Why 2024 is so San Francisco

The city’s leaders are forged in a mix of wealth, diversity and a good bit of political nastiness.

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Vice President Kamala Harris is one of many influential Democrats who got their start in San Francisco’s political scene.

Good evening. The presidential race has become extremely San Francisco, so I’ve asked The Times’s San Francisco bureau chief, Heather Knight, to tell us just what that means. Then, I take a close look at Donald Trump’s refusal to clean up his alarming remarks about voting in future elections. — Jess Bidgood

If the last few weeks of political drama were a soap opera — and they sure felt like one — some of its biggest writers and stars would hail from one place: San Francisco.

There was former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has represented the city some conservatives love to hate for 37 years, shrewdly working her back channels and lobbying President Biden directly to leave the stage. There was Gov. Gavin Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor, who quickly disappointed Democrats who had hoped he would get in the race himself.

And, of course, there was Vice President Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic nominee, who worked in the San Francisco City Attorney’s office before winning election as the city’s district attorney in 2003.

Coincidence? Maybe not.

San Francisco has long held an outsize place in the national consciousness, and particularly in politics, a surprising feat for a city smaller in size than Staten Island and smaller in population than Columbus, Ohio.

Former President Donald Trump is already trying to use this to his advantage, warning at a rally on Friday that a Harris presidency would mean “crazy San Francisco liberal values” being imposed on the entire country.

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