Everyone is complaining out in the Sunset.
Supervisorial District 4, which encompasses the single-family homes covering the sand dunes south of Golden Gate Park, forms a cautious residential ghetto isolated in many ways from the eastern core of the city. District 4 is as quiet politically as the streets are flat—which makes it the easiest place to walk precincts in this city.
These moderate working-class and Chinese immigrant voters, mostly homeowners, elected Joel Engardio (after he lost three times previously) as their supervisor in 2020. His defeat of Gordon Mar was the first strike of the corporate class in their war against pro-worker and tenant politicians.
These voters have always been susceptible to the law-and-order wave that took out Mar, and had the highest increase in vote counts for Trump between 2020 and 2024 Their resistance to multifamily development has been at the core. And it’s no surprise that District 4 was mostly on the “yes!” side of the corporate-funded campaigns that took out Chesa Boudin, the Board of Education, the progressive majority on the Democratic Party Central Committee (and, yes, even London Breed.)
And now their savior, Engardio, a mere two years into his term, is the target of a fervent recall of his own. District 4 residents are upset because their new elected hero sponsored last November’s Measure K, a “green” initiative to close the frequently undrivable Great Highway from the Cliff House to the Zoo (where it is already permanently closed south of Sloat Boulevard due to rising tides and erosion).
In the labor movement, we endorse folks based on multiple Issues: jobs, health care, housing, right to organize, etc. There is never a dealbreaker based on any one issue. (Unless if you start crossing picket lines …) But a group of District 4 voters has decided to initiate a campaign against Engardio because of a road and a park. Taking out an incumbent is always hard, but anybody can start a recall. The voters of D 4 will decide how this turns out.
Labor came in big in District 1 for Sup. Connie Chan on the renter-heavy north side of Golden Gate Park, the only place that labor exhibited a semblance of unity. It took more than an army of labor and community activists knocking on doors; almost a million dollars went into the independent expenditures to guarantee that Chan would win by more than the 125 votes she won by last time. It was still close: Marjan Philour (also a three times loser) was tied with Connie after the (third) round of the rank choice voting 11,001-11,001.
It’s good to know that the labor movement can still win when most of the unions try to work together. (We did it with Gordon Mar in 2020). But, don’t forget, this campaign was merely defensive.
Last November, as we richly know, voters gave the car keys to Donald Trump and Daniel Lurie. A few weeks into this new order, as Washington DC is blowing up, San Francisco has been pretty quiet.
There was a little drama when Lurie introduced his “emergency fentanyl bill” as the supervisors quietly ceded a limited authority to the mayor. (And the board let Lurie fire a progressive African-American police commissioner without much noise, by a 9-2 margin, during Black History Month.)
In this reactionary environment, even in San Francisco, the corporate money is winning. Any new “progressive” coalition, which I will (loosely) define as organized labor, working families, immigrant rights nonprofits, affordable housing advocates and LGBTQ and civil rights groups, etc., may recoalesce. A new table has to be formed, and what better time to convene that big tent where affordable housing, good jobs, civil rights, and affordable health care are under obliteration-level attacks from the fascist we elected to the Executive Branch of the United States.
So let’s remember District 1. Can something like that be replicated city wide? Or was Connie Chan our last battle?
Tim Paulson is the retired executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council and executive secretary treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council. Nothing is this article reflects the position of the labor organizations.
