A car-free stretch of highway in San Francisco leads to recall vote and warning to politicians

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — During the coronavirus pandemic, the city closed a stretch of a four-lane highway along San Francisco’s Pacific Coast and made it an automobile-free sanctuary where bicyclists and walkers flocked to exercise and socialize under open skies and to the sound of crashing waves.

But with the post-pandemic return to school and work, resentment grew among neighborhood residents who relied on the artery to get around. Some blamed the district city supervisor who helped make the change permanent by placing on a citywide ballot a measure to turn the 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) stretch into a new park.

On Tuesday, district voters will decide whether to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio.

The recall of a local supervisor who represents one-tenth of a city of 800,000 might seem like minor politics. But the election highlights a San Francisco in flux and a still cranky, even emboldened electorate as leaders prepare to make tough decisions about the city’s future.

The recall election will be the city’s third in four years. It’s fueled by many of the same people who tossed out three liberal school board members in February 2022 followed by the ouster of politically progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin in June of that year.

“This recall is really about the future of our city,” said Engardio in an interview with The Associated Press. “Do we want to be a city that just preserves itself in amber and goes back in time? Or do we want to be a city that innovates, thinks ahead, is forward-looking and welcomes new people?”

Who is Joel Engardio?

Engardio, a crime victims’ advocate, supported the previous recalls. He was among detractors who said Boudin was too lenient on crime and the San Francisco Unified School Board too focused on progressive politics, including renaming 44 school sites.

Later in 2022, he defeated an incumbent to win one of 11 seats on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Engardio represents the Sunset District, a low-key residential neighborhood of single-family homes on the west side with a high Chinese population.

Last year, he was one of five city supervisors who placed a proposal to permanently ban cars from the Great Highway on the November 2024 ballot. Measure K passed citywide, but failed in his district. In May, recall petitioners submitted 10,500 valid signatures to qualify the initiative for Tuesday’s ballot.

A new park divides the city

On an overcast afternoon last week, people jogged and rode bikes down what had once been called the Great Highway. Moms pushed babies in strollers on a road divided by a median of blowing sand and creeping ice plant succulents, still striped with dotted white lines marking what used to be driving lanes. An older man walked by slowly, using a cane.

The new park dubbed Sunset Dunes is popular with many San Francisco residents — but not so much with those in its home community.

Backers of the recall say Engardio betrayed his constituents by going back on support for a compromise that would have kept the highway open to vehicles during the week and banned them on weekends. They say he failed to listen to their concerns about quality of life and traffic safety in the district.

Engardio says he was always clear about his preference for an oceanside park and only supported the compromise because it was up against a ballot measure at the time that would have fully reopened the highway to cars.

His supporters say the ocean belongs to everyone and that the supervisor is being targeted unfairly. They also say the city has made significant changes to mitigate traffic flow through the district.

Dueling campaigns

Wearing a blue cap and white sneakers, volunteer Heather Davies slips a recall flier under a door. At another house, she thanks a man for returning his ballot with a yes vote.

Davies says the recall is what regular people like herself have to counter the interests of Engardio’s wealthy donors, including Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman and Ripple cryptocurrency co-founder Chris Larsen. The tech entrepreneurs have contributed a combined $375,000 to support the anti-recall campaign, which has raised more than $800,000 total; the pro-recall campaign has raised about $250,000.

“We don’t have the levers to pull in democracy like these guys. They can flood the market with social media, and we can’t afford to do that,” she said.

But Alex Wong, a father of two young children, says he supports Engardio because the supervisor has always endorsed family-friendly policies, like building more housing and improving schools.

“The recall itself is centered around a road closure that the rest of the city voted on in support. It may not be popular among my neighbors, but I don’t think that in itself is worthy enough of a recall,” Wong said. “The Sunset is better than this.”

Controversial housing proposal looms

Tuesday’s vote comes as San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie faces his biggest test with a controversial plan to construct taller, denser buildings with tens of thousands of new housing units, which San Francisco very much needs.

Engardio, who is a moderate Democrat like Lurie, supports the plan, which has strong opposition in his district.

“Anybody that thought that the recalls were just a rejection of progressive politics is wrong,” said Jason McDaniel, who teaches political science at San Francisco State University.

He says other politicians are getting the message, “and it’s going to make them less likely to embrace difficult positions.”