“Growing up, my family was politically aware,” says Democratic California State Sen. Scott Wiener. “I remember in 1980, when Reagan was elected, I was 10 years old. I remember our house was a house of mourning that election night, and there was a sense in my home of just trepidation of what was going to happen because even though Reagan seems somewhat more benign than Trump, it was a very right-wing takeover.
“My family was very aware and attuned to what was happening, and especially as Jews, you’re always attuned to who’s taking over the government and what they could do.”
Growing up in Southern New Jersey, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Wiener, the son of an optometrist, was raised in a conservative Jewish family, with ancestors who fled the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century before immigrating to the United States. While his hometown ultimately transitioned from a farm town into a more developed suburb, there was no local synagogue until Wiener’s parents formed one with a dozen other Jewish families from the surrounding area.
“My life, growing up, revolved around the synagogue,” he recalls. “It wasn’t until 10th grade that I had any friends outside of the synagogue.”
As one of only two Jewish kids in his high school graduating class, Wiener learned at a young age what it’s like to be part of a minority group and the prejudice that can be directed at someone for being different. But the casual antisemitism that he experienced as a child also made him keenly aware of the importance of standing up for the marginalized in society, a value that has helped shape his socially progressive beliefs.
Wiener was a studious and hardworking student, who swam competitively in high school. He first became involved in politics as a teenager when he interned for his member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Jim Florio, who was later elected governor of New Jersey. Wiener volunteered for local state legislative campaigns and attempted to run as a delegate for presidential candidate Paul Simon during the 1988 Democratic primary, which required him to go door-to-door collecting signatures from registered voters to qualify. Simon ultimately dropped out of the race, but the experience gave Wiener skills that he would rely on later in life when he sought public office.
Wiener attended Duke University, where he and some fellow students restarted the university’s defunct Democratic student organization. After heading to Harvard Law School, Wiener wasn’t as politically active, instead becoming involved with the school’s LGBTQ student group. After moving to San Francisco in 1997, he continued his involvement with LGBTQ causes, serving as treasurer and co-chair on the board of directors that helped establish the San Francisco LGBT Center. He also served on the board of BALIF, a volunteer-run association for LGBTQI lawyers in the San Francisco Bay area, and as a co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club.
In 2004, Wiener narrowly won a competitive election for the San Francisco County Central Democratic Committee, propelling him back into politics. In 2010, at the urging of some community members, he ran for the city’s Board of Supervisors, where he served for six years before running for State Senate, where he currently represents San Francisco.
Although the congressional seat that Wiener is seeking is now open, following Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s retirement, Wiener did not wait for Pelosi’s decision to announce his campaign last October. He has emphasized his record and accomplishments in office and his reputation as one of the legislature’s more progressive members.
If elected, Wiener would be considered one of the most liberal members of Congress. But in the world of San Francisco left-wing politics, he’s considered the more establishment candidate, embracing what some might classify as a “progressive institutionalist” approach to politics. He came to work within the system, not to tear it down altogether — a stance that enrages voters and pundits on the Democratic party’s far-left flank, who argue that such an approach is insufficient to combat the authoritarianism and executive overreach of the Trump administration.
While he’s running in an 11-candidate field, many political observers consider Wiener one of three frontrunners in the race, and a favorite to advance to the general election under California’s “top two” primary system. His chief rivals are San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan; Marie Hurabiell, the director of the political advocacy group ConnectedSF, which advocates for more moderate or conservative policy solutions; and Saikat Chakrabarti, a centimillionaire, climate policy advocate, and software engineer who’s best known for his brief stint as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff.
The largely self-funded Chakrabarti has sought to establish himself as the darling of the far left in the primary, attacking Wiener as being insufficiently progressive and tying him to a super PAC — “Abundant Future” — funded by wealthy tech leaders and crypto billionaires, that has been attacking Chakrabarti as a carpetbagger.
