By John Ferrannini

District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio became in 2022 the first person to oust a previously elected city supervisor since district elections to the board were reintroduced a generation ago. At a meeting last year, he was at SF Hole in the Wall Pizza on Irving Street near 19th Avenue defending his role in putting the closure of the Upper Great Highway on the November 2024 citywide ballot as Proposition K.

Albert Chow remembers that moment when the push to recall Engardio began.

“We all told Joel, ‘This was a bad mistake. We’d like you to reconsider. We had no discussion,’” Chow recalled. “One of the people got so heated, he said, ‘We’re going to recall you if you do this,’ and at first, I didn’t think it was a serious threat – someone got angry and said it – but as time wore on, and he (Engardio) was moving forward with the position, I think more and more people thought ‘If this thing goes through, we’re going to recall him.’”

*After the initial publication of this report, Engardio said that was not the whole story.

“The recall papers were pulled and written and dramatically waved in my face during that meeting as they attempted to bully me to get their way,” Engardio stated. “They wanted to thwart democracy with bullying threats that I remove the measure from the ballot.”

Chow confirmed that indeed Richard Corriea had recall papers in hand. However, Chow said he did not take this seriously at the time except as a barometer of the emotion in the room.

“It was more of trying to show the level of anger, the level of opposition,” he said. “People were literally screaming. Tears were coming out.”

Engardio was no stranger to recalls, having been involved in efforts to recall three members of the school board, as well as District Attorney Chesa Boudin, in 2022, before he was elected as part of a voter revolt, centered in the Sunset, that rocked San Francisco politics. But his support for closing the Upper Great Highway to vehicle traffic – since the success of Prop. K, it is now the Sunset Dunes park – outraged some Sunset residents who previously supported him.

Engardio said during his supervisorial campaign that he supported a compromise brokered by his predecessor Gordon Mar that would leave the Upper Great Highway open to cars on weekdays. Engardio now says his campaign website that year stated he supported the possibility of a park between Lincoln Avenue and Sloat Boulevard. He also said he “supported the compromise in 2022 because that was the best we had in the moment.”

Chow alleges that Engardio told him privately that, “The Board of Supervisors had the votes to close the Great Highway, and soon, and he (Engardio) wrested it from the Board of Supervisors” so voters would have the chance to save it as a thoroughfare for vehicles.

“At first, I thought I had no reason to not trust him. Maybe he was doing the right thing,” Chow said, adding he found out from then-Board President Aaron Peskin that the board was not going to imminently vote on the matter.

“I was pissed off,” Chow said. “That’s when it started for me.”

Asked to corroborate Chow’s account, Peskin said, “That rings a bell. What we had voted on many years earlier, Joel was not on the board at the time, was we voted to adopt the Ocean Beach master plan, and we voted that in a number of years we had to close the Great Highway south of Sloat (Boulevard) by the Zoo. During COVID is when the Great Highway was closed on a temporary basis and that became the Gordon Mar compromise. Joel got talked into by whoever … to use the excuse of the pilot project (the 2022 Mar-brokered compromise) coming to an end to call for the closure of the Great Highway.”

“Albert is misconstruing the conversation,” Engardio said. “I was trying to explain that there was a majority on the board who would likely vote to close the Great Highway when it comes before them next year. And by next year, I meant 2025, because the pilot program was ending in 2025, and so 2024 was the last time the voters could weigh in. So, if they didn’t, the board would likely close the road the following year.”

After Prop. K passed citywide – without majority support in any precinct of District 4 – the recallers’ effort began in earnest, Chow said.

“When I saw it was overwhelmingly ‘no’ on our side of the City – who intimately know and use the Great Highway – I got upset,” he said.

In February, proponents began collecting signatures. The signatures and petition were submitted May 22 and were determined to contain 10,523 valid signatures. A date for the recall election was set for Sept. 16. Mailed ballots have already been distributed.

“There were no apologies from him, no ‘I read the community wrong,’ no ‘How can I rectify this?’” Chow said. “He was so out of touch with us.”

In late July, Chow and other recall proponents held a news conference in the Sunset alleging Engardio covered up a meeting with Lucas Lux, who is now president of Friends of Sunset Dunes, an affinity group connected with the park, and Todd David, a former aide to state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is now political director for Abundant SF. The meeting happened shortly before Prop. K was placed on the ballot and was omitted from at least one version of Engardio’s calendar, though not from another, which was how the discrepancy was found.

The meeting was not found on a calendar provided to Corriea, a supporter of the recall, who said Engardio should voluntarily give up his seat on the Board of Supervisors.

“He should resign,” Chow agreed. “This is his Watergate right here.”

An Engardio spokesperson said Chow and others were “tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.”

Otto Pippenger is a field director for the recall who helps coordinate campaign volunteers. He is confident Engardio will be removed from office.

Pippenger was sending out volunteers for canvassing near the South Sunset Playground Park on Aug. 2 when he said he was optimistic the recall effort would be successful.

“In 10 years of volunteer coordinating with campaigns, I’ve never seen higher ‘yes’ rates,” Pippenger said. (The recall appears on the ballot as Proposition A. A “yes” vote is to remove Engardio, allowing Mayor Daniel Lurie to select a replacement, a “no” vote would support his remaining in office until the end of his term in 2027.)

District 4 resident Heather Davies was one of those volunteering to canvas that day.

“People say politicians lie all the time,” Davies said. “They actually don’t. Thoughtful politicians don’t do that. If they change their mind, they bring everyone along with them … and they’re supposed to be informed about major possible policy changes that affect their constituents.”

Chow is confident Engardio will be removed, painting the circumstances as a David and Goliath struggle.

“We just have the talent, and we just have our hearts,” he said.

Ballots to decide the recall question have been distributed to District 4 voters. The return deadline is Sept. 16.