San Francisco District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong appears headed to keep his seat in a crowded race, according to early election results released Tuesday night.
As of 9:45 p.m., Wong had the most first-choice votes out of five candidates. After ranked choice voting, Wong ended up with around 72% of votes.
San Francisco uses a ranked choice voting system to decide the winner. Of the ballots counted so far, multiple rounds of eliminating candidates and redistributing their votes to the remaining candidates showed Wong receiving many transferred votes.
“Our campaign worked hard and the results reflect that,” Wong said in an interview. “It’s the honor of my life to serve the neighborhood that I was born and raised in.”
Natalie Gee, a legislative aide to Supervisor Shamann Walton, placed in second behind Wong with 28% after several rounds of ranked choice voting.
“While it does not look like we will be victorious today, I know that the movement we built is only getting started,” Gee said in a statement. “It appears the price to pay to win this seat is to abandon your convictions and abandon working families, and that is not a price I was ever willing to pay.”
For Wong, the results so far appear to speak for themselves.
“For me it comes to just talking about the things that people in the neighborhood care about and focusing on the basics of governance,” Wong said. “For far too long, City Hall has been focused on ideology and grandiose ideas. I’m just focused on making government work for everyday people.”
So far, results include most vote-by-mail ballots and some ballots cast at voting centers on Election Day.
Wong was appointed to the Board by Mayor Daniel Lurie in December after District 4 voters recalled former supervisor Joel Engardio, primarily over his support for Proposition K, a ballot measure to permanently close the Great Highway and turn it into a park. The measure passed, but the majority of District 4 voted against it, sparking the recall effort.
For Tuesday’s election, voters had a say in whether they want to keep Wong in office. If the votes continue in his favor, Wong will serve the remainder of Engardio’s term, which concludes in about six months.
District 4 voters will again return to the ballot box this November to vote on a supervisor to serve the next full term of four years. Wong said he plans on running again.
