By John Ferrannini
District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong, who was appointed by San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie to fill the term of ousted supervisor Joel Engardio, was decisively elected by his own right June 2.
Speaking with the Sunset Beacon and Richmond Review shortly after the first election returns were announced, Wong said, “when there were outside pundits that were giving their predictions, we just kept doing the work, and we didn’t show off. We didn’t advertise what we were doing. We just kept our operations going.”
Wong got 72% in the final round of ranked-choice voting, according to the most-recently released preliminary election returns from the San Francisco Department of Elections. Natalie Gee, chief of staff to District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, got 28%.
Gee stated on election night, “while it does not look like we will be victorious today, I know that the movement we built is only getting started, and I look forward to continuing to be a champion for this neighborhood, and for working people across our incredible City.
“I would like to thank the hundreds of people in D-4 and across San Francisco who dedicated their early mornings, late nights, weekends and holidays to knocking on doors, making phone calls and doing whatever it took to reach the community here in the Sunset,” Gee continued. “I’m proud of the race we ran. I’m proud to have been able to stand up for working families in my neighborhood. To fight for safer streets, to protect our most vulnerable communities, and to advocate for the services like buses and playgrounds and libraries that our residents depend on.”
Wong said he “knocked on the majority of doors in the entire district.”
“I personally gathered 800 signatures to put myself on the ballot,” he added. “And my team, we covered this district. Seven times.”
Wong, a former City College trustee, was appointed last December to fill the seat encompassing the Outer Sunset neighborhood until this election could be held for the term ending in January 2027. Another election will be held in November for the four-year term beginning next year. Wong said he’s “focused on the basic things.”
“I want to be able to ensure that the voices of this neighborhood are heard at City Hall,” he said, and “ensure that the Sunset is getting its fair share.”
“I’m focused on getting a protected left-turn signal at Lincoln Way and Chain of Lakes (Drive), getting rid of the no left-turn sign at 34th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard,” Wong said. “That didn’t make sense to neighbors. Those are the things that impact everyday people, that is affecting their quality of life, affecting their commutes each and every single day.”
In a round-about way, it was commuting that got Wong into office. Engardio was recalled after boosting Prop. K, which closed the upper Great Highway entirely to vehicle traffic. While Prop. K passed citywide, it was very unpopular in the Sunset.
District 4 has been a hotbed of political activism in San Francisco since a COVID-era voter revolt that led to the recalls of three progressive school board members and District Attorney Chesa Boudin. That led Engardio into office in the first place, who himself was the first person to beat an incumbent elected supervisor since the reintroduction of district elections almost a quarter-century earlier.
Wong wasn’t the first person to have replaced Engardio. Last November, Lurie appointed political novice Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz. The 29-year-old resigned after one week amid allegations related to her management of a Sunset district pet store. Then Lurie appointed Wong, a Sunset native and child of immigrants from British Hong Kong. In an interview late last year, Wong said he spent much of his initial time in office responding to power outages in his district, and that he’d support a ballot measure to reopen the highway to cars on weekdays.
A number of candidates put their hats in the ring for the seat. Coming in behind Wong and Gee was Albert Chow, a hardware store owner who was a leader in the movement to reopen the highway and recall Engardio. Chow declined to comment shortly after the first returns came in around 9 p.m., and didn’t return a message later June 2.
Jeremy Greco, the current producer of Sunset Solos at Sealevel, a monthly solo theater performance series, and David Lee, an educator and the 20-year executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, also didn’t return requests to comment by press time for this report.
Categories: News
When a billionaire mayor is allowed to set up his own political action committee and pour an endless amount of money into it, with endless contributions from other billionaires and “politically aware donors”, these are the results you get. I’m glad that Chow, Greco, and Gee ran. I’m especially glad that Chow and Greco gave it their individual all.
San Francisco is now in a situation where multiple billionaires can literally drop endless cash on campaigns while pummeling the general populace with messaging until they bend to their will — the very definition of propaganda.
How would Wong and Sherrill have done if they had had to run their own campaigns and think for themselves, instead of relying on prefabricated messaging from corporate PR firms and individual consultants? And how would they have done if they had *not been political picks based on nepotism and favoritism, both of which are documented in recent media reports? It would’ve been a much more even race than this was.
Speaking of Wong, I watched a Board Of Supervisors meeting a few weeks ago where a group of Black community members from the Western Addition came to speak in support of the Ella Hill Hutch Center. Each person told an incredibly heartfelt story about how much the center means to them, and begged all the supervisors to please keep the center open.
It wasn’t until the final speaker was almost done talking that I realized two things: 1) I was watching the Reverend Amos Brown, who is a local legend, and 2) Alan Wong spent the entire time working on his laptop.
From what I could see, Wong never looked up once while Reverend Brown or any of the community members were speaking. Considering who Reverend Brown is and what the Black community is going through at the hands of the City right now, it was beyond disrespectful.
There’s a larger story to be told about why we have so many billionaires in the San Francisco Bay Area, and what it would mean to turn off the venture capital faucet. If all of this VC money were to go away tomorrow, Cinderella’s carriage would turn back into a pumpkin, exactly like it did in 1999 and then 2000, when the dot-com bubble exploded.
Wong, Sherrill, and so many more would have to act on their own merits instead of being propped up by unseen deals and all-expenses-paid campaigns designed to play to the simplest mindset, such as “Son Of The Sunset” and AI-generated campaign flyers.
Finally, Albert Chow is not “a hardware store owner.” He is *the* owner of the San Francisco Heritage legacy business Great Wall Hardware on Taraval Street, and the co-leader of the Recall Engardio effort.
That recall effort was successful after former Supervisor Joel Engardio — backed by many of the same billionaires that forced DA Chesa Boudin out of office along with the above-mentioned school board members — flipped his stance on the Great Highway as soon as he got elected.
Chow has done a *ton for the Sunset community, including coming back after his store got burned down during the recall effort under very questionable circumstances — especially when Progress Hardware on Irving couldn’t — and it’s disappointing to see him described in this article as just some kind of random individual.
In my opinion, both Chow and Greco showed great character by entering this race and staying in it till the end, despite the overwhelming odds. And I disagree with this reporter’s statement that Wong was “decisively elected by his own right”.
One has only to look at sfethics.org — along with the massive disclaimer text on the billboard advertisement on the side of Walgreens at 22nd and Irving — to see that Wong was elected through political contributions from a group of very wealthy individuals, many of whose money comes from venture capital.
https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-we-need-to-stop-subsidizing-venture-capitalists/
Congratulations! Way to go D4 and Supervisor Wong!
He had the mayors full support with a Huge campaign war chest… Hope he takes good care of D4