At the same time he’s being attacked from the left as insufficiently anti-establishment, Wiener is also being attacked from the right by Hurabiell, a former Republican and Trump appointee to the board of the Presidio Trust, as too extreme and one of the poster children for far-left governance that has contributed to San Francisco’s recent struggles with crime, drug use, and homelessness — factors that have led angry, frustrated voters to oust the city’s former district attorney and mayor in recent election cycles.
Wiener has largely responded to the attacks by emphasizing his responsiveness to the concerns of his constituents and local advocacy organizations. While others may tout the importance of ideology in the asbtract, Wiener portrays himself as laser-focused on accomplishing concrete goals that benefit the broader community directly.
“I am very focused on whatever I’m doing at the time, certainly when it comes to politics and legislation, but also being present in the community,” he says. “I definitely test my friends’ patience sometimes, because I’m often busy with community events or I’m running late because I had three events earlier in the evening.
“People will stop me on the street or at restaurants, or when we’re out and about to talk to me about legislation or what’s happening in the city. So my friends have shown a lot of patience with those interactions, because I never say no when people want to talk to me. I’m their elected representative, so I have a responsibility, in my view, to be available and engage with people.”
METRO WEEKLY: Let’s start on a personal note. You identify as a gay man. When did you first become aware of your sexual orientation?
SCOTT WIENER: I think I always knew as a preteen and a teen that there was something different about me. I was a shy kid, pretty introverted, and I just knew I was different. I knew that there were other kids in my class or at camp who I maybe had a crush on, but didn’t realize it was a crush. And when I was 17, I admitted to myself that I was gay. That was in 1987. So I was growing up as a closeted gay kid in the 1980s, which was a period of hostility towards LGBTQ people. There was a mass die-off of gay men happening due to AIDS, so it was a very scary time, not only in terms of people like me dying, but a federal government that had not only abandoned our community, but was cheerleading for us to die faster.
MW: When did you come out publicly?
WIENER: Three years later, when I was 20. It was at the beginning of my junior year of college. And I first told my sister, who was two years behind me at the same college, and who I’ve always been very close with. She was great.
After telling my sister, I told a few of my close friends at college, and a couple of months later, told my fraternity brothers. I was in a Jewish fraternity, and was serving as treasurer. My plan had been to run for president. But I thought to myself, “I can’t tell my fraternity brothers, because if I tell them, there’s no way I can be fraternity president.”
But, as I think a lot of LGBTQ people know, once you start telling people, it becomes a little addictive, and you want to tell more people — it takes on an energy of its own. So I ultimately decided to tell my fraternity brothers, in a group at the end of a fraternity meeting, and they were great, really positive and accepting, and a month or two later, they elected me president. A few months after that, I told my parents.
I knew we had lesbians in my extended family. My mother’s older sister, my aunt, came out in the ’60s, and I have an older cousin on my father’s side, and she came out in the ’70s. So we always had lesbians around, and they had partners and girlfriends. So I knew my parents would be accepting, and they were fantastic, but it was still hard. It’s always hard to tell your parents even under the best of circumstances, which is why I feel so strongly about the work we’ve done in California against forced outing by schools, because it’s a choice that only that kid can make on their own timetable, even under the best of circumstances.
MW: How would you describe yourself politically, and where on the spectrum do you find yourself within the Democratic Party?
WIENER: I’m a progressive Democrat and I’m someone who supports Medicare for All, who has gone to battle with some of the largest corporations on the planet — whether it’s the oil industry, the big tech companies, the health insurance companies, the big telecom and cable companies –- to pass tough, pro-consumer, pro-environment, pro-worker legislation.
I’m considered one of the most progressive members of the California Legislature, and I think I’ll be one of the most progressive members of Congress. Locally, in San Francisco, the city is very left, so it’s about what shade of left you are. And so I’m not part of the camp that’s the most far left in San Francisco. I’m part of the camp that is left, but not “lefter.”
MW: How do you define progressive?
