The race for District 4 supervisor is heating up, and the candidates want you to know one thing: the Sunset has been neglected. On that point, at least, there seems to be near-universal agreement.
At a recent candidate forum, hopefuls took turns naming the specific corners, parks, and stretches of the Sunset District that have been left to deteriorate — crumbling infrastructure, underserved commercial corridors, and public spaces that feel more forgotten than maintained. It's the kind of granular, neighborhood-level accountability talk that voters in the Outer Sunset have been hungry for. These aren't abstract policy debates; they're candidates pointing at specific blocks and saying this is broken and here's what I'd do.
Notably absent from the conversation? Current Supervisor Joel Wong. His no-show gave the other candidates plenty of room to swing — and swing they did, blasting what they described as "big money" influence and the mayor's heavy hand in district politics. The implication was clear: Wong is less a representative of the Sunset and more an extension of City Hall's existing power structure.
It's a familiar populist pitch, and in San Francisco politics, railing against outside money is practically a tradition. But the critique lands a little differently when the incumbent can't even be bothered to show up and defend his record. If you're going to let downtown interests and the mayor's office shape your district's priorities, you could at least have the courtesy to say so to voters' faces.
The real question for District 4 residents is whether any of these challengers will actually deliver on their promises to revitalize neglected neighborhoods — or whether this is just another cycle of candidates discovering the Sunset's problems right on schedule for election season, only to forget about them once sworn in.
The Sunset deserves better than performative concern every four years. It deserves a supervisor who fights for basic infrastructure, pushes back against wasteful city spending, and — at minimum — shows up when constituents are watching. That shouldn't be a high bar, and yet here we are.
