Supporters of Sunset Dunes park who are running a campaign to defeat Proposition G, the November measure that would reopen the Great Highway to cars, have raised seven times as much as their opponents, according to campaigns finance filings.
The No on G campaign has raised $279,500 so far in 2026, according to the filings. The bulk of those donations came from just eight people who gave recently, in August, and largely after park supporters held their campaign kickoff on Aug. 10.
In fact, the majority of the No on G funds were from just one person: Laura Yakovenko, wife of the blockchain platform Solana’s co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. She gave $200,000 in August to oppose Prop. G.
Yakovenko has donated to urbanist measures before: She gave to 2024’s Prop. L to fund Muni and 2022’s Prop. J to keep Golden Gate Park’s JFK Drive car-free.
The No on G campaign also received $25,000 each from Donald J. Edwards, a Miami-based investor, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Friends of Sunset Dunes, the nonprofit advocating for the park.
Lucas Lux, the No on G campaign director, said the official filings did not show the latest: The campaign has also received donations from 216 people who have given since July 23, and the median contribution of those was $50, he said. Mission Local could not independently verify the numbers.
“People really enjoy the park and want to support,” Lux said. “We’ve always had a lot of success finding a broad base of both small and large donors because the park makes a positive difference in folks’ lives. Some of those people happen to have more money and are able to donate.”
The Yes on G campaign, which supports reopening the road to cars on weekdays, raised just about $38,000, according to filings, and entirely in smaller sums: It had 92 individual donors who gave less than $5,000.
The campaign also said those numbers were not the latest: It has raised about $100,000 in total as of Sept 4, it said, though Mission Local could not verify the numbers.
Lisa Arjes, a District 4 resident and supporter of bringing cars back on the road, gave $5,000 to pass Prop. G. She was also one of the biggest donors to the Joel Engardio recall and helped finance a lawsuit to overturn Prop. K, the 2024 measure that closed the Great Highway to cars and made way for Sunset Dunes park.
William O’Keeffe, Jr. and Selena Chu, both staunch advocates to reopen the Great Highway — and recall Engardio — gave $4,990 and $4,900 respectively.
“It shows we have lots of local support, all from working class people giving whatever they can,” said Jamie Hughes, the Yes on G campaign spokesperson. “When you have lots of grassroots support like we do, you may be at a disadvantage in paid media, but we have lots of volunteers who are really active. You can do a lot with less.”
Proponents to reopen the Great Highway to cars — whether financing ballot measure campaigns or funding lawsuits — have had a harder time raising money.
Sunset Dunes supporters raised over $1 million over two election cycles, funding the pro-park Prop. K in 2024 to create the park and this year fighting Prop. G, to keep it that way.
The Great Highway proponents, meanwhile, raised just $316,000 in those two races.
Even the group behind a lawsuit and the following appeal — a separate effort — sent out a GoFundMe in June pleading for community support. The group filed an appeal after a judge denied its challenges over Prop. K’s legality in January.
The funding difference is similar to the imbalance in the recall Engardio campaign of 2025, when those who wanted to keep Engardio in office out-raised the recallers nearly 3 to 1.
That recall, triggered by the former supervisor’s unapologetic support for the park, was successful in spite of that gap.