WIENER: I think progressive means, first of all, that you stand up for people who don’t always have a voice, whether it’s immigrants or low-wage workers or LGBTQ youth or trans people or consumers, and it means that you are willing to take on powerful interests and break glass. It means that you have a forward-looking vision to solve problems, that you’re willing to demand that we build more housing, that you’re willing to challenge the healthcare system to have a more comprehensive, universal system so people don’t fall through the cracks, that you’re willing to envision a world without fossil fuel, where we have abundant, cheap, clean energy, where we make it easier to build all the things that we need to survive and thrive. That’s how I define progressive.
MW: Is progressivism incompatible with capitalism or free markets?
WIENER: I think it is compatible, and I think you can have very, very strong progressive policies in a free enterprise society. I don’t think the two are incompatible. I think, though, that being progressive in a capitalist society means that you support strong regulation to protect the public, that people can start businesses and grow businesses and make money, but we’re going to ensure that workers share in that prosperity. We’re going to ensure that we do not allow corporations to create an authoritarian kleptocratic state, which is what’s happening now, because that kind of state is always going to be brutal towards marginalized communities, like LGBTQ people and immigrants. I think, in a capitalist society, you can have a progressive approach that lifts people up and ensures that everyone gets to share in that prosperity.
MW: If you are putting yourself on a spectrum of progressivism, are you closer to the Elizabeth Warren school of thought or the Bernie Sanders school of thought?
WIENER: I think Elizabeth Warren. So the Elizabeth Warrens and Robert Garcias of the world are people who are very, very, very progressive and very solutions-oriented. Elizabeth Warren just partnered with Tim Scott to pass through the Senate a very significant, forward-looking housing bill that’s going to be very impactful. What I admire about Elizabeth Warren is she’s someone who’s very progressive, but is focused on turning those progressive ideals into progressive laws.
And just to be clear, I like Bernie, and I agree with him on many things, but yeah, I think Elizabeth Warren is someone I admire immensely.
MW: When I mentioned to somebody that I would be interviewing you, the one thing that this person knew about you was your stance on building more housing. And this person said, “He’s a YIMBY person.” Is that an accurate assessment of where you stand, or would you classify yourself another way?
WIENER: I’m one of the OG YIMBYs. I was one of the first elected officials in the country to embrace YIMBYism. And by the way, AOC is a YIMBY and Zohran is a YIMBY. So YIMBYism is progressive, even though there is a certain strain of folks in the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] world who believe that the private sector should not have any role in building housing. I think that is a very counterproductive approach. I support government involvement in housing, and I just released a housing plan a few weeks ago with a $1.2 trillion public investment over 10 years for things like mixed-income social housing, and dramatically expanding the Section 8 rental voucher program. So I absolutely believe that the government has a big role in creating more housing. Reagan destroyed that. We need to rebuild it.
But in addition to that, the private sector has a big role to play. And anyone who tells you that only the government should be building housing is basically advocating for a permanent shortage of housing. The reason housing is so expensive is we’ve made it incredibly hard to build it for the last 50 years, and it has driven the car into the ditch. So we need to make it easier to build every form of housing. That’s YIMBYism. That’s what I believe. It’s what AOC and Zohran believe. It’s what Elizabeth Warren believes. And being pro-housing construction is the progressive position. Advocating for a housing shortage is quite conservative and, I think, destructive.
MW: While left-leaning politicians do support some concepts of YIMBYism, the people who are held up by the media as spokespeople for that movement are people like Ezra Klein or Matt Yglesias. And I think that makes some on the political left shut their ears and minds to the YIMBY message because those figures appear to reserve their harshest critiques for liberals and progressives.
WIENER: Listen, anyone who says, “Oh, I don’t like Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein, and they’re the ones saying it, so therefore I don’t support building housing,” that’s a pretty vapid way to come to a policy conclusion. They’re choosing to say, “Those are the people. I don’t like them, and they’re the ones saying it.” And they’re not listening to the fact that Zohran or Nithya Raman in L.A., who was elected city council with broad DSA support, are incredibly pro-housing.
