District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio has lost his recall election. Click here for in-depth election results. Read below for Engardio’s concession and other updates.
Recall election results
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9:20 p.m. — Mayor Lurie weighs in
Mayor Daniel Lurie issued a statement at 9:20 p.m., thanking Joel Engardio for his “years of service” while telling aggrieved Westside residents that he is listening.
“As I campaigned for mayor last year, I heard countless Westside families say what San Franciscans have been feeling for years: That their government is doing things to them, not with them, and that government is not working to make their lives better,” Lurie wrote.
Lurie is hoping to pass a citywide upzoning plan that has met fierce resistance from homeowners across San Francisco, particularly in the Westside. During their election party, pro-recall campaigners explicitly mentioned the plan as if to warn elected officials: You could be next.
Lurie will now get to appoint the next District 4 supervisor before an election in 2026. “Our team is evaluating next steps for the District Four supervisor seat,” he wrote.
“I’m certain that the mayor will listen to us, and appoint a caretaker or appointee who is going to make sure that our values are heard in this period of essential change,” recall campaign organizer Otto Pippinger said on Tuesday night.
— Joe Rivano Barros
9:11 p.m. — Joel Engardio concedes
District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio conceded the election on Tuesday night.
“I accept the election results,” Engardio said in a five-minute speech, speaking to a room of some 60 supporters and press a little after 9 p.m.
But, he said, the closure of the Great Highway and its transformation into an oceanside park, which roused the ire of his electorate, was worth it.
“We can still celebrate, because we are on the right side of the history when it comes to Sunset Dunes.”
In a lengthy post on X at 9:47 p.m., Engardio compared to opening of the park to erecting Golden Gate Bridge. That project, he wrote, “faced a lot of resistance” too, but “forward-looking people had the courage to build it anyway and create the icon of our city.”
Outside Engardio’s campaign headquarters earlier, members of the media were kept waiting in the fog until 9:10 p.m., 25 minutes after election results had dropped.
Inside, the attendees, mostly Engardio campaign staffers, projected a sense of unity: They fell silent for a minute when the results landed, rallied to cheer their candidate up when he spoke, then each shook his hand.
Many seemed to expect the result. Supporters clapped and said, “We love you, Joel,” thanking the supervisor.
The supervisor promised he would say hi to them on the beach. “I’ll see you at Sunset Dunes,” he said, smiling.
Earlier today, Engardio showed Mission Local a framed picture of him and his husband at the park. It’s his favorite photo, he said, and his post-election plan is for the couple to spend more time there.
Asked whether he listened too much to constituents outside his district, Engardio replied: “The coast belongs to everybody.”
“I know I did the right thing,” he added. “In a short time, people will wonder what the controversy was about.”
— Io Yeh Gilman and Yujie Zhou
8:45 p.m. — ‘He’s toast! He’s done!’
The recall crowd didn’t realize what was happening at first.
Gathered at Celia’s and awaiting the first drop of election results, recall supporters looked at their phones until one began began clapping loudly while walking into the room. Others followed.
“64! 64!” supporters began after seeing early election results tilting 64.6 percent to 35.4 percent against Joel Engardio. “He’s toast! He’s done!”
The crowd burst into cheers. The ensuing speeches were almost background noise.
Otto Pippinger, the recall-campaign organizer, walked in like a winning sports player through a narrow walkway. Surrounded by people, he nodded, high-fived and fist-bumped supporters along the way. “Otto! Otto! Otto!” they cheered.
“We appear to have sent a message that will resound for a long time,” Pippinger said. “Now, we are counting on the mayor to do the right thing.”
“I’m certain that the mayor will listen to us and appoint a caretaker or appointee who is going to make sure that our values are heard in this period of essential change,” he continued, referencing Mayor Daniel Lurie’s upzoning plan, which opposed by many Westside homeowners.
Jamie Hughes, the recall-campaign manager, said the upzoning plan may be the next focus of an army of mobilized volunteers. And reopening the Great Highway to cars.
Earlier this year, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan floated the idea of putting up a ballot measure to reopen the Great Highway. Even if city supervisors don’t do it, Hughes said, the recall volunteers may try for a ballot measure, even though Prop. K was widely popular across the city and won 55-45.
“It could be a voter initiative. We’ll get the signatures.”
— Junyao Yang
8 p.m. — Polls close. Predictions open.
Pencils down.
It’s 8 p.m., which, on Election Day, is the witching hour. The polls are closed and all we can do is wait. In about 45 minutes, when the first batch of votes is slated to drop, we’ll know a great deal more. But here’s what we know now.
If, by some alchemy, the initial returns come in and Joel Engardio is beating the recall, then it’s hard to see how he loses.
Angry people vote sooner than less angry ones, and the anger gap between recallers and Team Joel was significant. It’s hard to imagine that the earliest voting won’t tilt significantly toward recalling Engardio.
For voters who are undecided or indifferent — and are waiting to be persuaded — voting against the recall is the more intuitive choice.
If you’re not dead-set on recalling someone, letting them finish their last year in office before a conventional election in 2026 is the obvious choice. It’s not unreasonable to predict that late-arriving ballots will skew more toward retaining Engardio than early-arriving ones.
Many variables, however, are at play. Older voters, who are more likely to favor the recall, are also more likely to vote in-person or drop off completed ballots at a polling station. The same goes for conservatives, who distrust voting by mail.
Another variable: the recall of Joel Engardio is an odd and polarizing issue.“Progressives” don’t like recalls, but they also don’t like Joel Engardio, who was never their candidate. Given the chance to kick Engardio when he’s down, many will. Or they simply won’t vote.
