Proposition G, the November measure that seeks to re-open the area now known as Sunset Dunes Park to cars on weekdays, has cleaved the two San Francisco congressional candidates: Sen. Scott Wiener is against the measure, and District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan is for it.
It may yet become a key issue in the race, and it is not clear who will come out on top.
Prop. G is a favorite on the Westside, where over 60 percent of voters in the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods opposed the 2024 proposition that closed the Great Highway to cars and turned it into a permanent park.
Chan, the Richmond supervisor, is certain to profit from an aggrieved base of residents heading to the polls in a longshot attempt to revert the park back to a road. But the congressional race is citywide, and there Wiener may take the advantage: San Franciscans voted 55 to 45 in favor of the park two years ago.
While Chan’s stance is seen as a winner on the Westside, Wiener is banking that it’s a winner for him across San Francisco.
“For every vote on the Westside that potentially is Yes on G, there’s also many folks in the center, north and eastern parts of the city that are No on G,” said Wiener campaign spokesperson Joe Arellano.
Wiener is embracing the difference. He has authored the official argument against the measures, which will be printed on the information pamphlet sent to every voter, and spoke at the No on G campaign’s Aug. 16 kickoff. His satellite campaign office in the Richmond, created to court Westside voters, features posters reading “We love Sunset Dunes.”
Chan is more reticent. She supports Prop. G, according to her campaign, but has not publicly interacted with the Yes on G campaign. The measure’s opponents, in fact, did not realize Chan had taken a position until they were contacted by Mission Local.
“I always heard she was not going to get involved with G,” said Jane Natoli, a Richmond resident and YIMBY leader involved in both Wiener’s race and the No on G campaign. Others echoed Natoli’s remarks.
Chan’s recent timidity is notable. Before June, she was a standard-bearer for reopening the Upper Great Highway. In April last year she wrote in the Richmond Review that she wanted to explore a ballot measure to partially reopen the road, and in January she was the first to sign an ultimately failed measure that would have done so.
Asked to comment on the perception that she is now keeping the issue at arm’s distance, Chan said in a written statement that Prop. G is a community-driven effort by Westside residents to “put forward their vision for the future of the Great Highway and let their fellow San Franciscans decide.”
Observers of the congressional races say Prop. G will help both candidates with voters they need. But it isn’t clear who will benefit more.
Having Prop. G on the ballot “will probably bump the turnout on the Westside, particularly areas where the Great Highway has a direct impact,” said political consultant David Ho, who runs a pro-Chan political action committee. That may bring out less politically engaged residents to vote for Chan.
Prop. G supporters are also more likely to use the measure as a litmus test when weighing who to send to Congress, said Jamie Hughes, leader of the Yes on G campaign. Already, observers of the race said, many Yes on G voters are for Chan — and against Wiener.
Even the official rebuttal from Prop. G proponents attacks Chan’s rival: The statement, titled “Scott Wiener turns his back on serious safety concerns,” will also appear in the voter pamphlet.
“We’re angry out here,” said Sunset community leader and Chan supporter Albert Chow, one of the early opponents of Sunset Dunes. “She is true to her Richmond folks. She’s listening to them. They’re being boxed in and so is the Sunset of course.”
Still Ho acknowledged, “it makes sense for Scott to preserve and maintain his core base of supporters” by being vocal in support of the park — that is, YIMBYs and urbanists, who have long counted Wiener as the dean of pro-housing, pro-transit policies.
Wiener being the poster child for No on G gives him a chance “to remind some of those more progressive voters that he’s on the right side of the issue,” argued Natoli, the No on G and pro-Wiener organizer.
About 36,000 more voters in 2024 opted to open the park than keep it a road, after all. And the California 11th congressional district is even more pro-park because it excludes the Excelsior area, which voted for keeping cars on the road.
Prop. G has put Chan in a bit of a bind because it is “an issue that doesn’t fit neatly within our political divide,” said Natoli. The No on G coalition, for example, also includes Chan endorsers and former supervisors Eric Mar, Gordon Mar and Dean Preston. Wiener and Preston are “not the kind of people that you see on the same side of stuff that much” but both have endorsed No on G.
And that may be why Chan is taking more of an “if asked, I’ll answer, but I’m not going to bring this up” approach toward Prop. G, said Natoli. “It’s a shrewd way of approaching it.”
