On Politics: Why 2024 is so San Francisco
Good evening. The presidential race has become extremely San Francisco, so I've asked The Times's San Francisco bureau chief, Heather Knight, to tell us just what that means. Then, I take a close look at Donald Trump's refusal to clean up his alarming remarks about voting in future elections. — Jess Bidgood
Why 2024 is so San FranciscoThe latest, 98 days out
If the last few weeks of political drama were a soap opera — and they sure felt like one — some of its biggest writers and stars would hail from one place: San Francisco. There was former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has represented the city some conservatives love to hate for 37 years, shrewdly working her back channels and lobbying President Biden directly to leave the stage. There was Gov. Gavin Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor, who quickly disappointed Democrats who had hoped he would get in the race himself. And, of course, there was Vice President Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic nominee, who worked in the San Francisco City Attorney's office before winning election as the city's district attorney in 2003. Coincidence? Maybe not. San Francisco has long held an outsize place in the national consciousness, and particularly in politics, a surprising feat for a city smaller in size than Staten Island and smaller in population than Columbus, Ohio. Former President Donald Trump is already trying to use this to his advantage, warning at a rally on Friday that a Harris presidency would mean "crazy San Francisco liberal values" being imposed on the entire country. In truth, the current crop of nationally powerful San Francisco leaders represents a more moderate segment of the Democratic Party than Trump's tough talk suggests. And the people who best know San Francisco's rough-and-tumble politics say that being from the city will be an asset, not a liability, as Harris takes on her toughest race yet. "We eat our young," said Supervisor Myrna Melgar with a laugh. "Those of us who survive it learn some real skills." A city of (political) championsHarris is following in the footsteps of several San Francisco-adjacent politicos who achieved national prominence, including the late Senator Dianne Feinstein and former Gov. Jerry Brown. So what is the city's secret sauce? First, its stunning wealth. The Bay Area, which includes San Francisco and Silicon Valley, is home to some of the world's most successful companies and scores of billionaires, and is known as the Democratic Party's A.T.M. Cultivating local deep-pocketed supporters early on can mean reliable support later for a statewide or national political career. Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, held a fund-raiser for Harris more than a decade ago. Susie Tompkins Buell, the co-founder of Esprit and the North Face, is a longtime Harris supporter. So are the Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, the former Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and the venture capitalist Ron Conway. (Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Trump's vice-presidential nominee, is seeking to draw on his own Silicon Valley ties to raise big money.) The city's diversity is also a big plus. Winning office in San Francisco means learning how to court business leaders and union members, landlords and tenants and people of all racial stripes and religious backgrounds. A successful San Francisco politician will mix with Cantonese-speaking immigrants in Chinatown, Spanish-speaking families in the Mission District, tech titans, homeless people and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. I recently moderated a mayoral debate, and you'd better believe the audience expected a quick answer to "Who is your favorite drag queen?" The attention on San Francisco can raise any politician's profile. But the answer I heard most often when asking City Hall insiders why their city had spawned so many national leaders was not a positive one at all. A knife fight in a phone boothI've covered San Francisco City Hall for more than two decades, and its politics are just plain nasty. Democrats of varying shades of blue fight over small differences in policy. I've seen them blast one another on social media, bully one another in meetings, bring city staff members to tears and undercut one another with ballot measures designed for the sole purpose of killing their enemies' ideas. The city attorney David Chiu coined the analogy that San Francisco's politics are like "a knife fight in a phone booth," and has said that battling fellow Democrats in San Francisco was much rougher than taking on Republicans in the State Legislature. "There's nothing like the battleground training here," he said after a recent Harris rally on the steps of City Hall. "Once you can do it in San Francisco, you can do it anywhere." Harris's first political opponent was her former boss, District Attorney Terence Hallinan, a teenage boxer who became a metaphorical brawler in the courtroom, too, earning the nickname "Kayo." It was an acrimonious race, according to Andrea Dew Steele, a political adviser who helped convince her then little-known friend to run for the office. Harris attacked Hallinan's conviction rate as one of the lowest in California and fended off his accusation that she owed her rise to her former boyfriend, Willie Brown, who was San Francisco's mayor at the time of the race. Steele said she thought that Harris's training ground in San Francisco had prepared her well to take on Trump. "It is a tough city," Steele said. "And she's as tough as it gets."
ON THE RECORD 'Vote for me, you're not going to have to do it again.'The best way to understand presidential candidates is through their own words. So, from time to time, we'll take a close took at Trump's and Harris's high-profile interviews, highlighting a moment you might have missed or an exchange everyone is talking about. First up: Trump's appearance last night on Fox News. Donald Trump had made an explosive claim, and Laura Ingraham appeared to want to help. Trump had told a group of conservative Christians on Friday night in West Palm Beach, Fla., that they would not have to vote again if they supported him in November. Democrats cited his statement as proof that he wanted to end democracy for good. Yesterday, Ingraham, the Fox News host, took it upon herself in an interview to give Trump an offramp, but he blew right past the chance to rebut their accusations. The former president, who had tried to overturn his 2020 election loss, repeated the claim several times — offering voters a sobering reminder that he often means the things he says, even when they sound outlandish. "I said, 'Vote for me, you're not going to have to do it ever again.' It's true," Trump said when Ingraham brought up the criticism of his remarks. Christians, he added, often don't vote. "I'll straighten out the country. You won't have to vote anymore," Trump said. "I won't need your vote." The exchange alarmed democracy experts and gave Democrats fresh fodder to assert that Trump harbors authoritarian ambitions. It also showed his lack of interest in hewing to a disciplined message in a race he is leading. During the interview, Ingraham gently suggested that Trump simply meant he wouldn't be running again four years from now, but he sidestepped the chance to agree with her. "You know who else doesn't vote?" Trump said. "Gun owners don't vote!" Undaunted, Ingraham tried a third time. "It's being interpreted, as you are not surprised to hear, by the left as, 'Well, they're never going to have another election!'" she said. "Can you even just respond to that?" Trump said, once more, that Christians don't often vote, and he urged them to do so, whether they vote early or not — although he undermined that message, too, by interrupting himself to say elections should be held only on a single day. "Don't worry about the future," Trump said. "You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don't have to worry about voting anymore." At that point, Ingraham explained to Trump that his critics had taken comments like that to mean he was never going to leave office. "But you will leave office, after four years?" she added, laughing. "Of course," Trump said. "By the way, and I did last time." He didn't mention the fact that he had left office only begrudgingly, after a mob had rioted at the Capitol in his name. — Jess Bidgood Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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