Even Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to live in San Francisco anymore. If not the explicit excuse for her recent announcement to seek reelection, that is no less its consequence. And all things considered — in San Francisco and California — who can really blame her?
On Sept. 8, Nancy Pelosi announced that she will run again in 2024 to represent California’s 11th Congressional District. In making her bid for one of the nation’s wealthiest congressional districts, she wrote:
Now more than ever our City needs us to advance San Fransisco values and further our recovery. Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for ALL.
Yes, assuredly what is needed now is more of “San Francisco values.” Of course, political hyperbole is a hallmark of those soliciting votes, but, even so, this is a bit much. Further, it raises the question of why Nancy Pelosi feels compelled to run again to meet America’s “needs.” For the 20th time. (READ MORE: Doom Loop City of San Francisco)
For one thing, Pelosi is 83 now. She will be 84 when she runs again in 2024, and 86 when her 20th term ends. While it is said that age is just a number, those are still pretty big numbers.
There is certainly no novelty for her at this point. While her district’s number has changed like a lottery ball drawing — going from 5 to 8 to 12 to now 11 — it has always been San Francisco, and Nancy Pelosi representing it since she first won a special election in 1987.
Being San Francisco, there is no danger of it falling into conservative hands. It hardly needs Nancy Pelosi to hold it: Any politician to the left of Che Guevara will do — and such persons are hardly rare in California, let alone San Francisco.
Gone too are the trappings of power that she once enjoyed. She has held every office that House Democrats could bestow on her: leader of her party in Congress twice, and twice speaker of the House — both firsts for a woman. No longer. (READ MORE: Nancy Pelosi’s Other Legacy: A Mountain of Debt for Our Children)
Now she is just one of 435, despite House Democrats in November 2022 voting her “Speaker Emerita.” Really, she is Speaker Pecunia — i.e., “money.” Knowing where their bread is buttered, House Democrats decided to butter her up in turn. And she has raised a lot of bread. According to 2021 Fox News reporting, Pelosi had raised $1 billion for Democrats since assuming a party leadership position in 2002.
And she hasn’t stopped. On June 29, she headlined a virtual fundraiser for Arizona Senate candidate Rep. Ruben Gallego. Just recently she told a Politico reporter: “You may not know this, but if you’re not a candidate, you really can’t raise money for yourself. And raising money for myself enables me to spend that on other people.” No word on how her constituents feel about this.
But, really, is the desire to raise money for others enough to tilt the scales toward staying on in Washington? It is when the realization that not doing so means returning to San Francisco. A hint at how bad things are in by the City by the Bay: One of the arguments of the city’s apologists is that things are not really that bad. And, for the record, they are.
Another piece of evidence is that San Francisco has hired Scott Beck as its “new top tourism official to try and shift the public perception of the city as it deals with surging crime and rampant drug use.” Recognizing that the mountain he has to climb starts with a single step, Beck, according to the New York Post, stated “that media coverage about the city’s safety is not ‘100% accurate.’”
Other city officials might take issue with that appraisal, most notably the former city commissioner, who had planned to offer a “Doom Loop Walking Tour” of the city.
And then there was Elon Musk’s blunt assessment of it being a “derelict zombie apocalypse.”
San Francisco’s problems of drug use, homelessness, violent crime, organized mass robberies, and general squalor have had their logical effect. While Tony Bennett famously “left [his] heart in San Francisco,” a quarter million others fled the bay area between 2020 and 2022, taking their more prosaic parts with them.
San Francisco is a microcosm of California. So too is its exodus. Horace Greeley once said, “Go West, young man”; today, that destination has been changed to “Elsewhere.” From January 2020 to January 2023, 800,000 left the state.
And, of course, California is a microcosm of the Left’s failed policies. Writ large, these can be summed up as declining services and rising taxes. Foremost among those declining services are two that the public most values: their safety and their children’s education. California was the first state to impose COVID lockdowns (following the lead of seven counties around San Francisco), one of the last two to lift them (Feb. 28, 2023), and one of the most draconian practitioners (ranking the fifth most restrictive) of them in between.
Its schools arguably suffered worst of all. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, “Most of California’s public school students spent the majority of the 2020–21 academic year fully online — longer than students in other states.”
For these failed services, Californians pay an enormous tax bill. California ranks fifth among the states with an effective state and local tax bill of 13.5 percent.
When the Mamas & the Papas released “California Dreamin’” in 1965, California seemed to be a dream. A place where “I’d be safe and warm.” No more. Over two generations, it transformed into Paradise Left. Now, it is Paradise Lost.
No wonder Nancy Pelosi is “quiet quitting” San Francisco by running to stay in Washington. She is not really any different than the many Californians who have been running to leave the state too.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987–2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001–2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004–2023.
