Agitated Sunset residents are charging ahead to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio, but doubts seem to be creeping in as to whether they’ll have the moolah to gather signatures and put the matter to District 4 voters.

Engardio’s anti-recall committee has raised almost $120,000 this year, more than six times the $18,827 raised by the west-side pitchfork folks, according to campaign filings made public Thursday. With about three months to go until the deadline to submit signatures, the recall effort had just over $12,000 in cash on hand. 

In a private Facebook group chat around the time of the filings, recall backers simultaneously swapped praise and lamented the imbalance in funds. Vin Budhai, a leader of the recall, acknowledged the disparity noted by one commenter and replied, “and we’re broke … and running on fumes …”

A closer inspection of the filings shows that the recall effort — spurred by Engardio’s sponsorship of Proposition K, which passed in November and will turn the upper portion of Great Highway into a park — may have even less money than reported.

Most expenses have gone to paying field directors Jamie Hughes and Otto Pippinger, and the committee has yet to document expenses for campaign attorney Jim Sutton and accountants Stacy Owens and Peter Sullivan.

Power Play followed up with Budhai, who said his Facebook comment about money was mostly in jest.

“We are not broke, we are just running lean on cash,” he said. “I would like a war chest.”

There’s still time for recall organizers to fill the coffers; otherwise, they’ll be relying on a thin bench of volunteers. The deadline to submit at least 9,911 valid signatures from Sunset voters to the Department of Elections is May 22.

Got tips? Send us an email at powerplay@sfstandard.com or text/call (415) 408-7504. 

TOP COP CROP: It’s no secret Mayor Daniel Lurie is mulling new leadership for the San Francisco Police Department — he’s practically flashing lights and sirens from his ears. There is, of course, his effort to bounce police commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone. Those close to Lurie say a commissioner of his choosing would be more likely to back his preferred candidates for chief. 

So it makes sense that Lurie, doing his best impression of the late Mayor Ed Lee, went on a listening tour at police stations across San Francisco. While he openly sought ideas on the future of the department, officers read between the lines and offered unvarnished feedback on their leaders, Power Play is told by multiple sources. 

The officers’ message? Chief Bill Scott has gotta go. And as for who should replace him: Anyone but Assistant Chief David Lazar. 

Scott never earned widespread love from the force, stemming from his Los Angeles roots and low-key style. As for Lazar, operating as a political force, as he’s known to do, is anathema to police culture. Officers value the team and bristle at anyone seen as too comfortable in the spotlight. Considering the number of times Lazar has spoken at Chinatown banquets, where he is occasionally honored, it’s no wonder some officers aren’t fans. That’s true even if Lazar had good reason: Those banquet-goers vocally push for more police resources. 

“I know many officers who are frustrated, and I speak with them constantly about their concerns. We are working hard to hire 500 officers to take the pressure off of them and their families,” Lazar said in a statement. “Leadership is not a popularity contest. It’s about doing what is right for the officers, our Department and City.”

Just about every cop, politician, and journalist in town knows Lazar wants to be chief. But he may be in the doghouse anyway. The Chronicle reported Friday that Lazar got in a crash with a civilian while using his police car lights to circumvent traffic, in what may have been a violation of police rules.

FRIDAY NIGHT WITH THE GOP: It was a Friday night jam-packed with conservative talking points at the Italian Athletic Club in North Beach, as the Republican Club of San Francisco hosted Rep. Kevin Kiley for dinner. Around 180 guests toasted national Republican victories and a moderate turn in the Bay Area, watched Fox News clips, and partied beneath a "Trump Fix America Again 2024" sign in the ballroom.

Kiley, a rising Republican congressman who ran to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2021 recall election, represents the suburban Sacramento area and California-Nevada border. In a speech, he vowed to take down California's sanctuary status and to specifically target liberal cities by forcing local law enforcement to cooperate with federal agencies.

Kiley’s “No Sanctuary for Criminals Act” takes aim at cities “like San Francisco that say they want to be sanctuary cities on top of being a sanctuary state," the congressman told the cheering crowd. The bill hasn’t budged since it was introduced in 2023. Kiley is also preparing a 2026 ballot measure to require voter ID in California, but details are forthcoming. 

MANDELMAN’S CUTS: It’s no surprise that doing business with the city can be a total headache. A movement to make it easier got underway in 2023, when the Board of Supervisors repealed a law that banned SF from doing business with red states because of their conservative social policies. 

On Tuesday, board President Rafael Mandelman will propose a set of contracting reforms — some taking aim at social-justice-inspired restrictions introduced years ago. He hopes to axe a prohibition on doing business with the country of Myanmar and eliminate the Sweatfree Procurement Advisory Group. Mandelman is also raising the monetary threshold for contracts that must follow regulations such as the MacBride Principles, which were instituted during the Irish Troubles to encourage U.S. businesses operating in Northern Ireland to engage in fair labor practices. (Sources tell Power Play that the last supervisor who tried to reform the MacBride Principles backed off following pushback from the Irish community.)

Big picture: Mandelman said he wants city staff to spend less time vetting small contracts and more time on the bigger ones. Just how skewed is the time-to-money ratio? According to Mandelman, staff spend nearly 60% of their time working on vendor agreements that make up just 2% of San Francisco’s contracting value. 

“The most important thing for a big blue city like San Francisco is to show we can be governed effectively. … One of the things that weigh us down is ‘everything bagel’ liberalism,” Mandelman told Power Play, referring to Ezra Klein’s critique of overregulation by Democrats. 

PELOSI’S PLAYBOOK: At a roundtable Thursday, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said that — contrary to popular belief — Democrats have a plan to thwart President Donald Trump’s agenda. She pointed to the party’s huge gains in the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections: “We stopped them in 2017, and we’ll stop them again in 2025,” Pelosi said. 

SF’S MAGA ENCLAVES: Last year, the neighborhoods that took the biggest swings toward Trump were heavily Asian American. Underlying that trend is rising distrust of Democrats among some voters: “Democrats are too left,” said Lai Wah Hun, one local Trump voter. 

HUD CUTS: Layoffs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could throw federal housing grants into chaos. San Francisco’s homelessness department gets 8.2% of its annual budget from the federal government — almost all of it from HUD.