One thing to know about the June 2 election out in District 4 is that it will not be the end of the race, no matter who wins.
It’s a marathon until November. All five candidates in the June special election for supervisor have filed paperwork for the that month’s general. The frontrunners, Natalie Gee and Alan Wong, have already set up committees to solicit donations for the race.
But the June race, which will determine who serves the Supervisor Joel Engardio‘s remaining term until January, will also tell voters a lot about the strength of each candidate, and the contenders are in their final sprint.
On a recent Wednesday, Natalie Gee, one of the five candidates, woke up around 5:45 a.m., as she usually does, and started her day with a pilates class. “I almost canceled because I wanna sleep in,” she said. “But it was $15!”
She then spent the day like many others: making donation calls, knocking on voters’ doors, and filming twee social media videos.
At home, she scrolled through her phone contacts and lists of people who have donated to the campaigns of politicians who support her. For those who’d promised to give, she reminded them, “Don’t forget to follow through!”
As of May 18, her campaign has raised $375,000, and labor unions have thrown in another $385,000 to back her. Her opponent, incumbent Alan Wong, has raised $334,000 and is benefitting from another $881,000 in PACs bankrolled by Mayor Daniel Lurie’s wealthy allies, including a Trump megadonor.
Like most days, Gee spent a few hours filming and editing videos for social media — a lot of them: Gee has posted at least one Instagram Reel a day in recent weeks. Her Instagram page is filled with pink and purple, her campaign theme color. She’s made cutesy videos, like one where she’s holding a Sailor Moon themed umbrella with girly-pop dazzling transition effects. With her broad smile, she made fun of attacks against her, throwing her opponent’s flyers in the air with Mariah Carey’s “Obsessed” as background music.
She recently reappropriated a design from an opponent’s attack mailer and created signs reading “Natalie Gee’s Sunset” — a limited edition only available for those who sign up for three volunteer shifts.
We planned to meet that Wednesday around 4:30 p.m for a doorknocking session. (Mission Local will follow the other candidates in a series of stories on the District 4 campaign.)
The goal: 11 doors she hadn’t finished last Sunday. She put a pink window sign that read “Natalie Gee for Supervisor” on the windshield as she got out in a black tulle top with puffy sleeves, platform heels and knee braces, and hit the ground.
Gee jotted down a personal greeting on every flyer that she slipped into a doorway that day. When there was a Ring camera, she stood on her tippy-toes and grinned.
Most of the doors on the block near 21st Avenue and Kirkham Street went unanswered. But at one single-family home, Rose, an older Greek woman who has lived in the Sunset since the 1970s, happened to be working in the garage.
Rose had a lot of concerns: solar panels for street lights, a blighted house down the block, and the Kirkham Street neckdown — a traffic calming design in nearby District 7 that has been taken down following resident complaints.
Rose seemed to have made up her mind to vote for Gee before they spoke. But she really wanted to talk about the congressional race.
“How come you did not endorse Saikat?” asked Rose, as she walked out of her garage to talk to Gee. “Do you have anything against Saikat?”
No, Gee said quickly. In fact, her husband works for Saikat Chakrabarti’s campaign. Because of that, Gee now can afford to take a day of unpaid leave a week from her legislative aide job.
Both Connie Chan and Chakrabarti endorsed Gee for her run. But Gee told Rose she supported Chan because of her longtime relationship with her (Gee has known Chan since the latter was an aide for Supervisor Sophie Maxwell), plus Chan’s track record on labor.
A few doors down, Gee walked up to a cyclist who had just moved to the Sunset in October. He wanted to know her plan to increase safety for bike riders.
“I’m really good at doing community meetings, so I want to bring people together to gather input on any processes or any improvements we make,” Gee told him.
Community input is the buzz word for almost every candidate in the District 4 race. “I’m going to listen to you,” they say. For a district that recently recalled its supervisor for not listening enough and has never, going back to the invention of district races back in the 1990s, elected anyone for two consecutive terms, how can you talk about anything else?
From the man’s expression, the answer seemed unsatisfying. They found common ground in the end, over stop signs.
“There are a couple of random intersections that are only two-way stops. I’ll be going and like, ‘Oh shit,’” he told her. “As a young guy, am I really saying more stop signs? That’s crazy,” he chuckled.
“Same!” Gee agreed. “I want you to be safe when you’re biking. And I want our seniors with their grandkids walking the street to be safe too.”
Other conversations happened right on the sidewalk.
“Are you Natalie from the posters?” said a woman who stopped Gee near Ortega Street.
When the woman read Gee’s platform, “I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” she said. “And then you got to the Great Highway and I was like, no thanks.”
“I hear you,” said Gee. Gee gave her Sunset Dunes spiel, one that all candidates have been asked to make again and again on the campaign trail: She wished there had been more community input when Engardio put the measure on the ballot to close the road and turn it into a coastal park, Gee said, especially for residents who don’t speak English.
Now, Gee supports opening the Great Highway to cars on workdays and the signature-gathering effort that is underway to put it up for a vote in November. But if the measure fails again, she said at a Mission Local forum, she won’t pursue it further.
If you walk around District 4, you quickly see why the road closure became the spark for the political maelstrom that has engulfed the neighborhood for the better part of the last two years: In the Sunset and Parkside, over 88 percent households have at least one car, including 15 percent that own three cars. Many of those households miss using the road to commute north to the Richmond and south to Daly City.
Today, some Sunset residents are still adamant about bringing cars back to the Great Highway, while others want to never have this discussion ever again.
Despite Gee’s position against Sunset Dunes, she received an unexpected endorsement from Lucas Lux, the president of the pro-park Friends of Sunset Dunes group. “We don’t agree on Sunset Dunes, but he came out to endorse me,” Gee told the woman.
The endorsement from Lux — one that was meant to boost Gee’s chances among park supporters who see no viable candidate in the race to represent their view — has become controversial for Gee among those who oppose the road closure.
So much so that she issued a statement emphasizing that she did not seek out the endorsement and her position on reopening the Great Highway to cars on weekends remains the same.
“I didn’t ask for this endorsement. I didn’t make a deal with him or anything,” Gee said. “It’s absurd that some people are like, ‘You need to denounce it,’ but outside of this, he’s also a resident of District 4.”
At 6 p.m., the door-knocking done, Gee met up with about a dozen Sunset residents who are part of a Pokémon Go group called “West Sunset Best Sunset” at the Ortega library for a session. She has been organizing Pokémon events across the city since 2017 — she was so obsessed with the game that she worked on a resolution to declare Feb. 27 “Pokémon Day.”
The small crowd put their heads down, staring at phones, and walked from the branch library through a garden path to Quintara Street, little campaigning involved. Except when a woman, in between catching Pokémon, teased Gee: “You must be doing well because they have attack ads on you.”
Gee’s last stop of the evening was a mixer organized by the Sunset Merchants Association. Two of her opponents, David Lee and Jeremy Greco, also made an appearance at a packed parklet for Two Pitcher Brewing Company on Noriega Street. It was loud and crowded — a tough place for crowd work. People were distracted by the famed smash burgers, debating if the hour-long line was worth it.
At around 7:30 p.m., Gee called it a night. She was about to head home, change into workout gear and join a boxing session with a friend at the campaign headquarters on Irving Street.
“My friend was like, ‘I’m gonna bring all my punching gloves and you can just punch out all your anger or frustration on me,’” Gee said. After a day on the campaign trail, there is one answer: “I was like, ‘Okay!’”
