Joel Engardio has a plaque over his desk: “What would Jimmy Carter do?”
It’s not the kind of question your typical poll-minded pol would ask. And that’s the point: The Sunset district’s supervisor isn’t, or at least doesn’t want to be, a politician who does only what is necessary to keep getting himself elected.
He told me about the plaque last fall, less than three weeks before voters elected Donald Trump and Daniel Lurie, when I asked him about a decidedly less momentous item on the upcoming ballot. I wanted to know if he was worried that his advocacy for a voter measure that would shutter a portion of the Great Highway, the notorious Proposition K, would ruin his political career.
“Sometimes you are faced with very difficult decisions, and it’s better to do the right thing versus the politically expedient thing,” he said.
That Engardio hadn’t been expedient is now abundantly clear. Sixty-four percent of voters in his district opposed Prop. K, and his detractors submitted 10,523 valid signatures to a petition to recall him, creating a referendum on Engardio’s future that is set for Sept. 16.
Engardio is attempting to spin those numbers in the best possible light. In an interview last week at the charming Black Bird Bookstore and Café on Irving Street, blocks from the ocean, he told me those signatures represent only 20% of registered voters in his district. “That means 80% of the electorate in District 4 did not sign,” he said. “If you wanted to sign, you had ample opportunity. So 80% of the people, over the course of four months, chose not to sign.”
Engardio also theorized that because some of those voters scribbled their names in January, before they began to like the new park formed by the road closure, Sunset Dunes, and while they still feared a “Carmaggedon” that hasn’t materialized, some won’t vote to recall him.
According to nearly every political professional I have spoken with since the recall effort was certified May 29, Engardio is engaging in wishful thinking. Whether they love or loathe him, they believe Engardio is toast.
The political calculus goes something like this: Constituents who are irate about Engardio’s support for closing a vital thoroughfare in their neighborhood are highly motivated to vote against him. Meanwhile, the typical District 4 resident — and they are the only ones who get a say, unlike the citywide Prop. K — won’t bother voting.
Worse still for Engardio is that Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has said nothing about the race, is about as likely to back Engardio as he is to mention Donald Trump’s name anytime soon. That’s because Lurie will get to appoint an ally to the Board of Supervisors if Engardio is booted, preferably someone who can retain the seat the following June, the next regular election.
The irony here, given the moment of Lurie’s centrist leadership, is that Engardio is exactly the kind of politician San Francisco needs. He is a moderate in every sense of the word, an advocate for what became the moderate coalition years before it coalesced.
Engardio works hard for his constituents. He created a “Fix-It-File” online tool to let people in his district inform him of city projects that need attention. He was ahead on the eighth-grade algebra fight. He supports legislation to make it easier for San Franciscans to build alternative dwelling units in their backyards. He’s also a leader on joyful initiatives like spearheading Asian-style night markets that have become popular in other parts of the city. “We sparked night-market fever,” he boasted.
Where he screwed up, at least from the perspective of attracting opposition that could cost him his job, was advocating for a new park along the ocean at the expense of a span of roadway that wind and sand were certain to claim anyway.
In other words, if Engardio gets tossed, it will not be because he isn’t a good legislator or public servant, but because he touched the third rail of the traffic wars.
Like any nasty political row, local or national, so much about this topic is anecdotal and emotional, defying “proof” that one side or the other is right. Sunset residents can’t even agree if traffic has gotten worse as a result of closing the Great Highway from Lincoln Way to Sloat Boulevard.
Take a recent San Franciso Chronicle article that signaled its on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand timidity by asking a question it declined to answer: “Has the Great Highway closure led to a traffic nightmare? This is the most complete data yet.” A representative observation: “A few of the park’s neighbors believe the Great Highway shutdown has pushed traffic onto their blocks, even if the data doesn’t back up their assertions.”
It’s telling that this debate comes down to perceptions more than facts. When a San Francisco Standard reporter tagged along on a Sunset resident’s commute to Mountain View for an article on how residents are fuming over increased drive times, the trip was 11 minutes faster than it had been before the portion of the Great Highway closed.
The outrage over the closure of a section of a road that didn’t offer off-ramps to the neighborhood reminds me of the opposition to the Chase Center by Mission Bay advocates who said ambulances going to the new UCSF hospital would get hung up in traffic. To my knowledge, it hasn’t happened once in seven years.
Some of Engardio’s allies have been encouraging him to apologize to his constituents. I asked if he plans to. “I’m humbled by the fact that a majority voted against Prop. K, and so I am sorry when people didn’t feel heard in the process,” he said. “Some people are going to be angry at me no matter what, and I won’t be able to change their mind. But I can talk about all of the other things that I’ve done to help their lives and will do to help their lives. So if a recaller needs a tree pruned or a pothole filled in front of their house, then we’re going to quickly go and fix that problem for them, because that’s my job.”
I think it’s ridiculous to recall an elected official who is really good at his job over one policy disagreement, particularly when he’ll be up for election in less than a year. If you want him out, vote him out when his term is up.
Before we left the Black Bird, I asked Engardio to reflect on his admiration for Carter, the one-term president known for his inadequate political skills.
“Look at how Jimmy Carter ended up,” he said. “You have to measure your life in the value you bring to society and the people you love and the people around you, not a job title. Jimmy Carter died at 100 years old, revered as a peacemaker, as someone who did the right thing. If only we could all live as well as Jimmy Carter did. That’s something to aspire to.”
I don’t get a vote, because I don’t live in the Sunset. But I “stand with Joel,” as his anti-recall campaign advocates. If Lurie wanted to take a principled rather than a political position, he’d stand with him, too.
Engardio will be fine either way. San Francisco, on the other hand, will be worse off without him in elected office.