The Sunset District in San Francisco had long been considered a sleepy neighborhood of single-family homes abutting the Pacific Ocean until it became embroiled in political wars the past couple of years.
Residents fought over turning a roadway into a park. They battled over whether to allow denser housing construction. And they feuded over whether to recall their supervisor, Joel Engardio, over those issues, ultimately deciding to oust him in September.
Now, they have finally found something to agree on: Mayor Daniel Lurie made a huge error when he appointed a replacement supervisor who has resigned after just seven days in office.
A week after Mr. Lurie appointed a political neophyte, Beya Alcaraz, 29, to represent the Sunset District on the Board of Supervisors, she stepped down Thursday night amid a host of allegations about her past business practices.
She was accused of leaving a pet store that she owned in the Sunset District in shambles, and suggested in text messages that she had cheated on her taxes. She could not be reached Friday for comment.
It was considered the biggest misstep of Mr. Lurie’s 10-month tenure. The embarrassing resignation left constituents and political leaders wondering how he could have appointed someone so inexperienced without a more thorough vetting.
“Mayor Lurie is finally uniting people,” said John Crabtree, a Sunset District resident who volunteered on the recall campaign. “There is agreement that this thing, this last week, was B.S.”
The Sunset District saga has roots in the Great Highway, a two-mile stretch of roadway lining Ocean Beach that was closed to cars during the coronavirus pandemic to give people space to exercise while remaining socially distanced.
As the pandemic waned, the city struck a compromise to reopen the road to cars during the week and use it as a park on the weekends.
The district elected Mr. Engardio in 2022 to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, akin to a city council, largely because he was instrumental in recalling three school board members and supported the ouster of a progressive district attorney whom the politically moderate district did not like.
It did not take long for the district to turn on Mr. Engardio and recall him, too. Sunset voters were angry that he didn’t consult them when he championed a citywide ballot measure that permanently closed the Great Highway to cars. They were also upset that he backed a plan by Mr. Lurie to allow bigger apartment buildings in the neighborhood.
That left Mr. Lurie with the job of finding a replacement who would satisfy the neighborhood on the Great Highway issue and support his housing plan — a rare combination. He found such a person in Ms. Alcaraz, a political unknown who approached him at a street festival shortly after the recall of Mr. Engardio and told him that she wanted the job and gave him her phone number.
The mayor’s office says that it paid a private firm to vet Ms. Alcaraz. The firm did tell the mayor’s office that there might have been issues with the Animal Connection, a neighborhood pet store Ms. Alcaraz transferred to a new owner in May, for no money, but it did not unearth the tax issues.
Julia Baran, the new owner of the Animal Connection, said in an interview on Friday that nobody from the Lurie administration called her or visited the pet store during their vetting process.
If they had, she said, they would have learned that Ms. Alcaraz left behind a freezer stuffed with pet corpses. Furthermore, she said, the store was covered in urine and feces and short on inventory.
“I’m very familiar with the smell of death now,” she said.
Ms. Baran, irate over the mayor’s appointment of Ms. Alcaraz, took her story to several local media outlets. She also shared screen shots of text exchanges, first reported by Mission Local, in which Ms. Alcaraz wrote that she paid her employees under the table and that she wrote off dinners and drinks with friends as business expenses.
“They may or may not pay me back in cash,” she wrote next to a smiley face emoji.
Ms. Baran said that she had no idea what the mayor saw in Ms. Alcaraz.
“It’s irresponsible and concerning and it really makes me question his capabilities,” she said. “The truth matters.”
Mr. Lurie said on Thursday night that he thought that Ms. Alcaraz could heal “a divided community.”
But he added that he had not learned about “the new information about her conduct while running her small business” until earlier that day, and that the two agreed that she should resign.
Lucas Lux, who lives a block from Ocean Beach and led the effort to convert the Great Highway into a park called Sunset Dunes, said it had been a wild week.
“Like everyone else in the city, my head is spinning,” he said. “I’m enjoying the show, I guess.”
Mr. Lurie has enjoyed high approval ratings so far after serving as the city’s top cheerleader in Instagram posts and fending off a plan from President Trump to send Border Patrol agents to the city last month. He has prided himself on focusing on local quality of life matters and avoiding national politics — at least when he can.
But the Sunset shenanigans have left some San Franciscans wondering how much longer the mayor’s honeymoon period has left.
“He’s gotten himself into a bit of a political pretzel,” Mr. Lux observed.
Rafael Mandelman, the president of the Board of Supervisors, said that Mr. Lurie needed to work harder to find a top-notch Sunset supervisor this time around. He noted that the appointee would have to rebuild trust and satisfy constituents enough to get elected, all while supporting Mr. Lurie’s agenda.
“It’s a very, very tall order,” Mr. Mandelman said.
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
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