I authored a big bill last year, Senate Bill 79, to require cities to allow more housing density around public transportation because it is not progressive to say we shouldn’t build apartment buildings near train stops. That is a conservative position. And so when the L.A. City Council voted on their position [opposing] the bill, the most progressive members of the city council — Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez, who are super-lefty labor DSA-aligned or DSA members on the city council –- all supported, or voted not to oppose the bill.
There are some cities — and unfortunately, San Francisco is one of them — where a lot of the DSA people are like, “We can’t ever agree with the YIMBYs on anything.” And that’s ridiculous. Supporting the construction of more housing, of all varieties, at all income levels, is the progressive position, just like supporting renters and rent vouchers and rent stabilization is the progressive position. And many, many, many YIMBYs are very supportive of renter protections.
So there is so much, frankly, overlap in these worlds when it comes to supporting housing construction, supporting stabilization of renters. I think sometimes people focus on disagreements because, yeah, there are folks in the YIMBY world who are maybe a little more Libertarian, and there are folks in the DSA world who don’t want any private-sector involvement in housing, but I don’t think those are the dominant views of either movement.
MW: Just from a class-based analysis, the natural constituency for NIMBYism is landowners who don’t want a tenement or a public housing built near their single-family home because it will drive down property values.
WIENER: Yeah, and it is broader than that. I mean, it’s also that, as human beings, we are creatures of our environment and we all live in neighborhoods. There’s a natural instinct to be like, “I love my neighborhood and I don’t want it to change.” And so there’s maybe a little apprehension when there’s going to be an apartment building built or a new bus line running through, or there’s going to be some change in the neighborhood, and then people sometimes get their hackles up. Some people just don’t want to see change, don’t want to see a taller building or something that is multi-unit, and that’s a natural human response. But there are others who say, “Okay, maybe I’m a little uncomfortable with this, but in the long run, this is going to be good, and so we should do it.”
MW: There’s a broad spectrum among Democrats regarding Israel and its recent military actions in Gaza. It ranges from the traditional Democratic position of unwavering support, to a position that’s more critical of the Israeli government that includes conditioning foreign aid to Israel, to a position that is not only more critical of Israel but the larger concept of Zionism. Where do you fall on that spectrum?
WIENER: My positions have been fairly consistent over time. I think Israel plays a very critically important role for Jews globally. It’s the home of half of all Jews on the planet, seven million Jews, Jewish homeland, it matters. It’s also the case that, for several decades, the Israeli government has been a disaster and it’s just gotten worse and worse. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is a vile megalomaniac, and he is now in coalition with truly genocidal, despicable people who used to be banned from being in the government, the Kahanists, and they’re now in senior government positions. And so it is just horrific.
I’ve been very vocal, going back well before October 7th [when Hamas and Palestinian militant groups launched a military attack against Israel in 2023], in opposing –- in 2021 –- Israel’s overreaction in bombing Gaza, opposing the settlement policy in the West Bank, and supporting the creation of a Palestinian state. I was obviously very vocal, after October 7th, about the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the belief that Hamas should have no role governing anything.
But six days after October 7th, I started opposing Israel’s escalations because I quickly saw that Israel was going to go overboard. So I’ve been quite critical of the scale of Israel’s response in Gaza and the level of destruction and death, with 80% of buildings in Gaza destroyed. And when I got into the [congressional] race, on my first day, I announced I wasn’t going to support offensive arm sales and made it clear I wasn’t going to take AIPAC support. So that’s where I’m at.
MW: So, supporting Iron Dome, but making a distinction between defensive and offensive weapons?
WIENER: Yes.
MW: And, based, in part, on that stance, you now interestingly find yourself being cast as the “conservative” in this primary, correct?
