There’s a ripping yarn about England’s 10th Duke of Marlborough, who, roughly a century ago, ambled downstairs in a tizzy because his toothbrush wasn’t “foaming properly.” The duke, by this point a grown man, had never realized that toothbrushes do not replenish automatically, and that his valet had been squeezing toothpaste onto the toothbrush.
In a related development, Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco’s congressional representative since 1987, last week announced she would not seek re-election.
Pelosi’s Nov. 6 valedictory video highlighted a series of city achievements of the past 38 years. And it was lost on few that these were all things — healthcare improvements, scientific research, infrastructure transformations — that were largely enabled in San Francisco by its elected congressional representative directing a firehose of money westward.
This is what the city stands to lose. Since the 1980s, it was as if some occult hand had simply recharged the city’s toothbrush. Pelosi is 85. Clearly, it was time. But San Francisco became accustomed to this treatment. We now must become accustomed to not getting it.
“I have no fucking idea how it worked,” said former longtime supervisor Aaron Peskin of Pelosi’s ability to direct funds back home. “It just showed up.”
“You name it,” he continued. “From fixing Aquatic Park to multi-billion-dollar subways. And everything in between. There was no aspect of federal largess for San Francisco that she was not seminally involved in.”
But Pelosi wasn’t just the city’s bag man. Her preternatural ability to solicit and direct large sums of money was matched by an outsize influence. These were surely connected, but she was effective even early in her congressional tenure — before she was whip, leader or speaker and before an appreciable number of federal representatives owed her a favor for their elections or re-elections.
“After the earthquake, we could not have torn down the Embarcadero Freeway without her,” says former Mayor Art Agnos. “I needed to get the permission of Sam Skinner, the secretary of transportation. I lobbied him and I did not get all the way home. Obviously, I went to Nancy. And between the two of us…” — Agnos breaks off and laughs. “I was successful because of her support with Secretary Skinner.”
Pelosi in 1989 was a relatively youthful 49 and in her salad days as a member of Congress. She was decades from becoming the Speaker of the House or the woman who raised and helped disseminate some $1.25 billion for the Democratic Party.
That kind of money and influence did a lot for San Francisco. But it also undid a lot.
“Take a look at the east side of the city and make believe the Embarcadero Freeway was still there,” says Agnos. “Just imagine!”
Political strategist Alex Clemens had Madame Speaker in his pocket. Photo by Joe Eskenazi, March 2020
San Francisco, an ethereally beautiful place with a sky-high self-opinion to match, will never be a normal city. But without Pelosi serving as our own federal budget genie, it stands to become a bit more normal.
Much of the federal largess Pelosi directed our way went to infrastructure projects of the good, bad and ugly variety. But more was accomplished than mere pyramid building: Pelosi used her 1987 introductory speech on the House floor to talk about recognizing the AIDS crisis at a time when President Ronald Reagan was loath to mention the disease.
“I disagree with her on any number of issues and I am way to the left of her. But when people understate her contributions, it makes me furious,” said Cleve Jones, the former Harvey Milk aide turned LGBTQ activist and founder of the AIDS memorial quilt.
“No one has worked as hard and for as long as she has to increase access to healthcare for ordinary, working-class Americans. Period. Going back to her very first speech.”
With great power comes great responsibility — but also great influence. Pelosi served as a human password for San Franciscans — elected officials but, perhaps more often, just regular people — to get past D.C. blockades. Malcolm Yeung, the executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, recalls the mood turn in Capitol Hill chambers when he said that Rep. Pelosi was backing his asks. It felt a bit like the doorman at the Emerald City of Oz shifting from “You’re wasting my time” to “Bust my buttons! That’s a horse of a different color, come right in!”
When Pelosi hugged CCDC founder Gordon Chin at a Capitol Hill event, it was as if he became a made man. “I remember in the panel conversation, the more junior congresspeople were asking Gordon what he thinks. You know, you’re a community person: That does not happen,” Yeung recalled. “No one really gives a shit what you think until they know who you’re rolling with.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi talks to a student at John O’Connel High School, Sept. 8, 2013
So this is what San Francisco stands to lose. Without an appreciable percentage of congress owing San Francisco’s representative a favor, that representative cannot pull strings and advance city interests. He or she cannot be the keeper of the party’s donor network and elevate this city’s needs. He or she cannot send home remittances to recharge San Francisco’s municipal toothbrush.
This is no knock on the men or women who would represent California’s 11th District. There are capable people running to succeed Nancy Pelosi. But nobody can replace her.
One could argue, in fact, that Pelosi was too effective a leader. The hundreds of millions she secured to complete the Central Subway, for example, bequeathed to San Francisco a stunted stub of a rail line that syphons human and equipment resources from the trunk line and will require billions of dollars of tunneling and infrastructure work to become effective public transit.
There is a $400 million federally funded “train box” — essentially, a large empty space where trains, perhaps one day, can go — sitting beneath the Transbay Terminal. It will accommodate CalTrain and high-speed rail. Perhaps. One day.
“How many other members of Congress could secure that level of funding for a train box?” asks SPUR president Sean Elsbernd, a former supervisor, aide to Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Mayor London Breed’s chief of staff.
The answer, of course, is zero. But that may not be a terrible thing: In the best of circumstances, our train box will sit empty for many years to come. The Transbay Terminal still resembles the world’s most expensive Greyhound depot and connecting it to Fourth and King will require billions of dollars. In lavishly funding infrastructure projects that will be highly limited or even useless without vastly more investment, Pelosi assumed the mantle of a benevolent Robert Moses.
It’s a tremendous shame: Pelosi’s unmatched skill for moving federal funding to San Francisco far outstripped the quality of the infrastructure projects the city tasked her with moving federal funding to. Her successors won’t have to worry about this: The present administration isn’t giving us this sort of money. And even sympathetic leadership would feel burned by developments like the Central Subway and Transbay Terminal.
But, no matter who succeeds Pelosi, he or she will not be able to call in favors with heaps of colleagues, deftly earmark huge sums with little fanfare or effortlessly elevate his or her constituents onto the dais of influence and bounty.
It will be harder for this representative and harder for their constituents. Everyone will have to learn to brush their own teeth again.