Silicon Valley's Left continues banishing moderate members
Several SF Democrats including long-loyal activist Cyn Wang were just denied charter for the new Westside Family Dem Club. Why? The Dems fear club leaders are Republicans in camouflage, as “family” is really code for “right wing.” This isn't the first time local Dem Central Committees have hastily ousted allies who behave slightly contra the hive mind. The SF Chronicle's analysis below.
In a politically healthy city, Cyn Wang would be embraced by the local Democratic Party. She might even be touted in campaign ads.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she married a woman from Mexico who just got her green card last week. She serves on the entertainment commission promoting nightlife, helps run her family’s small insurance business, sends her daughter to her neighborhood public school, and worked in the Obama administration as a diplomat in the foreign service.
She’s a registered Democrat and has been active in Democratic politics since high school. She voted for Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 presidential primary and Joe Biden in the general election. She calls herself an “intersectional feminist” in her Twitter bio and considers today’s Republican Party “the biggest threat to our democracy.”
But are she and her political allies really Democrats — or are they Republicans playing pretend? This is the ludicrous question that has emerged in San Francisco where many liberal leaders have chosen to embrace zero-sum politics rather than a shared opportunity to fix the city’s biggest problems.
Wang and other parents living on the city’s sleepy, politically moderate west side asked the San Francisco Democratic Party last week to charter their new club, the Westside Family Democratic Club. They want to register more voters in Districts One, Four and Seven in time for next year’s big elections and persuade families to get involved in civic life rather than bail on our struggling city.
But party members rebuffed them over a host of ill-defined concerns: They invited Supervisor Joel Engardio, a leader in last year’s school board recall movement, to an event! Their members include some well-off families! They say they’re Democrats, but what if they’re actually closeted Republicans? What if Republicans are funneling dark money into their bank accounts? In the most out-of-nowhere chatter of all, some party members speculated that the club co-founders are racist.
This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the whole thing here.
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