WIENER: Yeah. I love San Francisco politics, but it sometimes can be a little ridiculous in terms of how people are cast. And we all occupy this “lefty” area of the spectrum, but it’s little shades of, “Am I a millimeter to your left?” And when you look at prominent Jewish elected officials in this country, there are only a few of us who have taken the positions that I’ve taken. It’s like me and Bernie Sanders and Becca Balint. I’m sure there are a few more, but there are very, very few of us who have taken the positions that I’ve taken.
And so that’s why this is a very hard year to be a lefty Jew running for Congress. I’ve taken enormous heat in the Jewish community, lost a bunch of support because of my positions, but you still get attacked by the folks who are going to attack any Jew running for Congress who says, “Yeah, I think Israel should exist, but the government’s terrible.” You’re never going to be good enough. So you’re going to get attacked from all sides.
MW: And just to clarify, those attacks are coming from the right and the left.
WIENER: Yeah.
MW: Because you have, on one hand, some left-wing people who say, “Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state.” And then you have this “traditional” position that says, “Well, any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic.”
WIENER: Well, when I put out my statement labeling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, immediately there was a big coalition letter of institutional Jewish organizations, all of which I’ve worked with for many years, harshly criticizing me and saying that I lacked moral clarity, even though a majority of Jewish Democrats agree with me.
MW: Do you think the majority of Democratic voters agree with you?
WIENER: Oh, a supermajority of Democrats, but even among Jewish Democrats, a majority label it a genocide –- 40% of Jews overall and 52% of Jewish Democrats, and 77% of Democrats overall and one-half of all Americans. I’ve had many conversations with folks in the Jewish community who are very upset with me, people who I adore and I respect and I’ve worked with for years. I want people to understand that they can agree or disagree, but this is what people think, and this is what a lot of Jews think. And so we have to have space in our community for diversity of thought.
MW: On that note, some of biggest self-purported champions of free speech will criticize the Left for engaging in cancel culture, but it appears that if anyone is critical of Israel, even from a liberal Zionist point of view, suddenly free speech or ideological diversity gets thrown out the window.
WIENER: I don’t view it as much about free speech. Listen, the Jewish community, globally, especially after October 7th, has felt like it’s under assault. You had October 7th happen, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and immediately, before Israel did anything, there were literal celebrations that broke out around the world. They were labeled as “protests.” What are you protesting? Literally, while Hamas was still in Southern Israel slaughtering Jews, celebrations broke out around the world. And so for so many Jews, that sent a very powerful signal about what was happening here. And it created, I think, a sense of fear.
We’ve seen over the last few years, the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric on both left and on the right. Totally normal to have Nick Fuentes be platformed. Totally normal for Hasan Piker to say that Jews are inbred. The attacks on synagogues, the spike in hate crimes against Jews around the world, that’s what the dynamic has been.
So it should not surprise anyone that for many Jews, there is an extreme sensitivity. And I understand that, and I am sympathetic in many ways. In addition to that, we have a horrific government in Israel that is harming Palestinians, it’s harming Israelis, both Jews and Arab Israelis.
MW: Is it your view that the Netanyahu government has become worse, particularly in more recent years, because of the right-wing allies they’ve had to align with to keep control?
WIENER: I think part of it is that Netanyahu, who, like Trump, is a criminal, is desperate to stay in power so he doesn’t get prosecuted. So he’s willing to do anything to stay in power. For so many, especially younger people, the only Israel they’ve seen is with Netanyahu in charge for decades. And when he started losing some popular support, he doubled down on supporting the right wing, and now it’s gotten so extreme that he endorsed [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán’s re-election the other day.
But in addition to that, there is so much growing animosity towards Jews in the U.S., in Europe, in other parts of the world. And we’re seeing now that the mask is off. They don’t even pretend anymore by saying, “Oh, no, it’s not about Jews. It’s Zionists.” Now they’re just talking about Jews and we see it just be completely normalized online by people with huge followings.
MW: What is the distinction between antisemitism that is genuinely driven by anti-Jewish sentiment and anti-Zionism?
