In 1983, when I was a young reporter just starting out at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein signed a law strictly limiting the possession of handguns in the city.
A self-described Marxist-Leninist group called the White Panthers, whose members argued that the left should be well armed, immediately launched an effort to recall the mayor.
It would have been nothing, just a fringe movement, if Feinstein hadn’t done two other things that same month: She vetoed a bill by the late Sup. Harry Britt that would have extended city benefits to domestic partners, and she vetoed a resolution by then-Sup Nancy Walker proclaiming “reproductive rights day” in San Francisco. She said, as she often said later when it came to LGBTQ rights, that the domestic partners bill was too much, too fast—and she said reproductive rights day would be “too divisive.”
So the gay community was furious, a lot of pro-choice advocates were furious, the White Panthers (a very small group) were apparently exceptional organizers—and to the shock of everyone in the city’s political mainstream, the recall qualified.
Feinstein had been doing terrible damage to the city, following the will of every developer, and placing the city’s entire economic future on downtown offices for finance, insurance, real estate, and Pacific Rim trade. She allowed the destruction of the I-Hotel, opposed rent control and other tenant protections, and encouraged the early waves of gentrification. The Bay Guardian endorsed the recall, which means I must have voted for it (the first, last, and only recall I ever voted for).
The White Panthers didn’t care much about local electoral strategy; as it turned out, if the goal was to get rid of Feinstein, it could not have been a more spectacular failure. Feinstein’s husband, Dick Blum, got every developer and big corporation in town to contribute tens of thousands to defeating the measure, hired a top team of political consultants, pioneered a vote-by-mail strategy for a low-turnout election, and won with 80 percent. That made her politically untouchable, so she won re-election that fall with no real opposition, and we were stuck with her for another four years.
That was also the end of recalls in San Francisco for many decades.
But things are very different now: A recall ousted District Attorney Chesa Boudin (after a savage media campaign of lies and misinformation) and another ousted three members of the SF School Board.
Now Sup. Joel Engardio, who supported the Boudin and School Board recalls, is facing one of his own—and frankly, the math doesn’t look good for him.
Feinstein campaigned against the White Panthers, who were (to say the least) not popular; it was easy in 1983 to demonize a group of Communist gun lovers. She ran a campaign saying that recalls were undemocratic (after all, she would be up for re-election in just a few months). Engardio can’t demonize or dismiss the neighborhood groups, his own constituents, who organized this effort. The recall is all about his support for the Great Highway closure—which an overwhelming majority of D4 voters opposed.
He can say, as he has been saying, accurately, that recalling him won’t re-open the Great Highway—but all that does is make the issue central to the campaign, which is a loser for him, and piss a lot of people off.
He can try to blame former Sup. Aaron Peskin, but that sounds like he’s saying Sunset community leaders, many of them fairly conservative, are just Peskin dupes, which won’t fly. And he can’t say recalls are undemocratic, since he supported four of them and made that part of his supervisorial campaign.
So he’s got a bit of a messaging challenge here.
Engardio will have unlimited money, but this is going to be a very, very low-turnout election, in one district, with nothing else on the ballot. If 40 percent of the voters turn in a ballot (about the turnout in the Feinstein recall) that will be shocking. The Boudin recall, with massive media attention, in a June primary election, had 46 percent turnout. The 2022 School Board recalls—again, with massive media coverage—had 36 percent turnout.
When he won election to the job in 2022, Engardio got 13,643 votes. The total number of votes cast in that election, with the governor’s race at the top of the ticket: 26,826. More than 20 percent of the D4 voters—10,523—have already signed petitions in favor of the recall.
It seems highly unlikely that any Engardio campaign message will convince many of those 10,523 voters to change their minds–and the pro-recall group already has all their contact information for GOTV. If we assume that most of those angry people turn in ballots (and they’re going to be the most motivated voters) and the total number of votes in the special election is the same as the 2022 November election (unlikely) Engardio would have to get 65 percent of the people who didn’t sign the recall to vote to save him. That’s a heavy lift.
I don’t live in the district, and 48hills doesn’t endorse or oppose candidates. If Engardio gets recalled, and he says it’s an undemocratic system, I would be sympathetic—except that he built his career on a series of undemocratic recalls that set the stage for this one.
The election is Tuesday, Sept. 16.
