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Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:35] So Sydney, tell me a little bit about where you went out to on Saturday. Where’d you go and who did you meet?
Sydney Johnson [00:01:41] I followed Supervisor Joel Engardio around in one of his door-knocking shifts. He has been doing this pretty much every day for several hours a day for the last few weeks and months even, trying to convince voters to vote no on the recall.
Joel Engardio [00:02:03] Oh, hello. Hi, I’m Joel. I’m the city supervisor at City Hall and I’m just checking to see if you have questions or concerns. Oh, hi
Joel Engardio [00:02:14] It’s strategic. You know, if they know someone is already planning to vote one way or another in the recall, you know, skip that house, kind of maximize your time out there to focus on households where people might be undecided.
Joel Engardio [00:02:28] No, any opinion on the recall election? No, well, I’ll leave a little flyer here just to explain it. It’s in about 10 days.
Sydney Johnson [00:02:37] And following the recall at all, you know that there are some angry voters out there too, or at least one in particular, I know, who recognized Joel as soon as we got to his house. And he was very frustrated about traffic and pretty much slammed the door in our face.
Sydney Johnson [00:02:58] Does it get easier kind of dealing with those after a little while or?
Speaker 3 [00:03:06] You’ll get yelled at, but then you’ll have multiple people say they support you.
Sydney Johnson [00:03:14] I would say the majority, actually, of people that we talked to were curious, and, you know, there were certainly some people that said, oh, I actually just don’t really know much about this recall or what it’s about, and you know Joel had an opportunity to explain from his perspective what was going on. There were certainly people that came away from that conversation being like, well, you know I guess I’ll vote no on this.
Jeff Roberts [00:03:38] It’s a no in this house.
Joel Engardio [00:03:39] Oh it is! A no yeah well thank you yeah appreciate that!
Jeff Roberts [00:03:41] I mean they’re stuck with what they’ve got right yeah
Sydney Johnson [00:03:45] One of the neighbors that we spoke to was Jeff Roberts. He was working in his garage and Joel stopped by and introduced himself, asked if he had any concerns. Jeff said he was ultimately voting no against the recall.
Jeff Roberts [00:04:02] He was elected on valid merits, and if he does one thing that people don’t like, it’s not necessarily enough to make a recall.
Sydney Johnson [00:04:12] You know, he likes having more park space and actually has friends who have created art installations that are now at the park.
Jeff Roberts [00:04:20] And I love that and I ride bikes a lot around here so I like the park.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:32] It seems like it was an interesting experience being out there with Joel Engardio. He represents district four, of course. I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about this corner of San Francisco. How might you describe it, especially in comparison to other parts of the city?
Sydney Johnson [00:04:54] I mean, I think for folks who are not familiar with San Francisco, the sunset is probably not what they initially think of. It’s a really beautiful, quiet residential neighborhood, a lot of single-family homes, a lot a multi-generational households, it has a really large Chinese American population, a lot surfers, people who commute by car. It’s just not what you picture when you think of like downtown or Soma with these like big skyscrapers. It is a community that has this reputation of maybe being a little bit quiet, but also very organized.
David Ho [00:05:31] D4 is the Chinese barometer, right? That is independent, tends to be very populist.
Sydney Johnson [00:05:39] David Ho is a political consultant who works in San Francisco. He is an expert on Asian-American communities and voters here in the Bay Area. He also actually grew up in the sunset.
David Ho [00:05:54] Most people have multiple cars, right? They have intergeneration households. So that really clashes with some of the prevalence on the East side politics around urbanist agenda, you know, like open space, you know transit equity, you know more housing, up zoning, right.
Sydney Johnson [00:06:11] He has described the sunset as a place where people kind of just want to do their thing and live their life. And the closure of the road that created Sunset Dunes represented a big change that some residents felt they were not a part of the conversation that led to it.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:29] Exactly why we’re talking now, Sydney, there is this recall of the District Four Supervisor, Joel Engardio, who, as we were just talking about, is kind of out there fighting for his job right now. And I do wanna ask, like, I guess if you could tell me more about Joel Engardeo and why he is now sort of the latest person to face a recall in San Francisco.
Sydney Johnson [00:06:50] Joel Engardio actually ran for supervisor multiple times, was unsuccessful. And in 2022, Engardia was very supportive of the successful recalls of district attorney Chesa Boudin and three members of the Board of Education and actually sort of revived his political prominence by working with some of these pro-recall groups and supporting them. And then Engardio won his seat on the board of supervisors that same year. A couple years later, he came out in support of Proposition K. This was a ballot measure which permanently closed this portion of the Great Highway off to cars and made what we now call Sunset Dunes into a permanent park.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:50] Before Prop K, the upper portion of the Great Highway was only closed to cars on weekends. And Gardio and other supporters of Prop K pointed to the park’s popularity on those days and also the erosion already threatening parts of the highway. And then, last November, San Francisco voters approved Prop K with nearly 55% of the vote. But people who lived near the Great highway Mostly voted no.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:25] Why a recall? Why is Joel Engardio in particular sort of a target here?
Sydney Johnson [00:08:32] Supporters of the recall feel, quote unquote, betrayed by Joel.
Julia Quon [00:08:36] He promised transparency and listening to his constituents and students, including myself and my family, but what we got instead was silence and action taken behind closed doors.