How all this plays out will become more evident later. On the first ballot drop at 8:45, though, nobody expects Engardio to be leading. Not even his most ardent supporters.
The questions are: By how much will he be trailing? And how much runway will he have to catch up?
Here’s what people close to both campaigns have told Mission Local:
- If the recall is polling at 55 percent or better at the end of the day, the recallers are confident that Engardio is beaten.
- But if the margin is slim by the end of the day, with Engardio trailing by only 750 or fewer votes, Engardio backers think that’s a deficit the candidate could overcome.
This is not hard science. These scenarios were not carried down from Mount Sinai. But they are informed and reasonable estimates made by people with all kinds of skin in the game. So let’s see how the chips fall.
The 15,400 ballots that were received by day’s end Monday should be unsealed and tabulated by tonight’s 8:45 first drop. The second drop, slated to come sometime before 11 p.m., will add in all the in-person votes made at polling places and City Hall today.
This second drop figures to be small. By midafternoon, polling places were reporting in-person vote counts numbering in the teens. A reasonable over-under on how many ballots will make up that second vote drop is perhaps 750.
The sealed ballots dropped off at polling stations, however, won’t be counted until Thursday (the Department of Elections takes the day after an election off).
But even if three or four times as many people dropped off sealed ballots or placed them in the mail, not a hell of a lot more votes figure to be coming. It will make a difference in the event it’s close.
As Yogi Berra was wont to say, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. But it can only go two ways.
When San Francisco politicos are asked what it would take for recalls to fade from prominence, a common answer is, “when someone beats one.”
If Engardio does somehow elude this recall, he would be the first elected official in local history since Mayor Dianne Feinstein beat a recall brought about by eccentric gun nuts.
This came in 1983, when the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were recent memories. This was a setup that did not favor the recallers. And no local official has beaten one since.
A San Francisco recall election forces an incumbent to run against him or herself. Unlike the California gubernatorial recall of 2021, there is no Larry Elder for voters dissatisfied with Gavin Newsom to recoil from. It’s a candidate vs. themself.
That’s hard for anyone, and bodes not well for Engardio, who won the ranked-choice election that put him in office with just 50.87 percent of the vote. If Engardio eludes this recall, he and his team will be talking about this day for years, the way Joe Namath is still talking about Super Bowl III.
But if Engardio loses, it sends a different message. It would be the first modern recall undertaken without billionaire backers — and, in fact, in the face of the billionaires who threw a significant sum into keeping Engardio in office.
It would, as we’ve written before, be a shot across the bow of every San Francisco elected official.
Every supervisor who votes for Mayor Daniel Lurie’s upzoning plan isn’t going to face a potential recall. But any supervisor who is perceived as not listening to their constituents is taking their chances.
We haven’t even discussed who would potentially be appointed to fill out Engardio’s term if he loses.
Will that person be a caretaker with more leeway to take controversial votes? Or will the appointee harbor aspirations for the full-time job? Will San Franciscans be asked to vote to repeal Prop. K next year? Would this measure be a stalking horse and springboard for candidates hoping to win higher office?
But, first, all the votes must be counted. It all starts at 8:45. — Joe Eskenazi
3:45 p.m. — Engardio heading to phonebank after supervisors meeting
At board meetings, supervisors are given the chance to honor someone who recently passed away.
Today, Joel Engardio memorialized Kwang Hwin, an Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs ambassador whose tasks included giving directions, escorting students during their field trips, and making emergency calls.
“Music was one of his great joys, and his guitar brought him peace and comfort, and did the same for those lucky enough to hear him play,” Engardio said.
The meeting was relatively short, wrapping after less than an hour and a half — perfect for Engardio, who has more voters to reach. He’s decided to use the rest of the day to make phone calls to voters, since it’s faster than going door to door.
As the supervisors filed out, he stopped to have short conversations with Supervisors Rafael Mandelman and Stephen Sherrill.
— Io Yeh Gilman
3:30 p.m. — Engardio campaign pulls out of the field, but Joel Engardio knocks doors on his own
Imperiled Supervisor Joel Engardio cut a solitary figure in the Sunset this morning, knocking doors for four hours on his own before reporting to his day job at City Hall.
It wasn’t a bad day, he told Mission Local’s Io Yeh Gilman. He urged a few supporters to actually turn in their ballots, and ran into a few more boosters who’d already voted.
Every vote counts. But, come 8:45, some 15,400 votes will drop. Between 20,000 and 25,000 votes are expected overall. Engardio, his campaign says, “has always been our secret weapon” — and he is a very effective and endearing one-on-one communicator.
But he’s also one man. He is not John Henry building a railroad all by his lonesome.
But Engardio was indeed the only person in his campaign knocking on doors today. The rest of Team Joel dropped off literature at 5:30 a.m. so voters would wake up to it, and are now phone-banking.
After 30,000 knocked doors in three months, the campaign viewed this as the most effective use of its resources.
Every campaign is different and is working off its own internal metrics. But this move struck veteran campaigners as counter-intuitive.
“If you’ve ID’d people who have not voted yet, the normal thing to do, the standard operating procedure in campaigns, is to knock on their doors and ask them to go vote,” said veteran political consultant Jim Ross, who was campaign manager for Gavin Newsom’s winning 2003 mayoral bid. “It’s odd to me. They have money. When people are complaining that you’re contacting them too much, you’re doing just enough.”
Ross warned against intuiting tonight’s outcome based upon this or any election day strategy by either campaign.
Kaylah Williams May, who was the campaign manager for Chesa Boudin’s upset victory in the 2019 DA’s race, was also taken aback at the decision to pull back from the field.
