In late June, angry radicals — at least one of whom used antisemitic language — ejected Sen. Scott Wiener from the Trans March at Dolores Park.
The damage to Wiener’s bid for congress appears to be zero. Rather the opposite: Wiener’s congressional campaign transformed videos of people following and berating the stoic and forlorn state senator into a fundraising bonanza. He went on a quick national press tour that included a TV spot on CNN, and sent out a fundraising text based on the encounter.
You can’t blame Team Wiener for capitalizing — though the pile-on did feel a bit like a soccer player rolling about on the pitch and clutching his knee. The people who proactively exiled Wiener from the march only made him stronger.
More disturbingly, the behavior of a few sanctimonious loudmouths has, once again, been seized by bad-faith purveyors of misinformation — and curiously ham-fisted local politicians — and used to portray San Francisco as a hotbed of organized, political antisemitism. And that’s a black eye for all of us.
It would have been more reasonable to allow Wiener, one of the politicians who has most strenuously rejected the siren call for Democratic politicians to toss trans people to the wolves in hopes of appeasing the Fox News crowd, to lope through the march unmolested. According to Wiener, he’s put in an appearance at every Trans March for the past 22 years. It certainly would’ve been more politically wise to simply give him the cold shoulder during Year 23.
Instead, Wiener was 86ed in an abusive and damaging public spectacle by a small group of radical marchers. People are entitled to their beliefs, and it would be tautological to chide radicals for behaving radically. They don’t call them reasonables for a reason.
But we also don’t need to pretend the limited group of individuals who pressured Wiener to leave represent more than a fringe element, no matter how viral their online clips.
It is unambiguously antisemitic for individuals to go on about a Jewish man’s “Israeli masters” or “Zionist handlers” — let alone purportedly remark on Wiener’s “tainted bloodline” (as allegedly happened in a separate incident when a critic spotted Wiener at the airport).
This is San Francisco and this is a problem. But let’s not claim this is a San Francisco problem: Radical factions attempting to drive mainstream politicians from the Trans March is common. Mayor Daniel Lurie was ejected from the march last year as were Mayor Ed Lee and Sen. Mark Leno a decade ago.
Making mainstream politicians uncomfortable at the Trans March has, in recent years, been the only tangible achievement of the city’s extreme left. Last month San Franciscans voted in lockstep with the desires of Lurie, our dynastically wealthy Downtown-friendly mayor (who, like Wiener, is Jewish). San Francisco residents just voted down a tax on billionaires. In 2024, the year Lurie was elected mayor, 57 percent of voters in San Francisco — a city with a supermajority of renters — inveighed against a statewide measure to expand rent control.
We are living in a cartoon world right now, but we shouldn’t pretend we’re living in a cartoon San Francisco. Angry militants may have the heckler’s veto in Dolores Park, but there is zero political constituency for radicalism in San Francisco — anti-Israel or otherwise.
Scott Wiener showed up to the trans march and for the first time we kicked his ass out. It’s sad because while he’s written some good legislation for queers, hes ultimately a genocidal-supporting center right shill. Trigger warning: broken man walking away defeated. Vote Connie! pic.twitter.com/TXIB7omxde
— Dimitry Yakoushkin (@decadimitry) June 27, 2026
But you have to say one thing about a cartoon San Francisco — It’s a handy tool for powerful people who want to make sweeping changes to the city’s M.O. The once and future sales pitch from the city’s ascendant moneyed interests is that decades of liberal misrule by San Francisco’s feckless Board of Supervisors have put the city behind the eight ball.
The fact that San Francisco has been led by a string of Downtown-friendly, pro-business, moderate mayors going back to Frank Jordan in 1992 — and is arguably under the control of its most Downtown-friendly mayor yet — is of no matter to these masters of the universe. The fact that San Francisco’s strong-mayor system allows for the allocation of roughly 99.8 percent of the budget before the Board of Supervisors touches it is of no matter. The fact that San Francisco was portrayed by local and national news outlets as Robocop’s Detroit while crime continues to fall to historic lows is of no matter.
The solutions to San Francisco’s problems, as proposed by the folks firmly in charge, is more centralization, more power for the mayor, more tax breaks for the wealthy — and more people going to jail. Insofar as there’s any coherent opposition to this, it sure as hell isn’t a bunch of militants fulminating in the park.
When local radicals physically menace elected officials, shout bigoted slogans or deface Jewish-owned businesses, they deserve the condemnation they’ve received. But we are veering into Toon Town to claim there’s any sort of organized constituency behind them.
It benefits this city’s powers-that-be to present a cadre of fringe figures as some kind of viable political movement — and set themselves in opposition. At this point, it’s practically political muscle memory.
It shouldn’t be: It’s a version of the same cynical game played by Ron DeSantis and other politicians who present a cartoon iteration of San Francisco as the exemplar of “Democrat-run city” ineptitude, to boost their own standing.
It’s also a dangerous game for those who want to stay in local politics for the long haul. It should be lost on no one that the two 2024 mayoral candidates who chose to embrace the coarsely reductive Doom Loop rhetoric — London Breed and Mark Farrell — are firmly ensconced in the city’s political septic tank. Voters, meanwhile, seem pleased as punch with Sunny Dan Lurie, whose political philosophy is “Let’s go, San Francisco!”
As mayor, I can never accept hate directed at a member of our community. The language directed at Sen. Wiener yesterday was targeted, hateful, and antisemitic. In San Francisco, we welcome disagreement and respectful dialogue around issues many of us feel passionately about—but… https://t.co/FjGXJ9RcvY
— Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉 (@DanielLurie) June 27, 2026
The final problem with abrogating reality for a cartoon version of reality: Reality, for lack of a better word, is persistent.
As we’ve noted, after years of national and local stories focusing on the worst of the city, and an era of bruising, corrupt and creatively incompetent city hall politics, San Franciscans are happy to embrace political decorum and feel good about the place they live.
But there’s a sell-by date pending here: Governing is difficult and extends beyond political legerdemain, fundraising or hype videos. Whatever they’re shouting about at Dolores Park, at some point the people with all the power in San Francisco are going to have to show what they’re actually doing to address the city’s actual problems.
Robin Williams, it turns out, was on to something all those years ago. Regarding reality, he remarked “what a concept!”