After four months of gathering signatures, the campaign to recall San Francisco Supervisor Joel Engardio has reached a critical milestone, according to the campaign.
The campaign needed to collect at least 9,911 valid signatures, or 20% of registered voters in District 4, to trigger a recall election. The campaign announced Thursday they had collected approximately 14,000 voter signatures and submitted roughly 11,000 they believe to be valid.
The Department of Elections confirmed in an email statement Friday morning that it had received a raw count of 10,985 signatures.
In front of City Hall Thursday, about 80 people gathered for a rally before submitting their petition signatures.
“[Joel Engardio] ignored our community’s needs and kept pushing policies and propositions that hurt us and all San Franciscans,” said Selena Chu, a campaign volunteer who spoke at the event. She accused Engardio’s anti-recall campaign of trying to slow down and obstruct the signature-gathering effort.
Four sheriff’s deputies were stationed outside Engardio’s City Hall office to guard against any potential disruptions. Engardio spoke to journalists from another private office.
“These past four months, this issue has been on people’s minds,” Engardio said. “But I’m confident that a majority of Sunset voters will reject this recall.”
He believes residents’ anger has waned since the park opened, as fears of worsening traffic have not materialized: “Because they liked the park, and the traffic was not as bad as people expected it to be,” Engardio said.
The high-profile recall effort was launched late last year shortly after voters approved Proposition K, a divisive ballot measure to close the Great Highway to cars and convert the two miles of road into a park. Engardio, whose district includes the Sunset, where the coastal drive is located, championed the proposition and became a target for recall over concerns about increased traffic congestion in the neighborhood and longer commute times.
According to a source at the Department of Elections, a qualification decision could come as early as next Friday, though a full count of signatures could take over a month.
“It’s too soon to know if the recall has qualified for the ballot,” Engardio’s anti-recall campaign said in a statement.
The Great Highway was closed to cars in March and became the Sunset Dunes park a month later, welcoming more than 13,000 visitors on its opening day. Engardio’s campaign emphasized that a recall wouldn’t reopen the Great Highway to cars, and that the effort to remove him from office “sets a bad precedent for recalling officials over a single policy disagreement.” A lawsuit to overturn the ballot measure is pending in court.
Prop. K passed with more than 55% of the vote. Supporters of the measure, including urbanists and environmental groups, saw it as a way to repurpose the highway amid coastal erosion concerns. But the initiative deeply divided the city. While the vast majority of votes in favor came from east-side neighborhoods far from the park, the west side largely voted against the measure.
Many residents in the Sunset and Richmond districts, who are most affected by the highway’s closure, said the decision lacked adequate community input and exacerbated traffic concerns. Some political groups, such as the Chinese American Democratic Club, which was an outspoken opponent of Prop. K, have endorsed the recall.
The recall campaign started gathering signatures in January. If the signature count is validated, a special recall election would be scheduled within 120 days.
“There’s been a lot of curiosity about whether the campaign could pull it off,” said Mary Jung, a Democratic political strategist who led the successful 2022 recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. “It’s a tough process, and even tougher when it’s limited to a single district.”
If the recall does qualify for the ballot, Engardio has money on hand to fight it. His campaign, backed by tech titans such as Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, has raised more than $400,000. In contrast, the recall campaign, officially known as “Our Neighborhood, Our Future: Supporting the Recall of Supervisor Engardio,” has raised about $144,000 and has $54,000 in debt.
Engardio has politically powerful allies who are helping him fight the recall effort, including Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, San Francisco YIMBY, and state Sen. Scott Wiener.
“The recall is becoming a NIMBY effort to stop the positive progress at City Hall,” Wiener said in a recent social media post. “If this recall succeeds, that’s exactly what will happen.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information from the Department of Elections and details from Thursday’s rally at City Hall.