It is an irony that makes sense only in San Francisco: The more power Nancy Pelosi wins in Washington, the less popular she is at home.
It’s not that residents oppose the election of a fellow San Franciscan as speaker of the house. Nor are there signs that conservatives — so far as they exist in the city — are more disenchanted with her than usual.
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The protesters outside her Pacific Heights home and hecklers at community meetings are liberals, supposedly her most loyal supporters. They think Pelosi is spineless for making moves aimed at building a national majority and for protecting conservative Democratic seats in places like North Carolina and Indiana.
Why didn’t she impeach President George W. Bush? How could she appropriate money for the Pentagon while extracting a pledge to bring troops home? How could she support a measure to permit warrantless surveillance or allow a vote to repeal the moratorium on offshore oil?
All this is hard to fathom in Washington, where Pelosi is widely regarded as among the nation’s most prominent liberals.
As Pelosi helped orchestrate a national sweep in November that put her in the strongest position of any Democratic speaker since Tip O’Neill, she received the smallest vote total at home since her first run for office in 1987.
She is in no danger of losing an election — she still received 72 percent of the vote. But it is not just people on the political fringe who are upset. When Cindy Sheehan challenged Pelosi over her refusal to impeach Bush, one in six voters supported the peace activist.
The left’s suspicion of Pelosi dates to her first campaign for office in 1987.
In that race, the darling of the city’s liberals was Harry Britt, a former confidante of Harvey Milk who would have been the first gay nonincumbent ever elected to Congress. Pelosi was the establishment figure, a mother of five and a party insider who raised prodigious amounts of money for fellow Democrats.
“Nancy Pelosi has spent her lifetime doing favors for the rich and powerful,” accused one Britt brochure.
On Election Day, Britt handily won the liberal neighborhoods close to downtown. But Pelosi overwhelmed him in the more conservative flatlands between Twin Peaks and the Pacific Ocean. Out of more than 100,000 votes cast, Pelosi won by just 3,990.
Underlying Pelosi’s success, then, is an even richer irony: Were it not for Republicans, she never would have been elected to Congress.
