How SF Shaped Pelosi, Feinstein, Newsom and Harris Into Global Political Leaders

Vice President Kamala Harris proudly played up her East Bay roots at the Democratic National Convention, but her political career was launched in San Francisco.

In 2003, Harris, then a relatively unknown prosecutor, challenged the city’s incumbent district attorney. To the surprise of many, she won.

Harris’ rise from elected office in San Francisco is extraordinary. Next month, she could become the first Black and South Asian woman elected President of the United States. She reached the doorstep of the presidency by following a path forged by those who used the city’s cutthroat politics as a proving ground for seeking higher office.

Nancy Pelosi was the first female Speaker of the House.

Dianne Feinstein was the first woman to serve as San Francisco mayor before making her mark in the U.S. Senate.

Gavin Newsom climbed the ladder from an obscure city commission to become mayor and now governor of California with a national megaphone. He was elected mayor the same year Harris defeated her former boss, San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan.

Politicians have emerged from other California cities to establish a national profile — notably former President Ronald Reagan and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — but they were launched from Hollywood, not the Los Angeles political scene.

San Francisco’s political legacy raises the question: How can a relatively small city of 800,000 produce so many politicians with national and international prominence?

“This city requires its elected officials to engage on a daily basis in complex discussions with informed constituents who will raise the most intricate of local issues, no matter if you are walking through the Presidio or attending an event at Delancey Street,” Harris said at the public memorial for Feinstein, who died in September 2023. “And this environment, I do believe, guided Dianne’s style of leadership, even after she reached the heights of national and global power.”

Former state Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who many would include on the city’s list of political titans, said the environment that launched Harris, Feinstein and many others can all be traced to one person.

“Phil Burton is the father of all of this — period. Literally,” Brown said recently, referring to the late Congressman who came within a vote of becoming House majority leader in 1976.

In the 1960s, Burton began assembling what became known in San Francisco political circles as “the Burton Machine,” a coalition of religious leaders, unions and community activists who fine-tuned the art of winning elections. His brother, John Burton, an advocate for civil rights and environmental protections, served in the state Assembly and Congress.

Brown said Phil Burton expanded the city’s Democratic Party’s membership to include people who were largely ignored until the civil rights era. Burton, Brown said, “noticed that minorities were being left out. And he began to structure the world of politics that literally caused involvement by that collection of people.”

“We were all church and labor. Then we added ‘misfits’ — people who were pushed on the outside,” he added.

Burton was the first to invite Chinese American and gay communities to be in the Democratic coalition. Successfully navigating San Francisco’s multicultural communities, with all their complex, nuanced issues and concerns, helps prepare politicians for the national stage, Brown argued.

“The reason that the current vice president can be so effective during the course of dialog in a debate is that’s what she had to do to survive here,” he said. 

Burton was first elected to Congress in 1964. He used his political power to author landmark legislation, including the bill that created the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to protect the California coast — from northern Marin County to southern San Mateo County — from development.

In 1962, Burton urged Brown, then a young defense attorney, to run to represent San Francisco in the state Assembly, a race he lost before being elected two years later. Burton also recruited Pelosi, then a homemaker living in Pacific Heights, to host fundraisers in her home.

After Burton died suddenly in 1983, his widow, Sala, replaced him in Congress. Just before she died of cancer in 1987, she encouraged Pelosi to run for the seat. By then, Pelosi had become a prolific Democratic Party fundraiser but told KQED she had never really thought of running for office herself. In a special election to fill the seat, she faced more than a dozen opponents.

During a live debate at KQED, one opponent, city Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver, said Pelosi was out of touch with average San Franciscans.

“How can she relate to people like me, a single parent, working mother?”’ Silver asked.

Another opponent, Supervisor Harry Britt, criticized Pelosi during a campaign appearance for using her connections for national races and issues more than local politics.

“I would specifically challenge Nancy Pelosi to show one time in the last 20 years when those connections have been used, standing with the people of this community on issues of importance to this community,” Britt said. “One time.”

Once elected, Pelosi leveraged relationships she made in San Francisco business circles, including in the emerging tech community, to become a prolific fundraiser for Democrats across the country.

It all paved the way for her to become the first female Speaker of the House. Three years ago, Pelosi told KQED that in her first race for Congress, she became the focus of all the other candidates once polls showed her leading the field.

“Then I became the target by everybody, and they started saying all these things,” she recalled. “These are people I had in my home, that I had done events for, and all of a sudden, I didn’t know anything about anything, right?”

The race toughened up Pelosi for the rigors of Beltway politics in Washington, D.C.

The same could be said for Harris. She was a prosecutor in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office when she briefly dated Brown, then the Assembly speaker, in 1994 until after he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1995. Brown was her political mentor and helped open doors for Harris to the circles that wielded a lot of influence.

Rebecca Prozan, who worked with Harris on her early campaigns, said San Francisco politics is like an episode of Survivor.

“The caliber of people who run against each other have brass knuckles and are street fighters,” Prozan said. “And so when you have the kind of competition for elective office that you have in San Francisco, that prepares you for the next level and the next level and the next level.”

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, who previously served on the Board of Supervisors and in the state Assembly, famously described the city’s politics as a “knife fight in a phone booth.”

“People are used to playing very hardball, rough and tumble politics. It is not genteel,” he said recently.

Chiu, who told KQED he encouraged Harris to run for DA, said the city’s size and liberal politics mean campaigns get nasty and personal fast.

“We’re just squished up against each other in the political spectrum and trying to carve minuscule distinctions between imperceptible shades of blue,” he added.

San Francisco’s vibrant and diverse Asian American communities have unique issues. For example, winning over Chinese American voters means campaigning in front of multiple political organizations, each with different priorities. Successful candidates in San Francisco have to navigate it all.

“Every single one of those constituencies, which in most other places would be a constituency, has a diversity of constituencies within those constituencies,” Chiu noted.

Political consultant Ace Smith, who worked on campaigns for both Harris and Newsom, said San Francisco is to politics what the Dominican Republic is to baseball — a relatively small island that produces big league stars.

“A huge amount of them make it to the majors and make a huge impact in the majors,” Smith said. “You had better be able to hit everything from the 100-mile-an-hour pitch to the nastiest curveball to the screwball and everything in between.”

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, currently running for mayor, said there’s no hiding because San Franciscans are so engaged in politics.

“You cannot get away with being mediocre in San Francisco,” Peskin said. “You have to be the best of the best.”

Former Sen. Barbara Boxer, who once represented a slice of San Francisco, along with Marin County, in Congress, noted that while the city is known as being extremely liberal by national standards, the politicians who climb the ladder don’t fit that mold.

“It’s a progressive place, but it’s not progressive crazy,” Boxer told KQED recently. “I think the people who wind up winning are progressive pragmatists, not progressive dreamers.”

Newsom said San Francisco requires more of its politicians.

“The recognition of competence and cultural competence — one size doesn’t fit all. Recognition of diversity, inclusivity,” he said. “And when you create an inclusive environment, you create an entrepreneurial environment, innovative environment. And inclusivity brings the best and the brightest from around the world.

“So you have that mashup of greatness as well. And I think the politicians have to apply all that.”