Opinion: Why San Francisco Voters Should Choose a Conservative Republican to Succeed Nancy Pelosi

As the publisher of the Santa Monica Observer and a candidate for Congress in California's 11th District, I've watched progressive experiments turn San Francisco into a cautionary tale. Sky-high rents, streets littered with needles and tents, businesses fleeing, and a quality of life that once made this city legendary now feels like a distant memory. With Nancy Pelosi retiring after nearly four decades, voters face a critical choice on June 2.

There can be little doubt that in 38 years, Nancy Pelosi did sometimes deliver for her district. MUNI, BART and the Presidio Land Trust are all examples of her bringing back the bacon for CAD-11. We can almost look past the insider trading.

The leading Democratic contenders-Saikat Chakrabarti, Connie Chan, and Scott Wiener-represent the progressive left that has driven the city's decline. As a Conservative Republican, my politics are far closer to Pelosi's pragmatic approach than to theirs.

Pelosi built a career on results-oriented Democratic politics: supporting working families, defending neighborhoods, and delivering for San Francisco without chasing every radical fantasy from the national left. She wasn't afraid of markets, private investment, or cutting through bureaucracy when it mattered. She understood that government works best when it partners with business, not when it wages war on it.

Chakrabarti, the former AOC chief of staff and Justice Democrats founder, pushes big-government schemes like reviving a Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation for massive public housing, banning private equity from buying homes, and heavy-handed rent controls. Chan, backed by unions and the Working Families Party, and Wiener, despite some pro-housing rhetoric, lean into the same failed progressive playbook that has strangled development with red tape, empowered speculation through bad policy, and left renters and homeowners alike squeezed.

These ideas sound compassionate but deliver disaster. San Francisco's rents remain among the highest in the nation. Streets aren't safer. Businesses board up rather than invest. Doubling vouchers, making rent tax-deductible while attacking landlords, and more bureaucracy won't fix what over-regulation and anti-market ideology broke.

Real solutions require Conservative and Republican principles that Pelosi often embraced in practice: slash excessive red tape to speed housing construction, empower private builders where government falls short, protect public safety with real enforcement (not Prop 47-style leniency), and stop treating successful companies and investors as enemies.I'm running as the only Conservative Republican in this race because San Francisco needs balance, not echo-chamber extremism.

Democrats will almost certainly win the top-two primary in this deeply blue district, but voters deserve a strong voice in the general election who will hold the winner accountable. A voice rooted in fiscal responsibility, law and order, practical housing fixes through supply and markets, and opposition to the identity-driven distractions that have distracted from core governance.

I've spent years in media and community work calling out overreach-whether in Santa Monica or San Francisco. I oppose new taxes that punish working people, support pension and budget reforms, and believe public safety begins with prosecuting crime, not excusing it. My approach mirrors the pragmatic center that made Pelosi effective for so long: results over rhetoric, neighborhoods over ideology.San Francisco voters: if you're tired of progressive promises that deliver tents instead of homes, chaos instead of safety, and division instead of progress, give me your vote.

Support a Conservative Republican who will fight for the practical, Pelosi-style governance this district actually needs-not the far-left experiment that's failing it. Let's restore sanity, build housing the smart way, and put residents first again.David Ganezer

Republican Candidate for California's 11th Congressional District

Publisher, Santa Monica Observer