“You knock on doors every day,” she said. “It tends to be thin margins for a high-stakes race.”
May cautioned that every campaign “has its own set of data. And they may know something we don’t.”
Longtime San Francisco consultant David Ho said, however, that nothing is as effective at turning out voters as meeting them in person. “Talking to voters on the phone is not going to be as effective.”
“You need phone-bankers and canvassers and folks passing stuff out at polling stations, despite historical recent trends where most voters vote absentee.”
Engardio’s campaign feels it will win or lose with its secret weapon: Engardio himself.
“Nothing beats a direct conversation with your supervisor,” says the campaign, “in terms of gaining votes.”
— Joe Eskenazi
3 p.m. — People are out enjoying the Sunset Dunes on this foggy recall day
The park that could soon cost Engardio his job is filled with people and animals, all enjoying the open space. Their views on Engardio’s fate, however, differ.
“I don’t live here. But if I lived here, I would recall him,” said Mario Ramirez, a 50-year old Bernal Heights resident.
He believes closing the Upper Great Highway is bad for the traffic and causes more air pollution. Instead, he suggested keeping half of the park for recreation while turning the half, dedicated to cycling, into car lanes.
“A hybrid approach was ideal,” echoed a Sunset voter walking with two friends who preferred to stay anonymous. He favors the Upper Great Highway’s previous schedule: weekdays for traffic, weekends for people and bikes.
The current Sunset Dunes, which still looks much like a highway, seems incomplete to him. “If they’re gonna keep a park, they should allocate budget to” make it into an actual park, he added.
More people at Sunset Dunes today, including car owners who live by the Upper Great Highway, said they liked the park.
“This is good for me, because I like walking,” said Alex V., a 65-year-old Richmond District resident, who likes to spend hours walking there.
“I use the [Upper] Great Highway more now that it’s for walking than I did for driving,” said Tara Sullivan, 71, who walks along Sunset Dunes several times a week.
While people who live at both ends of the highway, near Sloat Boulevard or Lincoln Way, could hop onto the highway right there, people like Sullivan, who live in the middle, had to go out of their way to drive on it.
When the sun is out, Sullivan said, the Sunset Dunes is packed with people picnicking, reading, walking, or lounging in hammocks, kids on skateboards, little children learning to ride bicycles, and loads of strollers.
“Even when I drove, I didn’t really use this road,” said Chris Young, a 48th Avenue resident who lives in the middle of the Upper Great Highway. “I think there are, like, 50 other streets that people can take, literally.”
While many of his neighbors are furious that Engardio didn’t listen to his constituents, Young, who voted Yes on K, said, “Well, he did listen to the community, just a different part of the community.”
— Yujie Zhou
1:55 p.m. — Tough call at the firehouse
There’s nothing ablaze at Firehouse No. 18 on 32nd Avenue. Poll workers outnumber voters by a goodly amount. As of 1:55 p.m., they report 14 people have voted here in-person. Two more voters show up as if on cue, but they are voting provisionally.
Many more voters than that have dropped off their sealed vote-by-mail ballots in the box, however. It seems safe to say at this point that the tally of in-person voters added to the second vote drop at or before 11 p.m. will not look a lot different than the first, which drops at about 8:45. Sealed ballots won’t be unsealed until Thursday.
Retired military man Will Wood was one of the voters dropping off his sealed ballot at the firehouse today. He wasn’t thrilled with his choice.
“It was a 50/50,” he explained. “People should be represented. And if they don’t feel represented…” his voice trails off.
“On the other hand, if there’s a recall, the next person is appointed, not elected.”
In the end, Wood was moved by the enthusiasm of his pro-recall neighbors. He voted Yes on A to recall Joel Engardio. He wishes Engardio held more town halls; Assemblymember Phil Ting used to hold town halls, Wood said, and district supervisors piggybacked on those.
So Wood voted to recall. But he’s not thrilled with it.
“You can’t win for losing,” he says.
— Joe Eskenazi
1:45 p.m. — Engardio still shows up for work at City Hall
While Sunset voters miles away decide his fate, Engardio is at San Francisco City Hall for a key part of his job — attending the weekly 2 p.m. Board of Supervisors meeting. It’s been business as usual for his day job, staffers say, with lots of constituent calls and legislation to write.
Engardio showed up 15 minutes before the board meeting, fresh off four hours of morning door-knocking. He said it went well — he convinced a few supporters to actually go out and vote and also ran into a few voters who had already voted for him.
After the board meeting, he plans to get back out there — he hasn’t decided whether it’ll be phone calls or knocking on more doors though.
Meanwhile, in the basement of City Hall, election workers are counting up the ballots — and have received around a dozen more today from a voters who came in person.
They also received several new voter registration forms from League of Women Voters members Rebecca Miller and Paula March Romanosky, who held an event at the Larkin St. Youth Center today in honor of National Voter Registration Day. Miller, a District 4 resident, said she dropped off a sealed ballot this morning.
— Io Yeh Gilman
12 p.m. — Heather, your neighbor from 28th and Ortega, door-knocks for the recall
“Hello. Helllloooooo! Ni-hao! It’s Heather, your neighbor from 28th and Ortega. Have you voted today? You don’t want to read about it tomorrow.”
Retired National Park Service worker Heather Davies, who does indeed live at 28th and Ortega, is chipper and high-energy; with her mellifluous, sing-song voice she sounds a bit like a children’s television host as she works through one low-slung, salt water taffy-colored Outer Sunset house after the other, checking would-be recall voters off her master list.
A grey and foggy morning transitions into a grey and foggy afternoon, but Davies is nothing but sunny. She has a friendly audience out here at Judah and 33rd; it’s as if she’s selling beer on a scorching summer day.
