of which comes from billionaire and San Francisco Standard chairman Michael Moritz.
Gee has her own third-party support in the form of a labor PAC, which has put in $300,000. She and other candidates have made money an issue in the race: They held a press conference last week to call out the PAC money backing Wong, partly because it includes a quarter-million dollar donation from pro-Trump billionaire Jan Koum.
The winner of the District 4 election will sit on the Board of Supervisors for just six months, at which point the seat will be up for reelection again.
This leaves a strange calculus for the four Outer Sunset hopefuls seeking to oust Wong: There is an implicit hope that incumbency and a short stint as supervisor in a notoriously fickle district will earn Wong nothing now, but work in their own favor once they are in that same position come November.
And, later in the night, Chow and Gee again set their sights on Wong.
“Why did you take the big money?” asked Chow.
“I think you need to understand campaign finance,” Wong replied. “Those are independent expenditures,” he said, over which he has no control.
Gee also addressed Wong, but not before asking aloud: “Do I want to go spicy, or do I want to go fun?” A resounding “spicy!” came from one corner of the room.
“How come you haven’t denounced the big money coming in” from groups that supported Proposition K, which closed the Great Highway?
Wong wore a confused look on his face.
“Which Proposition K are you talking about?” he asked. At least one person in the audience groaned.
After a brief back and forth of clarification, Wong doubled down on his résumé.
“I’ve dedicated my life to public service, so I encourage people to look at my record of service, rather than who they see has outside expenditures,” he said.
In another exchange, Yang asked Wong why he had rejected law-enforcement union donations in his 2020 race for City College board — and had called for defunding the police department — but had since reversed course on both.
The years “2020 and 2026 are way different times in history,” he said, a rare acknowledgement that many politicians, including many San Francisco progressives, have changed their tune on law enforcement since the heyday of Black Lives Matter.
“Right now, we have a fentanyl crisis in our city. Our city faces public-safety crises,” Wong said. “We have a lot of brazen crime in our neighborhoods right now, where people are going into Walgreens and stealing like it’s a normal, everyday thing. And downtown, people are doing drugs in public, casually. That’s not normal for any city.”
Other questions posed by Yang — one on the subject of transit and another on future housing initiatives — made it clear that there are radically different visions for the urban future of the Sunset.
On the subject of transit, for example: As the city looks toward improving the N-Judah light rail, should a district supervisor prioritize, if they had to choose, parking or pedestrian safety?
Lee and Wong hedged a bit. Lee said, “It’s not an either/or. It’s a both,” while Wong echoed, saying “I don’t see this as a zero-sum game. I see this as an additive thing” — both came down on the side of small business, and thereby closer to parking.
Chow, who owns a hardware store, blamed the previous L-Taraval project for the loss of business and empty storefronts along that corridor, and said he would work with the city’s transit agency to ensure the Judah project “is a grassroots design.”
Greco and Gee appeared more firmly in the pedestrian safety camp.
Greco stands alone in support of keeping Sunset Dunes Park closed to cars, and told a story about visiting the park soon after his mother-in-law’s death and being moved by the art and music there — moved enough to want to keep the park permanently.
Chow, for his part, also gave the park some concessions — a sharp turnaround for the person who led the charge against it.
“I’ve seen the beauty, so hats off to you, Jeremy,” Chow said, also addressing Lux in the audience. Still, he said, “traffic must flow.”
In fact, Chow proposed another way to dig the Sunset out of this Great Highway-shaped hole: literally digging a hole.
Chow described a tunnel that would go underneath Golden Gate Park, connecting the major thoroughfare Sunset Boulevard to 25th Avenue in the Richmond. Audience members were left to wonder if such a plan is feasible or has ever been considered outside of Reddit forums.
Chow did not delve into the details. Later, in the last round of group questions, each candidate was asked about their vision for the neighborhood in eight years’ time. Chow had the last word.
He reiterated the tunnel idea, and made a joke about the future: “It would be great to ride Sunset Boulevard with my space car.”
It would be very easy for Alan Wong to denounce outside expenditures and the billionaires who fund them (and him). There is nothing that prevents him from asking Moritz and Mayor Lurie’s pals to back off and stop. There is a reason that Wong doesn’t just do that; it’s called being in someone’s pocket.
The candidates and their views have clearly improved as this race moves along. This is the Sunset where an ideological urbanist is not going to be happy. Pedestrian safety coexisting with traffic flow? Addressing housing affordability without Yimby style upzoning? Albert Chow admitting the park is nice? Oh boy! How’s that for disruption. A round of applause for all.
Sf People that usually vote casual in local, states (CA gov Race) and federal aren’t voting casually anymore in 2026 and 2028 becuz what President Trump doing. They also not voting in no common sense stuff like pro closure ghwy
District 4 supervisor race probably one with most activity. Saw and people in recent meetings they put on signs they had ranking Chow first then Gee second but voting Gee more likely get replaced by Alan since Gee and that Luca guy suddenly supported her so something going on there
I think we heard about their stance about Great highway, traffic/street safety and transit.
Voting Choices 1. Albert Chow (pretty much live there for decades to see enough in D4 and spearheaded for community input on recent issues also D4 resident put him as 1st choice) 2. David Lee (connect community very well 3. Alan Wong (although he had Trump donor supporting him. Sometimes it’s good to be a center)
No way we supporting someone who wanted no funds to public safety or had yes on closing great highway leading D4
Alan Wong called for defunding the police by 25 percent