
The first reason is that any Representative not promoting her district’s best interests should be challenged. The issue here is not Nancy Pelosi’s capability, integrity, or hard work — none of which are disputed. The question is the political direction she advocates, or fails to advocate.
The second reason for running is that if next year’s California “top-two” primary finally results in her being challenged by a Democrat running to her left — an outcome that has yet to happen — the race will be a matter of national interest. I hope to be the candidate to argue and articulate the programs and ideas of the new “Bernie Sanders wing” of the Democratic Party and contrast them to those of the party’s corporate-oriented establishment that have held sway for so long.
- Upon arriving in San Francisco in 1994, I first worked on the staff of Proposition 186, an initiative to create a California single payer health care system. Ahead of its time, it carried only one county — San Francisco. Yet twenty-five years later, Nancy Pelosi has still not co-sponsored federal Medicare for All legislation, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters now favor it nationally.
- In 2008, I organized a successful ballot question declaring it city policy that our representatives should oppose further Iraq War funding. Nine years later, I offered a successful amendment to the California Democratic Party platform calling for an end to funding the war in Afghanistan. In the interim I brought several resolutions before the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee regarding US military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. All those resolutions passed. But Pelosi has remained largely unmoved by any of what the antiwar movement has said or done. Most recently she echoed the Trump Administration’s call to overthrow the Venezuelan government–a position the Central Committee unanimously rejected, passing a resolution I wrote.
- She has lately dismissed the Green New Deal as “the green dream, or whatever they call it.” (If you’d like to change her position on that, please join the 9,400 others who have signed my petition calling upon her to co-sponsor it.)
Paid for by Tom Gallagher/Congress/2020 | FEC #C007005745 | Treasurer: Geoffrey Bauman
See “A progressive primary for San Francisco?” Link at: http://occupysf.net/index.php/2019/05/04/a-progressive-primary-for-san-francisco/