Observing Davies interact with unseen voters on the other side of doors, the children’s television show parallel is only reinforced. Homeowners on the other side of a door can only be heard in a muffled tone, so Davies, as if she was speaking to an invisible TV audience or mute puppet, fills in both sides of the conversation.
Hello! Helllloooooo! Ni-hao! Have you voted yet? You will? In an hour? Is that so? That’s right, we can’t get rid of him soon enough! Will you be voting Yes on A? You will?
And here the voter’s voice is now loud enough to hear from the street: “For sure!”
Davies is playing the short game and the long game. When she finds a receptive Yes on A voter, she slips in a flier about the forthcoming effort to upzone vast swaths of the city. Ask voters out here on 33rd Avenue about this and you’ll get a pretty consistent response: No sir, I don’t like it. And Davies hasn’t even told them about paying for all the new utilities and logistical needs for scores of thousands of new residents the plan would bring.
“And Joel is in favor of this?” asks an incredulous middle-aged Asian woman in a pink sweater and grey sweats.
“Yes, he fully endorses it!” Davies replies. She accuses Engardio of, once again, failing to talk to his constituents about this.
“Oh, oh, I’ll vote in one hour!” she replies. “Thank you. Thank you for coming. Keep going. Keep going!”
She does. A barefoot man with a Johnny Unitas-style buzz admits that “one of my babies” took down his Recall Engardio sign. He accepts another and affixes it to his home on the spot.
“Goooooood morning! And what a beautiful Tuesday morning it is!” Davies says as she knocks on the door of a multifamily home. These are target-rich environments. Six voters live here.
Nearby, she hands a recall sign to John Tsang, who is drying lemon grass and peanuts in front of his home. As she does with voters less steady with English, Davies makes sure to remind him that “Yes on A is ‘Goodbye to Joel.’”
Nearby, Gary Lo, a resident of the Sunset since 1993, affirms he’s already voted to recall his supervisor. This is something he didn’t see coming when Engardio narrowly beat incumbent Gordon Mar in 2022.
“Everybody liked him in the beginning,” Lo said. “He was just too, how can I put it, he did everything courageously. But some things need input.”
Thinking on the matter, Lo said the “female supervisors” repping District 4 — which include Katy Tang, Carmen Chu and Fiona Ma in his time here — have been better.
It’s just after noon and Davies is on to the next house. She routinely works off lists of 100 addresses and, in the last few days, says she has registered a 50 percent success rate — even with voters who’ve failed to return texts or calls.
“Hello. Helllloooooo! Ni-hao! It’s Heather, your neighbor from 28th and Ortega. Knock, knock, knock! Have you voted today?”
— Joe Eskenazi
11 a.m. — A long day for recall campaign manager Otto Pippenger, and it’s not even noon
Heading over the hills and into the Sunset, one hits the ever-present fog. Physically, the temperature here today is low. Metaphysically, it’s hot. People are riled up, and we’ll find out just how riled up when polls close at 8 p.m.
But even when it’s loud in the Sunset, it’s quiet. At Recall Central, aka deputy campaign manager Otto Pippenger’s house on 27th Ave., only Pippenger is manning the fort.
All the volunteers are out knocking on doors or otherwise Getting Out The Vote. Pippenger is on at least one phone call while drinking black coffee and smoking an American Spirit.
It’s been a long day, and it’s not even noon: Election Day starts in the pre-dawn hours and, every Election Day in Pippenger’s career has been kicked off by people brawling in the street in the wee hours, or a car-horn-honking melee or, today, a drunk picking a fight with the garbage cans.
While the day started early, Pippenger doesn’t expect it to go late. The tally of the first batch of some 15,400 early ballots will drop at 8:45 p.m., with the de minimis ballots of in-person voters added in a second tranche sometime before 11 tonight.
This figures to be a very limited number of voters; perhaps 30 or so for each of the 21 in-person polling places. Sealed ballots dropped off at polling places and later mailed ballots will be opened starting Thursday.
Just how many total votes will be recorded is anyone’s guess: 40 percent turnout would be 20,000; 50 percent — the likely ceiling — would be 25,000. At 8:45, Pippenger expects to know how this one is going to go.
At noon today, this quiet Sunset abode adorned with God-knows-how-many recall signs will, once again, be something more akin to a buzzing nexus as volunteers return from their rounds and check in. Signs of progress or worry, both scientific and unscientific, will be discussed.
In the meantime, a reporter chatting with Pippenger sits on the neighbor’s adjoining steps. Pippenger says they’re cool, but he has no idea how they’re going to vote.
“Honestly, I haven’t broached the subject,” he says.
— Joe Eskenazi
10:15 a.m. — Sunset seniors bemoan the cost of the recall
At 10:15 a.m., Guan and Lou, two grey-haired Chinese elders, sat at the playground near Parkside Library, sipping coffee. It’s an almost daily ritual for the two, sitting and chatting.
“Sunset does not need that road,” Guan said, in a mixture of Cantonese and Mandarin. He has lived in the Sunset for decades. “And, after today, you still can’t change it.”
When asked if they prefer an open road or a coastal park — they both drive — they answered without hesitation, “Of course we need the park. It’s nice to sit there and chat. In the early evening, seniors take strolls there,” Lou said.
Guan seemed most upset about how much money has been spent on this issue. “The back-and-forth on the Great Highway costs money. The election costs money,” Guan said. “It’s all taxpayers’ money.”
