Arizona should start thinking more like San Francisco (yes, seriously)
Never thought I’d write these words on this keyboard, but we need to start thinking and acting like the people of San Francisco.
Yes, San Francisco.
Arizona needs to adopt the vibe of The City by the Bay, the same metropolis that brought us flower children, Haight-Ashbury and the craziest, dope-hazed politics in America.
We must take inspiration from a city better known today for its street crime and sidewalk tents, its discarded needles and human waste, than its once envied street cars and Victorian homes.
Because something magnificent is happening in San Francisco that needs to happen in Arizona.
When extremists take over local politics
The political moderates are on the march, and they’re winning.
Yes, moderates. Those people impossible to rally to any cause have been aroused and are roaring their disapproval at City Hall and the Board of Supervisors.
They’ve had it with the latest wave of nut cases who took over city politics, especially during the pandemic, and they’re organizing with a vengeance.
They’re building a movement that will not stop until it has taken back the city, county and school board, and have established government of the sane people, by the sane people, for the sane people.
So can we.
Arizona has similar problems on the right
Our problem is slightly different than theirs.
Their loons and crackpots are on the progressive left.
Our loons and crackpots are on the populist right.
But it’s all the same problem, really.
They’ve got too many people with power living in an alternate reality detached from common sense. And so do we.
In San Francisco that problem is expressed this way, “We need to address the root causes of crime.”
In Arizona, it’s “The election was stolen.”
In San Francisco, the goofballs installed revolving doors in the jails.
In Arizona, the goofballs wasted months investigating an election that wasn’t rigged.
San Francisco moderates are on the move
Stories in The Wall Street Journal and Politico last Thursday and Friday describe how the political moderates in San Francisco, led by Asian Americans, are building organizations outside of government to take on the progressive leadership.
The activists are mostly Democrats, as are most of the voters in California, where Democratic Party voter registration is roughly double that of Republicans or independents.
In that state, Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic minority — having increased by 25% over the last decade to make up 17% of the population.
One of those Asian American organizers, Kanishka Cheng, who came to this country as a child from Sri Lanka, could have been speaking for all of Arizona when she said, “In San Francisco, politics has become so extreme that extreme is now the norm.”
In San Francisco, the moderates finally grew tired of all the shoplifting and car break-ins and fentanyl-fueled sidewalk contortionists. They got tired of prosecutors more interested in protecting criminals than their victims.
They could no longer abide school board members who wanted to erase meritocracy and George Washington, the father of the country. They especially couldn’t stand those progressive fantasies commanding all the attention when schools were flagging on reading and math or refusing to reopen as COVID-19 receded.
Recall elections have tossed out problems
In a landslide election, they recalled three members of the San Francisco school board.
Then they cast their lines for left-wing District Attorney Chesa Boudin. They snagged him in a recall election and tossed him out of government into the woke waters of academia, where he can swim with all the other flounders.
In California, the problem is concentrated in the Democratic Party.
In Arizona, the problem is concentrated in the Republican Party.
One of the major goals of San Francisco moderate activists is to take back control of the major political party in the city and replace extreme Democrats with moderate Democrats.
Likewise, that should be the goal of Arizona Republicans — to take back control of their state party.
For the last half-decade, the Arizona GOP has been so busy botching things that it has handed to the Democrats the governor’s office, secretary of state, attorney general and Arizona’s two U.S. Senate seats. The two chambers of the Legislature, once dominated by Republicans, are on the verge of flipping to the other party.
Extremism did that.
And now Arizona, a state in which Republicans still outnumber Democrats by more than 200,000 voters, is run largely by the Democratic Party.
Eventually, Democrats will do what Dems do
That’s a problem if you still believe in limited government, lower taxes, less regulation and law and order.
Fortunately, the Democrats who have won office in Arizona have proven mostly moderate in politics and temperament. If they gain all the levers of power, however, the temptation will be high to push mainstream Democratic initiatives that are further left than the Arizona population.
In San Francisco, the major corporations, meaning High Tech, are helping to fund the outbreak of moderation after growing frustrated with the social erosion in the city.
Trump lit a match in Arizona: Now he must put it out
“San Francisco, to some extent, has gouged its own eyes out,” said Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, which gave birth to Airbnb and DoorDash.
He told the Wall Street Journal he got involved in local politics because the school curriculum was abandoning basic learning.
The son of struggling Asian immigrants, he had attended public school and used his education to rise high in the tech world. “Being able to study algebra in middle school allowed me to be a computer engineer,” he told The Journal. “Tech gave me everything I have, and I desperately want people from any background to be able to access that.”
Arizona can strike after the election
Arizona’s national populists who now run the state Republican Party have lost three election cycles in a row. If they lose a fourth and Trump loses the White House, it will be harder to argue that national populism has a future.
The larger Republican voting base will likely become more receptive to a new direction and be ready to do the trenchwork to reform the party.
That is the key to success, said Chris Larsen, co-founder of the U.S. tech firm Ripple, who with other tech entrepreneurs have spent millions on the movement. “Things got to a point where we said, ‘Enough is enough, we’re getting involved in the muck,’ ” he told The Journal.
There used to be a time when sensible Arizona Republicans could ignore the far-right antics of the party. But the present crop is causing so much deep-tissue damage to the brand that the brand is losing elections.
If that is to change, Arizona Republicans who believe in conservatism can find the answer in a left-wing city whose politics they’ve long despised.
Phil Boas is a columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona can learn from San Francisco, where moderates are winning