What’s it like to be the odd bloc out? Just ask the 13,360 residents of District 4 who voted to transform the Great Highway into a city park.
They stand against some 23,000 Sunset residents who voted to keep the coastal road open to motor traffic. The latter lost that battle in November 2024 — and settled the score by ousting their supervisor Joel Engardio 10 months later.
As District 4 prepares to vote for his replacement in June’s special election, the cars vs. park battle remains front and center. But only one candidate, one far from front-runner status, supports the park over the road.
The other four District 4 hopefuls, mindful that supporting the park ended Engardio’s tenure even if it was popular with the city writ large, say cars should return on weekdays.
“A lot of them seemed focused on getting back to what they had, rather than working with the reality we have right now,” said Alice Duesdieker, vice-president of the group Outer Sunset Neighbors.
Duesdieker said she is disappointed that there is no candidate who is “forward-looking” on her top concerns — Sunset Dunes and transportation.
Heidi Moseson, a board member of the nonprofit Friends of Sunset Dunes, agreed. The minority that voted for the park is “a big and motivated voting bloc,” she said, and “it feels like all the candidates are just very casually ignoring that.”
Instead, the top-tier candidates go to great lengths to point out their support for returning cars to the oceanfront road — perhaps the mathematically obvious position, given that District 4 voted at a 64-36 tilt against the park.
Out of five candidates, only Jeremy Greco, a campus administrator at Presidio Hill School, supports keeping the park as is. But he is relatively unknown and has not yet raised any money even as rivals have amassed scores of thousands of dollars.
“The current slate of candidates probably consider it a political reality that this position is needed to win,” said Cyn Wang, a board member of the Westside Family Democratic Club.
Regardless of the views of the eventual winner in the race — or the near-supermajority of district residents — it is not within the purview of a supervisor to open or close a public park. That was a citywide matter, which nearly 55 percent of city voters decided in 2024.
Still, for District 4 residents who favor the park, the candidates’ positions on Sunset Dunes are about more than the oceanfront road.
“If this is their view on Sunset Dunes, I can kind of assume what their views are on transit and public spaces,” said Nina Strachan, a Sunset Dunes supporter and organizer of the Sunset Community Band.
Strachan lives in the Outer Sunset near 32nd Avenue and Judah Street. She said she can’t drive, and relies on biking and the N-Judah to get around — something she hopes her future supervisor will prioritize.
“A lot of these candidates are trying to say, ‘pedestrian safety is really important to me,’ and that just doesn’t feel genuine,” she said.
Tiffany Wong and Kenny Lee enjoy the Sunset Dunes park with their two kids. Photo by Junyao Yang on April 12, 2025.
Urbanists living in the neighborhood who support Sunset Dunes tend to also want even more open space, more housing, better public transit and more bike infrastructure, Sunset Dunes supporters say.
But they find little support among the June candidates.
Jane Natoli, former Bay Area director of YIMBY Action, said the “more urbanist-minded” voters on the Westside may feel “trepidation” that there is “not a lot of alignment with the candidates” in District 4.
Wong is a hard candidate for many urbanists to support even though he voted for the upzoning plan, because he favors returning cars back to the Great Highway, and actively worked on a ballot measure to make it happen.
But that is who the YIMBYs have. The Friends of Sunset Dunes group failed to find candidates to fill this void for the June special election, though it is hoping against hope that someone steps up and wins in the November general election.
That is a long shot. Anyone running in November would face a steep uphill battle against an incumbent just recently elected to the post, and perhaps a voter initiative on the same ballot to reopen the road. Such a measure, which is in the signature gathering process and requires some 10,000 to get on the ballot, would likely bring voters to the polls who are against the park.
Moseson, for her part, said the Sunset needs leaders who “bring constituents along” and understand some decisions may be good “even for people who are worried about them.”
But for now, she said, “we seem to have leaders who are just trying not to get yelled at.”