A Propensity for Deception

What's in a word? Much... so very much

Months ago, when some of the key leaders of the Recall Engardio Campaign gathered to discuss the framing and messaging of the campaign to recall and remove Supervisor Joel Engardio from office, we tarried for a time on the verb “lie.”

lie (verb) — speak falsely

present participle lying | past tense lied | past participle lied

:to say or write something that is not true in order to deceive someone:

:to create a false or misleading impression

Are you lying to me?

“Joel Engardio lies,” was a refrain from some at that meeting. But as was also pointed out that phrase is not the most politically valuable observation. Much of the American electorate has come to believe that all politicians lie, that it is a standard operating principle. Knock on a door and tell a voter, the person who represents you — in this case Supervisor Joel Engardio — lies and you will, quite regularly hear a variation of this response, “OK, what’s your point? They all lie.”

Words matter, always they do. And in this case, perhaps as much as any I have lived through, words matter deeply. Does Joel Engardio lie? Yes, with a stunning regularity and with no remorse. Back on June 26th my friend Jen Dougherty and I attended a “Coffee with Joel” event at Galinette Bistro on Taraval. You can read about what came from that event here — Nativist? - Though the Heavens Fall... by John Crabtree.

However, what happened immediately after the meeting is also interesting in the context of this post. Supervisor Engardio ended the meeting by saying, “OK, we should wrap up, I need to get back to City Hall.” That was fine, no one was arguing, Engardio had spent an adequate amount of time discussing issues and fielding questions. As Jen and I filed out of the bistro we were following the Supervisor and his campaign manager, Joe. Joe asked Joel, “do you have time to talk?” And Engardio responded, “sure, I have plenty of time”

Jen and I just looked at each other and shook our heads. She said to me, “he does it so effortlessly, and there was no reason for it.” “No reason whatsoever,” I responded.

Words matter, deeply.

Lying is not a sufficient word for what Supervisor Engardio foisted on the people of District 4, not by a long shot. Deception is better — to be deliberately false and misleading, often with malicious intent. I have at times, in this Substack also used the word chicanery:

chicanery — the use of trickery, deception, or clever underhanded actions to achieve an end, especially by misleading or manipulating others. It implies consciously employing dubious, dishonest, or crafty tactics to deceive people—often in political or legal settings.

One has to admit that is pretty spot-on. But alas, chicanery is not used enough in the lexicon to be a very valuable message point in a communications strategy.

When the Recall Engardio Campaign gathered to talk about framing and messaging, we had a deep discussion about what it actually felt like to residents of District 4 to have Joel Engardio repeatedly promise them that he would stand with them in their desire and efforts to keep The Great Highway open to vehicular traffic five days each week. Remember for a moment that Engardio came into the homes and sat at the tables of his soon-to-be constituents and made these promises to their very faces.

We talked about how that felt, and we settled on a word that best described those feelings — and that word was — Betrayal.

And that word — betrayal — has become ubiquitous in the public debate around the Recall of Joel Engardio across San Francisco. I hear it in conversation when I am out talking to voters, or when I sit somewhere and listen to conversations around me. Engardio betrayed the people of District 4 and now the people of District 4 want him recalled. And there you have it.

It came home to me this morning when I read a piece in the San Francisco Standard by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez and Han Li. It is a very good piece, well written, excellent analysis, strongly encourage everyone giving it a read. But I must say, they had me at the headline — ‘The Betrayal Zones’: Sunset maps show why Engardio might be a goner in recall election.

When I read that I knew that this recall election had settled around the most apropos narrative. Betrayal has become the 2025 word of the year in The Sunset, District 4 and across San Francisco.

A Propensity for Deception and Betrayal

On September 3rd the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF) handed down a verdict that Supervisor Joel Engardio violated open government rules when he scrubbed a single meeting out of his official 2024 calendar to prevent his constituents from learning about the meeting with Todd David (Abundant SF) as well as Lucas Lux to discuss closing The Great Highway and turning the roadway into a so-called “park.”

S.F. Supervisor Engardio found in violation of open government rules ahead of recall election — Ko Lyn Cheang, San Francisco Chronicle

As you might guess, after the SOTF decision came down on 9/3/25, the very talented researcher that I work with decided to go back and examine Supervisor Engardio’s 2023 official calendar. There is much there to examine, a veritable gold mine of chicanery. But in this post, to the likely frustration of my fearless researcher, I am just going to point out one calendar entry.

A meager 3 weeks into Supervisor Engardio’s term, he sat down with Lucas Lux and Jeff Daniel (now a principal officer of Friends of Sunset Dunes) to discuss “The Great Highway Park.”

Lucus Lux’s presence is of no real surprise; he met with Supervisor Engardio on an approximately monthly basis. Jeff Daniel is no surprise either. But the “issues discussed” is the most interesting, and disturbing, part of the calendar entry.

“The Great Highway Park” was something that three months prior, candidate Joel Engardio was telling his constituents he would oppose, that he would stand with them against. Sitting in their homes and at their tables, he promised them that he would support the compromise and keep The Great Highway open — Patricia Arack endorses Engardio Recall.

And then, by 1/25/23, he began engaging in his grand deception in his official capacity as a San Francisco Supervisor. Joel Engardio’s betrayal of his constituents was well underway and yet, the submission of the ballot measure that would become Prop. K was still 17 months in the future.

In 2023 Joel Engardio met with Todd David multiple times, although not as many times as he met with Lucas Lux. There were a dozen meetings, or more, about “Great Highway Park.”

I apologize T.S., while a long, careful look at Engardio’s 2023 calendar is well in order, my premise in this essay was to look for how far into this calendar that Engardio’s betrayal would be fully revealed. That was on page 19 of a 364-page document.

John Crabtree