Published Oct. 15, 2026at6:00am
The race to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress has become a nail-biter, thanks mostly to her endorsement of Connie Chan and her help with fundraising, strategy, and lining up high-profile backers.
But why is San Francisco’s progressive community lined up so solidly behind Chan?
After all, during my 11 years working for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, that stalwart progressive newspaper, we regularly vilified Pelosi and her alliances — criticizing her anti-progressive centrism, privatization of the Presidio, enabling of War on Terror excesses, and political corruption.
So why would progressives back Pelosi’s hand-picked successor, particularly since she is also endorsed by another boogeyman of progressives, former Mayor Willie Brown?
Chan — a San Francisco supervisor with scant legislative accomplishments who barely won her only two political campaigns — has regularly opposed progressive issues. She nixed the creation of car-free spaces in Golden Gate Park and Sunset Dunes (she is now supporting the park’s elimination through Proposition G), as well as improvements to public transit that leave less room for cars.
There are two reasons progressives support Chan: They hate her opponent, state Sen. Scott Wiener, and they’re part of a shrinking coalition that’s increasingly led by public-sector labor unions and nonprofit organizations, two groups that Chan has strongly backed, particularly while chairing the Board of Supervisors’ Budget Committee.
But I’m a progressive who supports Wiener in this election, and here’s why.
Wiener is the hardest working and most effective politician I’ve covered in my seven-newspaper, 25-year career as a California journalist.
Wiener’s work ethic is both an asset and source of frustration for his opponents. It’s a tension I explored deeply while reporting and writing “The Machine (opens in new tab),” a long profile of Wiener published by the Bay Guardian in January 2013, after his first two years on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Most of the progressive leaders I interviewed for the story opposed much of Wiener’s policy agenda while praising his effectiveness and affability.
But progressive views of Wiener have hardened since then, particularly around his championing of state laws to boost housing development and lower housing costs. His YIMBY approach, which curbs the ability of cities and local groups to deny or delay housing projects, is opposed by neighborhood groups that have long been a vital pillar of San Francisco’s progressive political coalition.
So it’s understandable that these groups, now weakened, are angry at Wiener, just like the conservative groups opposed to his championing of nightlife and LGBTQ+ issues; the nonprofits that opposed his efforts to get more funding for public transit; and tenants groups opposed to his efforts to make it easier to convert apartments into owner-occupied condos.
I’ve often criticized Wiener on issues ranging from the YIMBY agenda and condo conversion to his siding with political moderates over progressives in every election cycle. But as a journalist, I found him to be open, honest, and willing to discuss his positions.
And there were many progressive issues he championed and advanced more than any other supervisor. Wiener has always favored expanding public transit and bikeways, even when it meant taking space from cars, or keeping the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency in check.
When police started cracking down on San Francisco nightlife and underground parties in the early 2000s, a tactic the Bay Guardian labeled the “Death of Fun,” Wiener was an early and consistent ally, resisting the same San Francisco Police Department that he once defended as a deputy city attorney. As a California senator, Wiener led the fight to let bars stay open past 2 a.m. and allow public drinking in San Francisco’s new entertainment zones.
Yet somehow, in these days of extreme political polarization, Wiener has been painted by progressives as some kind of right-wing partisan. He got heckled and chased away from the trans march, even though he’s been the LGBTQ+ community’s biggest advocate in the California Legislature throughout his tenure. He gets called anti-tenant, despite his unflagging support for San Francisco rent control laws and advocacy for new apartment buildings.
I’ve even come to have a more nuanced view of the YIMBY laws he has championed. YIMBY advocates are right that high housing costs force the working class and people of color to leave San Francisco. Today, it’s hard to interpret a NIMBY agenda as progressive politics.
San Francisco’s progressive coalition seems stuck in the past, more concerned with performative politics, enforcing leftist orthodoxy and protecting its fiefdoms than with making genuine progress for all San Franciscans. Wiener’s campaign has capitalized on that by noting Chan’s history of rejecting ideas and projects. It is easier to say no than to take the flak associated with urging people to say yes.
San Francisco needs a leader like Wiener in Congress, someone who will tirelessly and effectively advocate for San Francisco’s liberal values in a country mired in conservative, reactionary dogma and failures. And unlike Pelosi, who silently presided over our country’s lawless excesses and reckless financialization in the years after 9/11, Wiener won’t be afraid to speak up and fight back.
Our country is a mess, and it’ll take hard work and persistence to fix it — qualities that define Weiner’s political leadership.
Steven T. Jones was city editor of San Francisco Bay Guardian 2003-2013 and its editor-in-chief from 2013 until the paper’s closure in October 2014.