— Junyao Yang
10 a.m. — Volunteers arrive at the recall campaign’s temporary headquarters
The doors are unlocked at a house near 35th Ave. and Judah St. where the recall Engardio campaign is headquartered for the day. John Crabtree, the volunteer coordinator, is marshaling his team from the kitchen table.
Volunteers arrive every 10 to 15 minutes to hear instructions, grab scripts and pick up yellow signs that read “Recall Joel Engardio.”
“This isn’t a job for most of us. This is a volunteer activity. And people disrupt their lives for this,” said Crabtree, who expects 20 to 40 people to drop by the house today.
Crabtree joined the campaign in January, when they were just gathering signatures, and said he has been doing a little bit of everything for the past 8 months to prepare for this day.
“There’s a deep, deep sense of betrayal,” he said. For Crabtree, the closure of the Upper Great Highway is “a really big example of how people were promised, and told, and led to believe that Joel Engardio would be an advocate for them … and that was a deception.”
Today, Crabtree is manning the phones, rallying volunteers and mapping out when and where they can hit the streets for door-to-door outreach. “There’s a sense of relief that we’ve made it,” he added. “This has been a long road, and very, very hard. Very challenging.”
The campaign plans to spend the final day going out to a list of highlighted addresses of identified supporters — people who’ve signed the petition or told the campaign they support the recall — to ensure they’ve voted.
If they haven’t, the volunteers will make sure they know where their polling stations are and answer any last-minutes questions to help them out.
— Yujie Zhou
9:45 a.m. — Voters trickle in to the Lincoln High School polling station
Ariana, a four-year Sunset resident, dropped off her and her husband’s ballots, hand in hand with her daughter.
She had made up her mind long ago, but the ballots were still sitting on the counter until today. “Both of us wanted someone who can represent us better.”
Chan, who has lived in the Sunset for more than 20 years, said she got every reminder she could possibly get about the recall: Seven to eight text messages in two weeks, phone calls, TV news and door knockers. She said she grew tired of it, and felt the recall was a waste of time.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Chan said in Mandarin. “Why don’t you let him finish his last year?”
Tim Van Loan walked out of the polls at Lincoln High School in a bike helmet and dress shoes and immediately started to text his neighbors. The voting machine told him he was one of the 33 percent of people who voted, and he found that ridiculous.
“I was surprised by how low it is!” He said as he sent off a text.
He knew about the recall, but forgot that today is Election Day until he saw the news.
Van Loan said he was empathetic toward Engardio’s situation.
“He’s probably pretty screwed,” Van Loan said. “He could’ve definitely done a better job, but I don’t think what he did is out of line of what he campaigned on.”
When Engardio ran for supervisor in 2022, both he and his opponent, Gordon Mar, were supportive of closing the Great Highway on weekends and opening it to cars on workdays.
But at a debate with Mar, Engardio had said he was supportive of that approach, seen as a compromise, because it didn’t rule out the potential of a permanent park.
— Junyao Yang
8 a.m. — In Engardio’s backyard, opposition is high
It was foggy and quiet in Lakeshore this morning. Between the two polling stations there, only around a dozen voters came by between 7 and 8:30 a.m., mostly to drop off ballots in person. The Department of Elections has already received hundreds of mailed ballots from the neighborhood.
Lakeshore is where Joel Engardio lives, and it heavily supported him back in 2022, when he won the seat after the neighborhood was redistricted from District 7 to District 4.
But these precincts were some of the ones least supportive of turning the Great Highway into a park, and are now expected to heavily favor his recall.
Precincts that supported Joel Engardio the most strongly opposed Prop. K
Precincts added to
District 4 in 2022
Percentage of District 4 voters who voted
against Prop. K in November 2024.
Percentage of first-choice votes Joel Engardio
received in the 2022 District 4 supervisor race.
Precincts added to
District 4 in 2022
Percentage of first-choice votes Joel Engardio
received in the 2022 District 4 supervisor race.
Percentage of District 4 voters who voted
against Prop. K in November 2024.
Chart by Kelly Waldron. Data from the San Francisco Department of Elections. Basemap from Mapbox.
One first-time voter, who was about to head off to college, explained that closing the Great Highway meant his commute to school got 10 to 15 minutes slower. So, he’s voting “yes” on the recall.
“With me going to school every day, it just kind of created more stress and chaos to our mornings,” he said.
What frustrated their family, his mom added, was not even necessarily the park but the process by which it was created. Engardio should have worked with neighbors to make a plan for how to help with traffic, she said.
Now, they want someone new. “I would hope for someone that is a little bit more in touch with the people that they’re supervising,” her son said.
— Io Yeh Gilman
7:30 a.m. — Heavy on fog, light on voters
At 7:30 a.m., the Sunset is engulfed in a fog so thick it’s hard to see the next block over. It’s quiet, and one can hear moisture drip from overhead power lines.
By 8 a.m. at the Lincoln High School polling place, two people have voted in person and a handful have dropped off their ballots. One of them came with five ballots, poll workers said.
The poll workers, two of them Chinese speakers, expect just about 30 people to vote in person all day today, and another 50 to drop off their ballots.
“This is definitely the most simple election I’ve worked on,” said M. Murphy, who has worked on seven previous elections.
Karen Melander-Magoon, who lives in North Beach, took paratransit to the Sunset around 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
“Part of the thing, as poll worker, we vote in advance,” said Murphy. Everyone in the room nodded. “I like to get it done early,” Melander-Magoon added.
But most people wait until the very last minute, the poll workers agreed. In a regular election, “the idea is that there could be a last-minute revelation, people hold off till the day of to get all the information,” he said. “With this special election with just two sides, both are very firm on their belief.”
