A bystander caught a paid staff member of Gordon Mar’s campaign for District Four supervisor tearing down a poster for competitor Jessica Ho on Irving Street Sunday morning.

After The Chronicle inquired about the incident, the staff member said he “acted out of emotion, not out of my values, or training or the values of this campaign.”

“I shouldn’t have done what I did, I know that, and I’m sorry,” Mitchell Enfinger said in a text message, adding that he tore down the sign because it was “put up by an outside special interest group that’s spent over half a million dollars to prop her up.”

Throughout the campaign, independent expenditure committees have spent tens of thousands of dollars on behalf of Ho and Mar to pay for posters, door hangers, TV and radio ads.

Ho’s campaign has received nearly $600,000 from Progress San Francisco, a PAC that often backs moderate candidates in local elections. Mar’s campaign received about $92,000 from a number of independent expenditure committees, including the San Francisco Labor Council Labor & Neighbor Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee and the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association PAC.

Mar’s staff member said this is the “first and last” time he has torn down one of Ho’s campaign posters.

But several merchants and residents said they’ve noticed Ho campaign posters suddenly going missing over the past few weeks. Awadalla Awadalla, owner of SF Hole in the Wall Pizza, said posters for both Ho and another candidate, Art Tom, have been ripped down from his storefront “two or three times.”

Longtime Sunset resident Sal Alioto said campaign posters for Ho have been taken from his front lawn twice.

“What kind of crap is that?” he said. “I just don’t understand why people do that.”

Edward Wright, Mar’s campaign manager, said he does not condone taking competitors’ signs down. He added that “tons” of campaign posters for Mar have also been torn down during the course of the campaign.

We “train our entire team not to do it,” he said. “We’re re-emphasizing that training.”

This is the latest back-and-forth between Mar and Ho in the race for District Four supervisor, which is becoming increasingly testy between the two front runners. Last week, Ho’s campaign sent out a scathing press release accusing Mar of lying to Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily, about his position on a state Proposition 10, which would overturn California’s rent-control restrictions. Mar denied the accusations and said his comments were mischaracterized by the paper.

The other candidates in this race are Trevor McNeil, Lou Ann Bassan, Tuan Nguyen, Mike Murphy and Adam Kim.

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