SAN FRANCISCO — To much of the country, Nancy Pelosi is the liberal embodiment of a city as crazy as its near-vertical hills. But here at home, the Democratic House leader is seen as something else: sober, centrist and very much a part of the political establishment, for good or bad.
For five years, ever since she entered the congressional leadership, Pelosi has balanced the interests of 200-plus colleagues of varied philosophies with the demands of a district about as far left politically as it is geographically.
Now she is within hailing distance of history; if Democrats win control of the House on Nov. 7, she would be the first woman ever to serve as speaker.
Her success is all the more striking given the persistent through-the-looking-glass quality of San Francisco politics. Where else would Willie Brown be elected as the moderate candidate for mayor? Or dignitaries clamor for a place among the drag queens and genitalia celebrated in the annual Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Parade?
In 2004, Sen. John F. Kerry won 62% of the presidential vote at home in Massachusetts. Here, he garnered 85%.
"If there's a stereotype of California as the 'Left Coast,' San Francisco is the epicenter," said pollster Mark DiCamillo.
"Many 'moderates' in San Francisco would be burned as witches elsewhere," agreed Alex Clemens, a local media and campaign consultant.
It is easy to lampoon San Francisco as the world's largest open-air asylum, as conservatives, in particular, are wont to do. On Nov. 7, the day the nation decides control of Congress, voters here will weigh an initiative making it official city policy to seek the ouster of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. This after the pair ignored a ballot measure two years ago demanding an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
But San Francisco is also a tough political town, more like New York or Boston than any West Coast city. Campaigns, a widely appreciated form of civic theater, are personal and often vicious.
The first time Pelosi, a longtime Democratic activist, ran for Congress, billboards across the city mocked her as "the party girl of the party." She squeaked to victory -- thanks, in an exquisite footnote, to the crossover support of San Francisco's Republicans, who found Pelosi less objectionable than her even more liberal opponent.