Sydney Johnson [00:08:48] I spoke with people like Julia Quon, who is a resident in the Sunset and a member of the Chinese American Democratic Club, which is one of the biggest funders supporting the recall. And she said that for people like her and her family, the park has, you know, hurt commute times, and they also felt that they were not included or given enough opportunity to be a part of the conversation of even getting Prop K on the ballot to begin with.
Julia Quon [00:09:18] So he shut down the Upper Great Highway. I have to go from where I live in the sunset to Kaiser on Geary. Usually this takes 25 to 30 minutes. Now it takes 45 minutes to 65 minutes.
Sydney Johnson [00:09:36] There are also some supporters of the recall who distrust some of the people who are supporting Joel, and in particular, a couple of billionaires who are putting a lot of money into this race in order to keep him in office. And then you have some supporters who are also hesitant about some of the plans to up zone parts of the West Side and introduce more housing, particularly along transit and merchant corridors. And so I think the the supporters of the recall kind of fall into those buckets
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:16] Sunset Dunes has been open since April now, so it’s been a couple of months. I mean, what has the impact been?
Sydney Johnson [00:10:35] You know, there were a lot of concerns about traffic and about how this might affect local businesses. SFMTA did do a study both before the road closure and this year after. The initial study expected some delays and the study that came out this year pretty much aligned with that. It showed pretty minimal impacts. I should point out though, there are residents who say that that’s not their lived experience.
Sunset resident [00:11:03] And I live on La Playa and Lincoln, where it’s a nightmare. Where we.
Sydney Johnson [00:11:08] At a public meeting just a couple of weeks ago, one resident who lives on La Playa was saying that she is dealing with bumper-to-bumper traffic during rush hour all the time, and that this was a direct result of this park and road closure.
Sunset resident [00:11:22] And I really would hope you would listen to the actual residents of this district. We want Joel Engardio to go.
Sydney Johnson [00:11:32] The other concern that was you know pretty elevated before the park was closed was just what impact it would have on businesses and I’ve spoken actually with a couple business owners who have said that their business is up and that they’re getting more people walking through the avenues you know stopping for a coffee or lunch. I think it’s hard to say after just a few months, you know, what the overall impact of this park is. But that has been what we’ve been hearing from voters and people who live there.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:06] Sydney, how has Engardio responded to the recall effort?
Sydney Johnson [00:12:09] Joel supports the park for a number of reasons, and he still stands by it.
Joel Engardio [00:12:14] As the park becomes more popular and as we see that the traffic Carmageddon everyone feared never materialized, those two talking points aren’t as salient in recalling me.
Sydney Johnson [00:12:25] He also disagrees with this idea that it was done without the community’s input.
Joel Engardio [00:12:32] My recall is over putting something on the ballot. I don’t have the power to close a road or create a park. I can only join three other supervisors to put something on a ballot, which is what I did. So I supported democracy. I supported giving people a choice. I supported letting people vote on an issue.
Sydney Johnson [00:12:50] You know, I think he has said that there’s been many conversations that he’s met with residents one on one. He has basically responded by trying to interact with as many voters as possible.
Joel Engardio [00:13:02] They’re trying to recall me, people are mad about the Great Highway, but I’m up for election next year so you could wait a year and kind of look at me against all the other candidates and judge me on all the issues next year.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:16] This conversation and this recall really seems to be centered around this park, but even if Engardio is successfully recalled, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the park is going to close, right?
Sydney Johnson [00:13:30] Correct. Recalling Joel Engardio will simply recall Joel Engardo. The mayor will be able to appoint someone to fill that seat, and then the district will have an election next year for the supervisor. But to reopen the Great Highway to Cars, that would take a whole other ballot measure, because that was something that voters passed. This was on the ballot. This was an election.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:59] We have been talking about, Sydney, how this isn’t the first recall San Francisco has seen in recent years. In fact, we had the three school board members. We had former district attorney Chase Boudin back in 2022 who were recalled in San Francisco. What do you think makes this particular recall maybe a little different than the others?
Sydney Johnson [00:14:22] Definitely compared to some of the earlier recalls we saw in like 2022, this one here in the Sunset District does not cut across ideological lines quite as clearly. And also that this took off largely because of one issue, you know, the park. I did not cover the recall of the district attorney, but from following it as a resident, it was, I think, a little bit more clear what different sides represented. And I think the recall attempt of Gavin Newsom is an even better example. He was able to say, hey, my opponents here are Republicans, people who don’t represent the values of California and Democrats and progress, democracy, all these things. Here in San Francisco, like, it’s very blue. Joel Engardio has gotten support from members of the Board of Supervisors and Nancy Pelosi and, you know, Senator Scott Weiner, but there’s also plenty of Democrats who have not rallied in support of Joel Engardio. One thing that’s really striking is just how the pro-recall group… Has raised only a fraction of the amount of money as the campaign to keep Joel and Gardio in office. That is unique. And I think what that shows is that you don’t necessarily need a mega-billionaire funding your campaign in order for a recall to get on a ballot and in order for a recalled to present a real threat to a candidate. I think that that is potentially alarming for other candidates. You know, you could potentially take a risky policy position and face a recall because of it. That is a different type of politics, maybe, than we’ve been used to for a while.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:27] What does this recall do you think mean for those of us who are not in San Francisco?
