S.F. Democrats reject new political club over wild accusations
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In a politically healthy city, Cyn Wang would be embraced by the local Democratic Party. She might even be touted in campaign ads.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she married a woman from Mexico who just got her green card last week. She serves on the entertainment commission promoting nightlife, helps run her family’s small insurance business, sends her daughter to her neighborhood public school, and worked in the Obama administration as a diplomat in the foreign service.
She’s a registered Democrat and has been active in Democratic politics since high school. She voted for Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 presidential primary and Joe Biden in the general election. She calls herself an “intersectional feminist” in her Twitter bio and considers today’s Republican Party “the biggest threat to our democracy.”
But are she and her political allies really Democrats — or are they Republicans playing pretend? This is the ludicrous question that has emerged in San Francisco where many liberal leaders have chosen to embrace zero-sum politics rather than a shared opportunity to fix the city’s biggest problems.
Wang and other parents living on the city’s sleepy, politically moderate west side asked the San Francisco Democratic Party last week to charter their new club, the Westside Family Democratic Club. They want to register more voters in Districts One, Four and Seven in time for next year’s big elections and persuade families to get involved in civic life rather than bail on our struggling city.
But party members rebuffed them over a host of ill-defined concerns: They invited Supervisor Joel Engardio, a leader in last year’s school board recall movement, to an event! Their members include some well-off families! They say they’re Democrats, but what if they’re actually closeted Republicans? What if Republicans are funneling dark money into their bank accounts? In the most out-of-nowhere chatter of all, some party members speculated that the club co-founders are racist.
“My mouth was agape,” Wang said, expressing a shock shared by many San Franciscans these days over the meanness in local politics and the political orthodoxy in some progressive circles.
“Those allegations could not be more false. We don’t have any funders! We probably have less than $100 in our account,” she continued. “Fighting systemic racism is one reason I’m involved in local Democratic politics. To me, it lifted the veil on how narrow of a definition they have of what being a Democrat means.”
San Francisco politics have long been toxic, but the blue-vs.-blue infighting has grown particularly nasty in recent years. Too often, debate jumps from what would be a small disagreement anywhere else to, “You’re a Republican-backed, Trump-supporting monster!” Common ground has been ceded to groundless accusations.
And in this case, the rejection matters beyond hurt feelings. San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee — or “the D triple-C” to local political nerds — is a little-known yet powerful group of people elected by party members in both of the city’s assembly districts. Democrats elected to office at the state and federal level also get votes on the committee.
The committee holds a lot of sway with its endorsements; a seal of approval from the San Francisco Democrats can vault local candidates into office. They also charter local clubs — 23 are listed on the party’s website — that can also endorse candidates, register voters and advocate for issues. Very few clubs exist on the west side or to promote issues important to families, leaving a big hole in a party that’s supposed to be inclusive.
Wang wanted to create a more welcoming party, including families with young children. She helped form the nonprofit San Francisco Parent Coalition, which supported the recall of two of the three school board members last year, and then teamed up with a few other politically involved parents to launch the new club.
Among them are Robin Pam, who started Kid Safe SF and the campaign to make car-free JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park permanently car-free; Parag Gupta, chief program officer at Mercy Housing, a nonprofit that builds affordable units; Sara Barz, a product manager at Apple and a Slow Streets supporter; and Maco Stewart, a privacy lawyer at Salesforce.
The club wants to improve the city’s public schools, make its streets cleaner and safer, get more housing built and strengthen public transit — a platform most Democrats across the political spectrum say they support. They met all the criteria to get chartered, including getting enough registered Democrats to join and filling out the proper paperwork.
They figured the Zoom meeting with party leaders would be a breeze. They figured wrong.
Some members of the DCCC grilled them intensely, made baseless accusations and then voted to table their chartering request.
Janice Li, a DCCC member who voted against tabling the effort, said the outcome reflected the city’s intense polarization.
“It’s that ‘You can’t sit with us’ mentality that makes me very uncomfortable with the state of San Francisco politics,” Li said. “It’s very, ‘You’re not even allowed in.’ It’s very ‘Mean Girls.’ ”
Li was referring to the 2004 comedy starring Lindsay Lohan as a new kid at a high school ruled by a trio of popular girls who cast out anybody who’s not exactly like them. It’s based on a book about cliques called “Queen Bees and Wannabes.”
In this case, the DCCC Queen Bees told Wang and her fellow Wannabes that the party suspects they’re DINOs (Democrats in Name Only), secretly funded by Republicans and perhaps even racist.
Based on what? Turns out, not much.
Before the chartering discussion began, the DCCC heard public comment — and two people opposed the charter. Brandee Marckmann, who staunchly opposed the school board recall, said DCCC members should think twice because the Westside Family Democratic Club invited Engardio to one of its events.
“I know a Republican when I see one,” Marckmann said of Engardio and the club founders, all Democrats.
Tenant activist Jordan Davis also opposed the charter, saying the word “family” is “a common dog whistle on the right,” that the club would be a funnel for Republican dark money and that the club wants to turn San Francisco into a “bland-ass gated community.”
“F– you, Westside Family Democratic Club!” Davis shouted into the computer screen. “I yield my time! F– you!”
In a normal city, these comments wouldn’t be enough to undo a club’s chances. But soon, DCCC members were grilling Gupta, who defended the club over Zoom. The harsh questioning transpired remarkably like the infamous 2021 school board meeting in which the commissioners wouldn’t let a gay dad volunteer on a parent council with lots of empty seats and nobody else wanting to fill them — because he’s white.
In this case, the DCCC asked Gupta about the club members’ income levels, racial backgrounds, sexual orientations and gender identities. They asked for the members’ positions on the school board recall and building market-rate housing. They asked why they used the word family in their club name. They asked whether the club members are really Democrats, whether they’re secretly taking money from Republicans and whether they’re racist.
Gupta, looking shell-shocked, gamely tried to answer their questions, but acknowledged he hadn’t quizzed all the club’s members on details like how they voted in a recall 15 months ago.
“We’re just starting out,” Gupta told his inquisitors. “We seek to be an inclusive club, and we seek to be representative of all demographics, genders, races and inclusive of all families. If someone considers themselves a family, we consider them a family.”
His admirable attempt to answer these questions wasn’t good enough. DCCC member Keith Baraka moved to table the chartering of the club. Honey Mahogany, the DCCC chairperson, stuck up for the group, reminding members that the club met the chartering requirements and had the right to form, but her instructions went unheeded.
Most club members abstained from the vote, but six voted with Baraka, enough to kill the club’s chances for now. Baraka told me after the vote his concerns had stemmed purely from the two public commenters, but that he had a fruitful discussion with Wang afterward and will support the club if it comes back for a vote. It’s unclear whether others will join him.
Peter Gallotta, a DCCC member who voted to table the chartering, told me after the meeting that he’s not clear why the group wants to be a chartered club with the Democratic Party rather than an advocacy organization.
“I think we need to reform our application process so we have more, and better, information as members before we give a stamp of approval,” he said.
Mahogany said she’ll schedule another vote on the club soon and thinks the real reason for the pushback was that some DCCC members fear the Westside Family Democratic Club could help get a moderate challenger to Supervisor Connie Chan elected in District One next year. But, she pointed out, that’s no reason not to grant a charter.
“This was really unprecedented,” she said of the scrutiny and quashing of the club. “The Democratic Party is a big tent, and we have people with different viewpoints.”
“That,” she said, “is how we have a healthy democracy.”
Reach Heather Knight: hknight@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hknightsf
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