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, announced last week that 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 replenished 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,” said 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.”
In 1989, Pelosi 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,” Agnos said. “Just imagine!”
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.”
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 replenish 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 streets 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, they 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.
Nancy faced down Trump and beat him repeatedly including with his first shutdown in 2018. Today’s Democrats without her leadership surrendered to Trump with his second shutdown.
So San Francisco had Speaker Pelosi, Governor Newsom, Vice President Harris and whatever Feinstein was and none of them could be bothered to devise an urban policy to address San Francisco’s perennial problems, problems which have been used by the right wing to make San Francisco a poster city for Democrat incompetence.
Pelosi was party leader overseeing two national election losses for Democrats yet she retained her position as party leader. In functioning democracies, party leaders who lose are summarily dismissed and sail off into the sunset.
Pelosi forcing the ACA through with the Stupak amendment and the Individual Mandate gave the finger to reproductive choice and raised taxes on people making < $250K, breaking Obama's campaign promise. Had Obama run on the IM he probably would have lost. The backlash to these betrayals was swift and certain. Democrats lost both houses of Congress, the White House to Trump and then the SCOTUS to far right wing nutjobs for yet another generation. True to form, they blamed racism, as if the professional politicians were unaware of racism before they stabbed their base in the back.
Pelosi had politics in San Francisco locked down hard. She would CUT anyone who dared cross her. More than any one figure except for possibly Willie Brown (locally), her ally, Pelosi holds responsibility for opening the door to right wing ascendency in DC and San Francisco.
That she is celebrated in spite of these appalling failures explains much about why San Francisco finds itself in its current predicament.
Better than Newsom. Better than Lee. Better than Breed.
Pelosi did her part. She achieved great things. Thankfully, she understands it’s time to bow out. God bless her. And god bless the next representative.
Depending. If it’s Wiener, God is not going to be blessing squat.
The longer you’re in office, the more entrenched you become. The more favors you accrue and the more favors you owe. Your donators become gate-keepers between the constituency and you. Moreover, a *representative* needs to be able to have some kind of empathy with her constituents. How the heck can an 85yr old centi-millionaire who lives in a mansion even remotely understand the struggles some one 25yrs younger than them (do the math. 25 years younger = SIXTY FIVE YEARS OLD)
Now, you know what…. it’s not all old people. Seriously. I know some old people who are smart as hell, but you know what? They walk around town. They come to cafes and restaurants and visit regular people, not surrounded by body-guards between visits with other centi-millionaires.
I don’t know. I just feel like the entire government has been taken over by this geriatric pile of rich people who simply are unable to fend off a bunch of energetic fascists.
No mention of Pelosi’s magic in creating the Presidio as we know it today? That’s got to be in her top 3 achievements.
She is, like most politicians, is a mixed bag. I knew that she was getting too old for office when she asked the FBI to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters because, she suspected, they were being financed by Russia.
San Francisco has benefited greatly from her leadership. But many of us are also glad to see her go.
I will always be in love with Nancy.
Congratulations on joining The Order!
Verily.
JE
I might have once bought into the conclusions of this fawning tribute.
To my mind, Nancy Pelosi is first and foremost a war criminal whose true legacy should be assessed along with that of Dick Cheney’s, whose reputation is being “tidied” after his passing.
That’s excessive. I won’t put any politicians on pedestals, certainly not one who’s sat in the same seat for nearly forty years enriching herself, but she voted against the use of force in Iraq and that alone sets her miles apart from VP Cheney.
she has funded the GENOCIDE IN GAZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She funded a lot of things. She didn’t do that by choice.
AIPAC. READ ABOUT THE CONTROL OF OUR COUNTRY.
Totally agree with your column and at the same time think it’s exactly what’s wrong with Congress. The pork barrel spending Pelosi secures comes with the quid pro quo of pork for other members of congress. Before you know it you have a 7% deficit and $38 trillion of debt we’re handing to the next generation. What this country needs is term limits on Congress and the end of gerrymandered Congressional maps. Until we have both of those things, Congress will continue to be a cesspool. And don’t even get me started on the insider trading scam she (and her husband and many other members in Congress) have been engaged in for decades.
So California is supposed to send even more than the current $80m to DC and don’t get back to subsidize the welfare libertarians in the red states who hate us?
If the American people vote for such a redistribution, yes.
If they voted on the merits you mean.
“insider trading scam”.
Yes, there are offenders in Congress, especially the new type that’s trading off Trump passing down “tips”. Looking at Nancy Pelosi’s trading record though, you got think she ain’t one of them.
https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Nancy%20Pelosi-P000197
Not so hot, considering the level of risk she assumes trading derivatives. Not that she’s in a bind, having to cut back on trips to the hairdresser or anything of that nature.
I do think that we can trace the current kleptomania in government to examples set by representatives like Pelosi. She surely enriched herself and her family for generations to come. That helped create a culture of enrichment that Trump is taking advantage of today.
Specifics would make your case less vague.