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If ShahidForChange falls short of the 25% he got four years ago, it will be another sign that progressive SF is in retreat. However, if he does better this time, it may be a sign that after Pelosi, The City’s representation in D.C. may move further left.
Shahid Buttar, a Stanford-educated lawyer and activist who has never held elective office and who lost to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi in 2018 and 2020, is attempting to unseat her again in November. As San Franciscans prepare to go to the polls on June 7, it’s worth considering that The City and state’s one-party dominance is not really a sign of flourishing democracy.
But one-party dominance can have its advantages … for San Francisco. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is Exhibit A in this case. Pelosi has been in Congress since 1987, and will almost certainly be running for her last term this November. When she leaves Congress, Pelosi will be remembered as one of the most influential members of the House of Representatives and one of the most savvy and powerful Speakers of the House in American history. Because of her leadership role, Pelosi has also been able to bring resources, projects and money back to San Francisco for things like helping turn the Presidio into a park and securing funding for expanding BART to the airport. Yet Pelosi’s next term may be very different because she will likely be in the minority as the Republicans seemed poised to win back control of the House. Moreover, because it is likely her last term, she will have less leverage when negotiating with members of either party. All this raises the question of why she is running at all. Yet one way to answer this question is to look at her competition and her political position. For much of her time in Congress, particularly the last decade or so, Pelosi has been a target of the far right who have portrayed her as a dangerous radical representing the left-wing bastion of San Francisco. This assertion is complete nonsense because Pelosi is no radical and never has been. She is a mainstream liberal and, to some, a corporate Democrat. And that is where Shahid Buttar, the strongest of the four candidates running against Pelosi, comes into the picture for 2022. Buttar, a Stanford-educated lawyer and activist who has never held elective office and who lost to Pelosi in both 2018 and 2020, is the radical who Fox News and the MAGA world claim Pelosi is. In 2020, Buttar — campaigning on an unabashedly left-wing platform — won almost a quarter of the votes in the general election despite being outspent by a margin of well over 10 to one. Buttar also has been dogged by charges of sexual harassment, which he unequivocally denies and sees as a part of a broader effort to discredit him and silence a progressive voice. When I asked Buttar how he differed most from Pelosi, he responded, “The biggest area is corruption and the role of corporate influence and the role of steering corporate interest in federal policy making. That breaks down to a bunch of different subsidiary issues.” Buttar then explained how he saw that corruption — specifically the role of corporate America in funding campaigns — as leading Pelosi to conservative positions on issues such as health care and climate change. Buttar also dismissed Pelosi’s ability to deliver for San Francisco, commenting, “Anybody who thinks that Nancy Pelosi is serving San Francisco or bringing home the bacon has not been to Bayview recently.” Pelosi has responded to Buttar’s campaign this year, and in previous years, by ignoring it. That policy extended to her office not responding to my requests to speak to somebody for this article. From a campaign perspective, it is hard to argue with Pelosi’s approach. Why would a powerful and relatively popular incumbent with an enormous campaign war chest bother with an opponent who may be best understood as a gadfly? However, given that Pelosi’s time in Congress is almost certainly winding down within the next few years and that her power will wane if the Democrats lose their majority, the question of whether San Franciscans want a progressive, even radical, representative in Congress over a more moderate Democrat is certainly worth asking — and Buttar is raising that question through his campaign. On issues from significantly raising the minimum wage to aggressively supporting the Green New Deal to calling for much stronger campaign finance reform, Buttar is considerably to the left of Pelosi. But it is not all clear that voters in San Francisco who preferred Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden in 2020, but who elected a moderate mayor in 2018 and recalled three members of the school board earlier this year, share his views. Because of Pelosi’s tremendous advantage in funding, experience and name recognition — and the reality that Buttar is not the strongest possible candidate — Buttar’s campaign is not really a test for progressive San Francisco, but his 2020 showing is a good benchmark. If Buttar falls well short of the 25% he got four years ago, it will be another sign that progressive San Francisco is in retreat. However, if he does better this time, it may be a sign that after Pelosi, The City’s representation in Washington may move further left. Lincoln Mitchell has written numerous books and articles about The City and the Giants. Visit lincolnmitchell.com or follow him on Twitter @LincolnMitchell
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