Voters overwhelmingly approved the recall of three San Francisco school board members, in what came to be seen as a vote on the board’s competence:

The successful recall campaign against school board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga, and Commissioner Alison Collins was fueled by discontent over a number of issues, tied together by a sense the school board was not doing its job.

“The voters of this city have delivered a clear message that the school board must focus on the essentials of delivering a well-run school system above all else,” said Mayor London Breed (D), who supported the recall effort. “San Francisco is a city that believes in the value of big ideas, but those ideas must be built on the foundation of a government that does the essentials well.” Breed will pick the three temporary replacements on the seven-member board.

The recalled board members said they were simply doing what voters wanted them to do:

Collins, Lopez, and Moliga had defended the board’s moves, arguing that they had been elected to prioritize racial equity. And the heavily outspent opponents of the recall called it a distracting waste of time and money and said a successful effort would only embolden conservatives across the country.

Possibly. Except the San Francisco case against the incumbents was built on competence:

“I hate to break it to them,” former city supervisor and 2003 Green Party mayoral candidate Matt Gonzalez told Weigel, “but this is really more about incompetence than it is about how it fits into some ideological battle over school boards or textbooks or things like that.”

Exactly. Incompetence will get you fired, even in San Francisco.