As Pelosi’s exit nears, San Francisco Democratic candidates fight over what comes next
Progressive policy ambitions meet practical realities as Americans weigh costs and consequences.
Nancy Pelosi held that seat for almost 40 years, which means most of San Francisco has never known a congressional race that wasn't a foregone conclusion. Now that she's actually stepping aside, the city doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. Scott Wiener and Connie Chan aren't fighting over ideology in any real sense.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
For nearly four decades, San Francisco politics revolved around one towering Democratic figure: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Now, as the longtime lawmaker prepares to leave Congress, the city is having an unusually public argument over what comes next.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-CA) and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan are competing to succeed Pelosi in […]
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Nancy Pelosi held that seat for almost 40 years, which means most of San Francisco has never known a congressional race that wasn't a foregone conclusion. Now that she's actually stepping aside, the city doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. Scott Wiener and Connie Chan aren't fighting over ideology in any real sense. They're fighting over who gets to inherit the machine.
That's the tell here. San Francisco isn't debating homelessness policy that's turned sidewalks into open-air encampments, or the retail closures that have hollowed out downtown, or why families keep leaving for Texas and Idaho. It's litigating which flavor of the same political class gets to hold the microphone next. Wiener versus Chan is a fight about factions and endorsements, not about whether one-party rule actually delivered for the city that invented it.
We'd have more patience for this if San Francisco were a model of good governance being handed off carefully. It isn't. Decades of uncontested Democratic control produced some of the worst quality-of-life outcomes of any major American city, and the response to Pelosi's exit is a scramble among insiders rather than any real reckoning with that record. Nobody in this race is running against the status quo, because the status quo is the only thing either candidate has ever known.
What comes next in San Francisco will look a lot like what came before, just with a new name on the door. That's not a transition. It's a succession plan.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.