Still, voting in person is expected to be slow today. A worker from the Department of Elections said it forecasts a turnout of at most 50 percent overall.
In the past, turnout for in-person voting is usually 10 to 12 percent. But because this election is unique — there hasn’t been a district-level recall election — it’s hard to predict, he said.
Outside the school building, a “vote here” sign pointed way to the polling place. A woman, passing by, stopped and made a face, “Voting?”
After this reporter explained the district election to recall its supervisor, she exclaimed, “Oh, that’s what I saw on the news last night!”
“I live in Pacifica,” she said. “We don’t do it.”
— Junyao Yang
Election analysis
Click the arrows to see new analysis as results come out.
8:45 p.m. — Showtime: First batch of votes drops — near supermajority favor recall
The first batch of 15,468 votes has dropped in the recall election of District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, and 64.7 percent are in favor of ousting the first-term supervisor. So far, 9,969 favor the recall and 4,452 favor retaining Engardio — a 4,517-vote bulge.
Coincidentally or not, the 65 percent thus far backing the recall is eerily reminiscent of the 64 percent of District 4 voters who inveighed against Proposition K.
Prior to tonight’s vote drop, recall backers told Mission Local they were confident that Engardio could not come back if the recall polled 55 percent or greater by day’s end. Conversely, Engardio backers thought he had a puncher’s chance if he trailed by 750 votes or fewer.
Clearly this is a lot more than 55 percent and a lot more than 750 votes.
This batch is composed of ballots received on Monday or earlier. A second, much smaller batch of votes will be released at or before 11 p.m. tonight of the perhaps hundreds of voters who cast a ballot in-person today at a polling place or City Hall. Sealed ballots dropped off at polling stations and later-arriving ballots will be tabulated starting on Thursday.
The big question heading into this initial ballot drop was would Engardio have enough runway to make up his deficit? It appears that may not be mathematically possible.
If the low end of 20,000 voters end up participating, Engardio would need to win nearly every vote to catch up. If the high end of 25,000 voters participate, Engardio would still need to get more than 73 percent of the outstanding vote.
Jamie Hughes, the leader of the recall effort, declared victory.
“Sunset voters put their trust in Engardio and he betrayed them,” he said in a statement. “This is what happens when you choose to represent tech billionaires over the people who elected you.
“Now it’s Mayor Lurie’s turn to appoint an honest Supervisor who listens to their constituents. D4 wants a Supervisor who will fight to reopen the Great Highway and stop Senator Wiener and the billionaires from turning ocean beach into Miami Beach. The Sunset district supported Lurie and hope he will not betray them too.”
The next ballot drop is slated for an undetermined time, hopefully before 11.
— Joe Eskenazi
4 a.m. — Will the sun set on the Sunset’s elected leader?
San Francisco children don’t struggle to remember that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Naturally: The sun sets in the Sunset.
Tonight, we may learn if the sun will set on the Sunset’s elected leader.
Today’s the day for the recall election of District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio. It’s the culmination of an incongruously bruising and vitriolic campaign against the legislator who championed Proposition K, a ballot measure to shut down the windswept Great Highway and replace it with a windswept park.
While a healthy majority of citywide voters liked Prop. K, a near-supermajority of District 4 voters did not.
The voters in the precincts where Engardio lives, who were redistricted into D4 in 2022 and provided him with his margin of victory in his supe race that year, liked Prop. K even less.
Some 77 percent of them voted against it — meaning Engardio’s once-upon-a-time base is now irate with him, and just about the most irate voters in all the realm.
In January, disgruntled District 4 residents filed the paperwork necessary to begin collecting recall signatures. Filings reveal that opponents of the recall have thus far raised $824,099, with $475,000 coming from three major tech donors: Ripple founder Chris Larsen, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Twilio co-founder John Wolthuis.
The recall effort reports raising $252,840.
In May, the recall campaign turned in nearly 11,000 signatures, and more than 99 percent were deemed valid.
So, that’s how we got here. Where will we be at day’s end?
At 8:45 p.m. tonight, the Department of Elections will drop its first batch of votes. These will be the early ballots received through Monday — nearly 15,500 of them, per the department’s tracker.
A subsequent Department of Elections report, due sometime before 11 p.m., will add in votes cast in-person at District 4 polling places on Tuesday. Sealed ballots dropped off today at polling places will begin being tallied on Thursday, as will later-arriving mail ballots.
At the end of the day, we can see how the votes stand and begin doing the math on what needs to happen for either side to win based on how many total votes there might be. That number is as-yet unknown and neither side will be content until the polls close at 8 p.m. tonight to rest on its laurels.
Neither the pro- nor anti-recall campaigns are going to be doing much persuading anymore. The key to the election, for both sides, is to turn out identified voters. And both sides will be doing that until the clock strikes 8.
The anti-recall side will begin at 5:30 this morning with the traditional Get Out The Vote flier-hanging. The pro-recall side will eschew this in favor of keeping its people fresh for later hours.
Today, all the money expended and all of the rancor on the internet will be eclipsed by rather traditional door-knocking and visibility campaigns. And Mission Local will be there.
Check back at this spot all day long for updates from reporters Io Yeh Gilman, Junyao Yang and Yujie Zhou, all of whom can communicate with the Sunset’s large Chinese-speaking population in its own language. Stay tuned for analysis from managing editor Joe Eskenazi and rapid data reporting and graphics from Kelly Waldron.
Sunset in the sunset will be at 7:15 tonight. Gleaning if the sun also rises for Engardio tomorrow — his birthday — will take a little longer. We’ll be on it.
— Joe Eskenazi
Joel turned out to NOT be a man of his word.
