San Francisco has been more optimistic in recent years, with Mayor Daniel Lurie adopting a more pragmatic approach, and voters staging successful recalls of the most radical and destructive local elected officials.

But the race to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi shows that old habits are hard to break.

Three viable candidates dominate, offering voters the thrilling illusion of choice, while delivering few new ideas on the issues that actually matter to everyday San Franciscans — continued sky-high costs, street drug use, punishing taxes, and ideological purity tests.

Scott Wiener leads the pack as the current state senator and professional LGBTQ+ cheerleader. He’s authored a pile of state housing bills that generated impressive press releases.

Actual homes completed? That’s a slower burn, thanks to the usual California cocktail of fees, lawsuits and mandates.

Wiener’s real passion remains cultural: sanctuary policies for transgender minors fleeing parental skepticism (SB 107), and a memorable pivot declaring Israel guilty of “genocide” after initially sounding more balanced.

Moderates in the city grumble that he’s too busy pandering to national activists on social media to fix the basics. But in San Francisco, that’s often a feature, not a bug.

Connie Chan, current Board of Supervisors member and the proud Pelosi endorsee, brings authentic local flavor as a Chinese-American immigrant who actually balances budgets and doles out immigrant services.

She’s competent at the city-county grind — revenue reserves, union deals, subsidized housing
— yet quite vague on national or world affairs.

On Israel, she’s all-in on the “genocide” label and something called the Block the Bombs Act, because why not import campus protest slogans into congressional policy?

Chan’s pitch is simple: continuously blame Trump and bring Washington more of the same city council-style progressivism that’s made San Francisco so infamous.

Saikat Chakrabarti is the flashy outsider centimillionaire socialist — yes, really. A former Stripe engineer, he’s dumped about $10 million of his own money into the race while railing against the rich and corporate greed.

He’s the co-founder of the Justice Democrats, who spawned the “Squad”; he’s also Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s endorsed by the Squad’s Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar (plus professional streamer Hasan Piker),

Chakrabarti is the slick fast-talker who emphatically wants to burn down the Democratic Party and rebuild it in his image: Green New Deal on steroids, wealth taxes, and maximalist foreign policy lectures. The irony of a centimillionaire tech bro playing revolutionary is lost on no one except his biggest donors.

Rounding out the field is Marie Hurabiell, the late-entering former Republican-turned-“common-sense Democrat.” She’s the rare voice pushing actual accountability on crime, merit in education, and pragmatism in housing without the ritualistic genuflection to every activist demand.

She has a loyal niche — especially among fed-up Asian-American families and small business owners — but she’s suffering from single-digit polling.

Here’s the truth San Francisco voters refuse to admit: there’s painfully little practical difference between the three viable leftist candidates. Wiener, Chan and Chakrabarti all worship at the altar of expansive social spending; ironclad sanctuary policies that prioritize illegal immigrants over public order; and a heavy focus on foreign policy that treats Israel as the villain while Hamas gets a nuanced read. And, of course, “ICE out.”

They quibble over housing tactics — streamlining permits vs. providing subsidies — but none will seriously challenge the regulatory stranglehold that holds back the creation of new homes people can afford, and want to buy.

All three will deliver outrage against Trump, demand more funding for the homelessness-industrial complex, and perform cultural signaling on gender and identity that alienates anyone still clinging to biological reality or parental authority.

The real debate is stylistic: legislative insider (Wiener), neighborhood progressive (Chan) or self-funded national disruptor (Chakrabarti). Voters get the same governance, either way.

This Tuesday’s primary is less a bold course correction than a referendum on what flavor San Francisco prefers for its its old, radical identity: legislative workhorse, local charm or revolutionary cosplay.

In a city that ousts prosecutors and school board commissioners when the pain gets bad enough, we have to wonder how long the voters can keep pretending the differences between candidates like these more than the bad results of the policies they all embrace.

Filling Nancy Pelosi’s seat is always going to be impossible for mortals. She’s commanded fear and respect across the aisle; these congressional candidates will mostly command attention from niche social media circles and local interest groups.

The winner — likely Wiener over the Chan/Chakrabarti runoff survivor — will enter Congress as just another safe-seat Democrat shouting into the void, rather than a voice for the winds of change blowing through San Francisco.

Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based in San Francisco.