The general election to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco is heating up, with leftists once again engaging in confrontational tactics.
Amusingly, their target is California State Senator Scott Wiener, who embraces left-wing orthodoxy on gay and transgender politics, but has been pegged as not sufficiently devoted to the Palestinian cause. The two worlds collided during a pro-trans march in SF’s Dolores Park, where a group of leftist attendees followed and harangued Wiener over his Gaza stance.
One protester yelled, “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel,” before Wiener exited the park. Wiener, who is gay and Jewish, has claimed that Israel’s attacks in Gaza constitute a genocide, but only said so beginning in the congressional primary campaign, leading many to believe it is an insincere position borne out of political pressure.
Wiener’s opponent in the general election is SF Board of Supervisors member Connie Chan, who is endorsed by Rep. Pelosi and has called Israel’s actions genocidal, but has not made the issue a centerpiece of her campaign. In actuality, the fervor of leftist opposition against Wiener in SF, which may surprise outside observers, likely has more to do with housing policy, with the Palestinian issue used as a convenient cudgel. Wiener is hated by longtime leftist locals as California’s most prominent supporter of building taller, denser housing, while Chan has consistently opposed building new housing in the city. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who practically made his anti-Israeli stance the entirety of his campaign, finished third in the SF congressional primary, partially due to leftists in the city who disliked his pro-housing stance and tech industry ties.
Wiener has since claimed that he was forced to leave the march following the harassment, because his antagonists had made it unsafe to continue. While it would be nice if incidents like these caused Democrats to reevaluate their stance on aggressively targeting Republicans in public places, they likely will refuse to make the connection. In the meantime, Israel will continue to be the issue that splits the leftist activist class against its current Democratic leadership — until they move on to the next outrage du jour.
