Column: In San Francisco, a political tremor — the rise of Democratic moderation
- Share via
- The reckoning that’s followed Trump’s return to the White House extends to one of the country’s bluest bastions.
- Local party chair Nancy Tung says Democrats need to focus more on results and less on performative gestures.
SAN FRANCISCO — These are soul-searching days for Democrats, a time of reckoning and self-criticism as they try to comprehend why they lost Congress and the White House and struggle to find their way back from political purgatory.
The examination extends even so far as San Francisco, a place famed for its liberalism and smugness, where the inward-looking reflection began even before Trump’s restoration to the White House.
In 2022, voters cast out three uber-progressive members of the school board, who seemed more intent on symbolic gestures, such as renaming public schools to erase the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere, than student achievement. A few months later, the district attorney, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in response to his perceived bleeding-heart approach to public safety.
Continuing apace, voters in November elected a political newcomer and relative moderate, Daniel Lurie, as mayor and punctuated the sentiment by gifting him a more simpatico Board of Supervisors at San Francisco’s baroque City Hall.
In the same vein, the city’s Democratic Party, not exactly a pro-MAGA choir, has moved closer to the middle, electing a leader who sees Trump’s election and improved standing in this blue bastion as one of those moments when red lights flash and sirens are blaring.
“One of the issues with the Democratic Party right now is that so much of party politics, especially at the local level, has been largely performative and not really relevant to the everyday lives of working people,” said the local party chair, Nancy Tung. “And I think we’re seeing the backlash now nationally.”
Levi Strauss heir and nonprofit executive Daniel Lurie was sworn in Wednesday as the 46th mayor of San Francisco. He vowed a “new era of accountability, service and change.”
San Francisco is not about to turn into a hillier version of Kansas, or become Alabama with views of the Pacific. Trump received 6,000 more votes here in November than he did four years ago and boosted his support by 2.5%. Still, he lost to Kamala Harris, the city’s former district attorney, by nearly 65 percentage points.
Tung’s politics should also be put in some perspective. She checks all the Democratic boxes — pro-choice, anti-Trump and on — and laughingly jokes that in many places she’d be called a communist. But Tung is a centrist by San Francisco standards, and the city’s political pendulum, which has long oscillated between left and far left, has clearly swung her direction.
People “can call me whatever they want,” she said over lunch in the city’s Mission District. “I think government should work for people, and at the local level there’s some really basic things that should not be controversial, right? Every community deserves good public schools. They deserve safe streets, clean sidewalks. Government that works, that’s not overly bureaucratic ... that’s not putting giant special interests ahead of everyday people.”
Tung, 50, is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. She grew up in Southern California, in Arcadia, before moving to the Bay Area, where she has spent most of her career as a prosecutor. Her work in the San Francisco D.A.’s office focuses on hate crimes.
Tung began her political activism fairly recently, after Trump’s upset victory in 2016. On a trip to Washington, she had planned to celebrate Hillary Clinton’s historic election as America’s first female president. Instead, she had an ugly cry at the National Portrait Gallery, seated before a rendering of women who’ve served on the Supreme Court.
A few weeks later Tung was back in the capital, marching on the eve of Trump’s first inauguration with bullhorn in hand. At home, she redoubled her political engagement by signing up with one of San Francisco’s myriad Democratic clubs. Eventually, though, Tung grew estranged, feeling marginalized not because she was a woman or Asian American but because other Democrats wouldn’t accept her comparative moderation.
The California Labor Federation shunned partisanship in favor of a campaign focusing on hard work and noting the lack of congressional accomplishment. The strategy helped flip a handful of House seats.
In 2019, she ran unsuccessfully for district attorney, losing to Boudin. The next year, the Board of Supervisors scuttled Tung’s nomination to the Police Commission because, in the climate following George Floyd’s murder, she was seen as too pro-police.
Slowly, however, the political winds shifted, as they often do. By 2022, it was the leadership of the San Francisco Democratic Party that seemed out of step. Among other moves, the party opposed the school board recalls, which 70% of voters supported, and the ouster of Boudin, who was handily turned out of office. In 2024, Tung led a centrist slate that took control of the party.
Over lunch at a favorite Indian-Pakistani restaurant, she described her goals between now and the end of her term in April 2028. Tung’s demeanor, as one might expect of a prosecutor, was no-nonsense. Arms crossed. Brow creased.
The most important thing, Tung suggested, was moving away from abstractions and indulgences and addressing issues that touch voters’ daily lives.
Tung cited a resolution the local party passed some years ago opposing the use of child labor in Africa’s chocolate trade. A terrible thing, yes. But why, she wondered, were Democrats in San Francisco devoting time to the matter? “It makes people think you’re out of touch,” Tung said. “Why is there something about child labor in another country and not something about how we’re treating children here?”
That may be reductive, but the point is well taken. If the last election showed anything, it’s that high-minded principles, like standing up for democratic norms, are less important to many voters than, say, the cost of gasoline and groceries.
Democrats, Tung said forking a serving of rice and lentils, need to “actually show people our value, like what we’re doing in the community. ... Are you helping feed people? Are you helping clothe people? Are you helping to connect people to services? Are you helping people cut through red tape at City Hall?”
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez was just reelected to Congress from a rural district in Washington state. Her experience offers lessons on how Democrats might win working-class voters.
Inevitably, the conversation turned to Trump and fears the country is goose-stepping its way to dictatorship.
Yes, Tung said, party leaders like herself can and should speak out and help channel Democratic outrage. There’s information and resources to share with individuals and groups, such as immigrants, who may be targeted by punitive policies. “Can we provide support to people who are impacted? Yes we can,” Tung said. “Can we provide a forum for people who want to speak out? Yes, you can do that, too.”
But the real resistance, Tung said, will have to come from elected officials, from members of Congress, from attorneys general and others fighting the Trump administration in court.
She didn’t say it, but the reality is if Democrats really hope to stop Trump’s excesses and his bulldozing of federal programs, they’ll have to take back some measure of power in Washington.
And there’s a great deal of work to be done.
Get the latest from Mark Z. Barabak
Focusing on politics out West, from the Golden Gate to the U.S. Capitol.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