He promised to clean up toxic land (proven by scientists and geologists in testing neighboring homes near 2550 Irving) and then backed off when pressed by Breed, Weiner and accepted faulted findings by DTSC to be suddenly “acceptable “ when the levels were NOT in the past.
Great Hwy: Joel promised a compromise : shared bikes and cars. Then backed off with pressure by the politicians and put the vote to an entire City. The recall is only voted in D4
Such a disappointment this man’s character has proven to be, calling those who agreed with recall “haters”.
What a spin.
Look in the mirror Joel
The truth will set you free. You are not a proven advocate for your community that voted for you.
It’s too bad –Joel Engardio is one of the smartest, best prepared, most good-faith supervisors the City has seen in a long time.
But he messed up badly on the Great Highway issue. He became a symbol of the unfeeling Big Machine of City government running roughshod over the folks in the neighborhood. Worse, he’s appeared dismissive of the neighborhood folks. And now he may pay the political price.
~R
He is not good faith. He is simply a weasel, who is now also toast.
And the Sunset is not for sale.
WHAT A LOAD! The man is a charlatan who tried to gaslight his entire district.
GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD LIARS. Maybe he can go work for Breed as a butler?
” smartest, best prepared, most good-faith ” I take major issue with that characterization on any actual issue. He continues to LIE about the GH as if closing the road “somehow” lowered emissions? THE MAN IS A LIAR. That’s not smart, that’s not best prepared, and it’s CERTAINLY not good faith. What a load of feathers! Was stripping ADU’s of rent control “smart” or “good faith” regarding protecting renters? Come the hell on!
yell at the clouds some more
“We’re terrified of the possibility of more traffic. Also we’re against public transit.”
The emerging anti-progressive majority in a nutshell.
There’s nothing anti-progressive about kicking a liar to the curb.
It’s the most progressive thing the Sunset could have done.
Lying about closing a road is not actually “environmentalism” kids.
you are so loud and annoying
The history of which Engardio speaks is one in which wealthy techbros not only dominate the working class financially, but take away public roads they need while not doing anything to improve public transit. Engardio is on the “right side of history” if history is Blade Runner.
Seems to me that in a district supervisor system a supervisor should first and foremost represent the interests of his district. Engardio did not. He deserved to be recalled. I don’t live in his district but I agree with the result.
That 77% number is only representative of a few precincts. While the Sunset voted against Prop K, the number was closer to something in the 60s. As for the park, as a resident of the Sunset, traffic is slightly up, but not terribly so, and well worth having a gorgeous park for all ages – it’s even bustling in the fog. We’d also do very well to remember that the Golden Gate Bridge itself was initially very unpopular itself! Give it a few years and 77% of residents will support it.
https://electionmapsf.com/
The GGB provides utility, doesn’t destroy it. False equivalences are false, sorry.
Also the GGB was created from an honest process, not a fly-by-night last minute proposition drop full of lies and Billionaire dark money.
How you go about things determines if they’re just and legal, and Engardio stans keep forgetting that his shady lies (and actual crimes in trying to cover up his ‘secret’ meeting with Google Lawyers and other tools of Billionaires) are only the first step in undoing his shameless and stupid giveaway to Bernal yuppie interests at the expense of actual locals.
The lawsuit will determine who laughs last, but it won’t be Engardio – he’ll be door knocking for the rest of his unemployed political tool’s life, and good riddance. Go stand with him now as he moves back to Michigan.
Sir or madam —
The election is over and so is this back-and-forth. It’s taking a not-insignificant portion of my working hours to go through these puerile comments.
It’s enough.
JE
the third most popular park in the city provides the thousands of people who visit it daily quite a bit of utility.
Your stats are wrong, tourist.
I live there. I go there frequently. Every time I go I see a lot of people using it.
Ocean Beach and the Great Highway path will remain for you tourists, don’t worry, we’ll let you ride on the side of the road as we drive to our destinations. Bernal yuppies will have to find another road to politicize, sorry.
You didn’t vote to change it…you voted to let lurie do what he wants. remove public transportation while raising height limits in the sunset instead of the rich neighborhoods he and his friends live in. well done.
Bernals are content to lie from the East side. They don’t get a vote, so sorry for your inconvenience.
It’s been clear to me that Joel’s goal for a decade has been to be mayor of SF. That’s why he pushed for the road closure as Supervisor with a city-wide vote–it made a name for him city-wide! However, he misled his constituents about what he intended to do, and went against their prevailing views. He and his high-priced backers clearly don’t understand District 4. People in the District are tired of stepping-stone politicians, Phil Ginsburg, and wealthy tech donors deciding what is best for the westside. They don’t have a clue what goes on out here.
Mayor Lurie should be careful too, if he knows what’s good for him. (Keeping silent on the recall was the tactical coward’s way out of this one.)
I laughed reading Engardio’s comment that he’s “on the right side of history” with the park. About a strip of roadway with crappy art, signs directing people on where to eat, and a skate ramp? Wow, it’s the best “park” in SF! Yay Joel. Can’t wait for Phil Ginsburg to start monetizing every square inch of it like he is doing with GG Park.
“They don’t have a clue what goes on out here.”
Oh they do, they just don’t care. Here’s hoping this recall gets some attention.
Exactly. The best park in SF? Does Golden Gate Park (blocks away from this new ‘best park) know about this?
Woof. These comments are as NIMBY as their posters’ privileged positions. Grow up, people.
YIMBY is a developer’s bought grassroots-ing effort, a charade. The sooner the willing tools of Billionaires realize the rents and housing costs don’t actually go down because you tore out existing housing and put in market rate units, the fewer of them we’ll have to throw out of town like Joel.
what are you even talking about? get off facebook. The only tool of billionaires in this story is the person who ceded a sup position to the billionaire mayor.