WIENER: As someone who’s harshly critical of the government of Israel, clearly, criticizing Israel is not antisemitic. Israel is subject to criticism just like anyone else. Where it does become antisemitic when you start talking about it in a way about how Jews “control the world,” or “manipulate and control” and “pull the strings” –- that’s one of the oldest antisemitic narratives. And sometimes you do see something that’s cast as anti-Israel imagery, but it’s really about the big hook-nosed Jew pulling the strings and controlling the world.
We’re seeing this now with the war in Iran, which has now become a regional war, with people trying to remove Trump’s agency, saying, “This wasn’t a Trump decision. It was the Jews who manipulated him into doing it.” Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens and others say it very explicitly, others say it less explicitly.
So when it goes beyond just saying, “What Israel is doing is wrong, disagree, this is bad,” when it goes a step beyond that into either explicitly or implicitly making it about Jews are manipulating and controlling the world, that is antisemitic. And so it’s important for people just to be attuned.
MW: What issues or stances would you like to be known for as a politician?
WIENER: I mean, housing is always the top priority for me. Funding for public transportation has always been a huge priority. And then of course, sticking up for LGBTQ people and not just when it’s popular.
If you’ve followed my work, I do the hard stuff, which is why you can see if you go to my website, I literally have a page, it’s called “Scott’s MAGA Fan Club,” with Marjorie Taylor Green and Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz and Megyn Kelly, who go after me. And the things they attack me for, overwhelmingly, it’s because I stick up for trans people and trans kids, it’s because I did the work around the sex offender registry to stop slamming gay kids onto the registry and to stop discriminating against them, all the work we’ve done around HIV decriminalization.
MW: On that note, your work on the sex offender registry is often criticized by people on the right who claim that your bill enables child predators. Can you clarify what the bill actually does?
WIENER: It’s such bullshit, and it’s such a bad faith argument. So basically, when the California sex offender registry was created in the 1940s, we had anti-sodomy laws. So the only legal form of sex was vaginal intercourse. And so when it came to statutory rape, whether it was gay or straight — the vaginal intercourse — the judge and district attorney could decide whether to put that person on the sex offender registry. And this is in the 14-to-24 age range. So that is an existing category in law — we didn’t create that. Once you get under 14, the penalties skyrocket.
So we’re talking about largely college kids and high school kids having sex with each other. The law in such situations provided that if it was vaginal intercourse, the judge could decide, “This was like a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ situation, I’m not putting this kid on the registry,” or “This was a predatory situation, so I’m putting this kid on the registry.” For anal and oral intercourse, because of the [now-defunct] anti-sodomy laws, it was mandatory, no discretion whatsoever. So if you have an 18-year-old boy dating a 17-and-a-half-year-old and having oral sex or anal intercourse, the 18-year-old is placed on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life. I also introduced another reform to tier it, so not everyone in those situations had to stay on the registry for life.
So we changed the law to do nothing more than to say “We’re going to treat all forms of intercourse the same way.” It’s still going to be a crime if it’s 18 and 17, it’s still statutory rape. We’re not changing that. But a judge will be able to look at the facts of the case, just like they do with straight kids, and decide: was this predatory? Was it not predatory? That is all the law does. We had full support from law enforcement, the DA’s association, the police chiefs, they all supported it, but QAnon went insane and they started lying and saying, “Oh, you’re legalizing pedophilia.” That’s false. It was just about aligning discretion around, do you put someone on or off the sex offender registry?
MW: So it’s still up to the judge to decide?
WIENER: Yeah, it’s all up to the judge.
MW: Your critics frequently use a picture of you from the Folsom Street Fair, clad in a leather vest, to paint you as a sexual deviant who is obsessed with sex, wanting to corrupt or indoctrinate people. Why do you think you, particularly, inspire such rage among social conservatives?
WIENER: It’s two things. First of all, I’m a lefty, gay, Jewish guy from San Francisco, so I check every box that triggers them. And they decided years ago to try to turn me into the antagonist that Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, can go after, because I’m a gay lefty Jew from San Francisco, who goes to Folsom, who lives my authentic life as a gay man.