‘We are on the right side of history’ = supercilious arrogance of professional managerial class.
“the right side of history” doesn’t even make any sense.
In any event he was clearly on the wrong side of this particular piece of history.
Too bad ‘history’ doesn’t vote….
The actual idiocy of a person living in the sunset taking the GH. Like…what are there maybe 3 blocks on either side where it makes sense? Just nonsense. I don’t know what your grievance is but it can’t honestly be driving on that road. In fact I met someone that was all sad about how they lived over by sloat in the mid 40s and drove to the va for work…And I was genuinely sad for her. Then come to find out she works from home, and when she does go to the va she goes to palo alto. Emblematic of the whole ‘movement’.
The ny times gor it wrong. Supervisor Engardio wasn’t recalled for supporting the Great Highway Closure. He was recalled because his own constituents didnt want the closure but he decided special interests were more important and he steamrolled to get K on the ballot. If he had truly listened to the people he would never have supported K
“Working” belongs in quotes anytime it’s regarding Engardio. He accomplishes nothing other than selling out to Billionaire developers and undermining his constituents. Removing rent control from ADU’s is not “working” – he’s a damn parasite.
richard corriea 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
You don’t live in the district, he does. He wins, you lose!
WE GET A REPRESENTATIVE, you get a pity party!
actually the city won because the sunset dunes exists, is popular, and will not be going anywhere.
It’s going to be a Great Highway soon enough tourist child. The lawsuit is bearing down on your lies – get run over again!
why are you threatening people with physical violence you sad pathetic internet troll?
All that exists is a legacy of LOSER ENGARDIO being PWNED, and the lawsuits that will dismantle his BS legacy of grifting.
We’ll be driving over your political graves, don’t worry.
Bye Joel!!!
You LOST because you LIED.
You sold out your constituents for downtown out-of-town Billionaire interests.
Good luck in your new job, LIAR.
Interesting that crypto, the POA, the chron, and Pelosi-Wiener couldn’t carry him, and that Lurie dropped him before the vote.
The irresistible momentum of “we live near a major attraction…why do all these other people keep coming here?” logic.
The funny part is how the yuppies all get there – they drive!
pathetic
@Joel- Next time listen to your constituency-Fool!
Sunset dunes is one of the best things that has happened to any city in the US in a long time. Thank you Joel for your hard work and for helping create an amazing space that brings joy to so many San Franciscans! San Francisco and its coast is happier and healthier as a result of your work! See you at the park!
Ut existed as Ocean Beach and the Great Highway as the safest SF road.
He’s put the danger on Sunset streets using a BS loophole that doesn’t apply, Billionaire dark money, fake PAC supporters, and lies.
Well, the Sunset gets the last laugh – Liar can move back to Michigan anytime.
THE MOST HATED PERSON IN THE SUNSET RIGHT NOW – FOR LYING.
Also too, the majority of the city;s voters. It’s all their fault. Stupid democracy.
Nope, the Proposition was not honestly brokered and was full of disinformation and outright lies. Or did you think closing a road and having vehicles go around actually reduces emissions, like the dishonest YIMBY tools tried to pitch? Get real kids, learn how the world works. You don’t take Billionaire money and use it against the will of your constituents using a loophole law to expand developer power and get away with it, we’ll eventually throw you the hell out of town just like Joel.
your sad lawsuit is goi g to lose you pathetic troll
uh… okay so you give the reins to an actual billionaire? well done.
the park will remain.
The lawsuit will inform you what CEQA does.
Get ready to get run over again! 🙂
Until the lawsuit gives it back to CA, but we’ll take it back even sooner. You can watch from Bernal like a tourist.
I’m so deeply irritated that you all couldn’t just wait until the next election cycle to do a normal vote. I even voted against K and still think this was immensely wasteful of time and taxpayer money. I’m inclined to vote against literally anyone you support for the foreseeable future.
You’re upset that a liar got fired why? We staunched the damage. There’s no telling how much money that Wiener’s tool would have wasted on pork.
The vote in District 4 was 65% to recall the supervisor. That overwhelming margin is the story. But your headline does not say so, and instead gives the now dismissed supervisor the quote about “being on the right side of history. “. Mission Local has apparently decided that the story is that two-thirds of the voters are wrong, and thus reveals the bias of your publication.
The Bay Area has a stunning lack of intelligent reporting on housing. SF Chron, KQED, Mission Local have managed to obscure one side and promote the tech/YIMBY/real estate lobby relentlessly. Given the vast swaths of facts that these publications ignore, they are the ones likely to show up on the wrong side of actual history
Todd —
The headline changed several times throughout the night. When an incumbent concedes an election, that’s usually the story.
Your contention that this headline is somehow a broadside against voters is bizarre and ridiculous and shows a troubling lack of media literacy.
Yours,
JE
I imagine he’ll just move to another district and run again… again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We are on the right side of history’… if you mean ‘history’ as in not representing your constituents’, then yes!
And it should have been even a bigger drubbing because I saw turnout was reported at around 30-31%. I expect the ‘NO’ folks showed in force so I expect the non-voters were skewed more towards recall than 65%.
Engardio was only interested in serving the wealthy white elite, with his elitist “improve public transit” and “build more affordable housing” agenda.
He looks like his next job should be with the USPS. Do they take liars?
Taking away a road that people with jobs need to allow early-retired tech bros to enjoy their $10,000 bikes is just more evidence that progressives hate working people.
Engardio deserves to be recalled. He showed a sneering disdain for his own constituents.