And the second reason is I don’t do just the “kumbayah” queer bills, I do the hard ones, like “Let’s not criminalize gay teens and slam them on the sex offender registry to ruin their lives,” or “Let’s provide refuge for trans kids and their families in Texas or Arkansas who are being criminalized and feel the need to flee,” or “Let’s stop imposing felonies on people living with HIV when we’re not doing that for people with Ebola and tuberculosis, and it’s totally discriminatory,” or “Let’s stop targeting sex workers, including so many who are trans, and profiling them.” These are the kinds of bills that I’ve done. It’s not the easy ones. These are the ones that are much more controversial and harder to explain, and people have knee-jerk reactions to them.
MW: Because you are so demonized online, do you worry that the attacks against you inhibit other LGBTQ people from running for office?
WIENER: Yes, I do. I mean, because in addition to all the slander online, which you see 100 times a day, I also have gotten thousands of death threats because of this work supporting LGBTQ people. The SFPD bomb dog unit has been repeatedly in my home because I get targeted so much. And I do think it sends a toxic message. With that said, I know a lot of queer people who are running and who are willing to be in the fight because they know it’s important.
MW: The Democratic Party, right now, has the worst approval rating it’s had in recent history. The brand is not just unpopular with Republican and independent voters, but with rank-and-file Democrats. Why do you think that is, and what should Democratic leaders do to change the party’s image?
WIENER: People don’t know what the party stands for, and people see the rise of authoritarianism. They also see the cost of living going through the roof. They see all of the things that we should be doing — like universal health care, making housing more affordable, having cheaper access to childcare, having paid family leave — and that people need or want to make their lives better. And they don’t feel like the Democrats are fighting for that.
And even though there are plenty of Democrats who do fight for those issues, and there are some great things that happened under Biden, with the expanded child tax credit or all of the clean energy work and so on and so forth, the Democrats have not shown people how our policies are the ones that are going to make their lives better.
Democrats, until recently, have been, at times, AWOL in housing. We had supermajorities under Obama in his first two terms, and we did the Affordable Care Act, which was great, but there was so much more we should have done when we had 60 senators. So people think Democrats are too timid, and question what we’re going to do to save our democracy and make life more affordable for people.
The good news is that there’s new energy in the party. Elizabeth Warren is one example. Again, I mentioned Robert Garcia. Laura Friedman is a relatively new member from Los Angeles. There are good people, like [Massachusetts Congressman] Jake Auchincloss, who are very solutions-oriented, focusing on “How do we fix these problems and show people that the government can actually make their life better?”
Trump got elected, in part, because people had concluded that the government had failed, the government’s not making my life better, my kid’s going to have a worse life than I have. And so people then do risky things, like vote for a psychopath and a career criminal. So, as Democrats, we need to turn it around. Not “We need to win this election” — of course we do — but “We need to actually fricking deliver and show people that we can make their lives better.”
MW: We hear this narrative about how Democratic voters want fighters, but what does fighting mean? Is it just going the way of California Governor Gavin Newsom and being the Democratic version of a troll? Or does it look like something different?
WIENER: Well, no. It partly looks like being vocal, but it’s also about actually showing results. And so not funding ICE — and being very clear, we’re not funding them, it’s over. And then tangibly gumming up and stopping Trump from doing the horrible things he wants to do.
In addition, it means having a positive vision of “This is how we’re going to make healthcare more affordable. This is how we’re going to make housing more affordable. This is how we’re going to make energy more affordable. This is how we’re going to make it more affordable for you to have kids and be able to work and raise your kid. This is how we’re going to make it possible for you to take care of your sick family member without having to quit your job.” So we have to do both.
California State Sen. Scott Wiener is a Democrat running in California’s 11th Congressional District. For more information on his campaign, visit his website at scottwiener.com.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
