Pelosi ignoring calls for a debate
Two years ago, one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top lieutenants suffered a shocking election loss to a challenger who ran to his left. Last month, another longtime top House Democrat suffered the same fate.
In November, for the first time in her 33year congressional career, Pelosi will be challenged for her San Francisco seat in a general election by a fellow Democrat, who calls her insufficiently progressive. If she’s worried, she doesn’t show it — she won’t even respond to his calls for a debate.
Pelosi has not debated an opponent since her first race for Congress in 1987, and she has demonstrated no interest in sharing a stage with Shahid Buttar, the child of Pakistani immigrants, attorney and democratic socialist who is running against her in November.
She’s not impressed that Buttar believes he could be another Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, the Bronx democratic socialist who unseated one of Pelosi’s lieutenants in 2018. Buttar, 45, has been frustrated in trying to get Pelosi’s attention and went so far Saturday as to hold a debate with an empty chair. An online petition,
“Tell Nancy Pelosi: Stop Dodging Debates,” had attracted 6,200 supporters by Monday.
Pelosi’s lack of interest in Buttar is nothing personal. Over her career, she has declined to debate Republicans and independents, too. In 2006, Pelosi’s Green Party challenger, Krissy Keefer, said, “She’s been there 20 years and never had a debate. She needs to come home and do a debate.”
Pelosi didn’t, and as has been the case in every reelection race she’s run, voters didn’t seem to care. She won the general election that year with 80% of the vote.
Pelosi is more visible to her constituents than most members of Congress, holding weekly news conferences and frequently showing up in other media appearances. Buttar dismisses those as “grandstanding and theater. The kind of questions you get from a reporter are not the kind you get from an opponent.”
He added, “I do think it’s revealing that she hasn’t defended her record. It behooves her to defend her record, even though it’s indefensible.”
Pelosi’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Her refusal to debate Buttar is no dealbreaker to local Democratic leaders.
“It’s up to her to make that decision. I believe that as a candidate, debates are important and useful,” said former Supervisor David Campos, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party.
He endorsed independent Sen. Bernie Sanders this year and in 2016 for president, and said he agrees with Buttar on “just about everything.” But he’s backing Pelosi.
“I don’t believe that (Buttar) has really presented a strong justification to remove Nancy Pelosi from being speaker of the House,” Campos said. “She’ll do more to advance the progressive agenda forward than he would.”
Molly Ball, author of the new biography “Pelosi,” said the 80yearold Democrat has long “faced pressure from the left back home — from (former San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt) her major opponent in 1987, a democratic socialist who accused her of buying the election on behalf of corporations and special interests, to the Iraq War protesters who camped out in her yard during her first term as speaker, to today.”
There is little sign that Pelosi is in the same predicament as former New York Rep. Joe Crowley, who was the fourthranking House Democrat when OcasioCortez upset him two years ago.
Crowley debated Ocasio-Cortez once. On another occasion he sent a surrogate, former New York City Councilwoman Annabel Palma, in his place.
The New York Times editorial board chided Crowley for skipping that and another debate, saying that “as a longtime incumbent with a powerful role as a party leader, he should relish, not shirk, a chance to make his case to voters.”
In several ways, Buttar is in a better position than many of Pelosi’s opponents have been over the years. His campaign said he raised more than $1 million through June, a milestone few Pelosi challengers have reached.
Still, that’s far less than the $8 million that Pelosi, one of the party’s most prolific fundraisers, had pulled in through March. She raised $87 million for Democratic candidates in 2019, holding 181 events in 54 cities, according to her campaign.
And there’s little sign Buttar is pulling in top progressive backing outside San Francisco. While Buttar frequently mentions OcasioCortez and the three other firstterm House members known as the Squad as kindred progressive spirits, none has endorsed him.
Buttar has been endorsed by some organizations that backed Sanders, but the senator himself has stayed neutral. Sanders did endorse Jamaal Bowman, a 44yearold progressive who, like Buttar, supports a Medicare for All health program and a Green New Deal environmental plan. Last month, Bowman defeated 73yearold Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in another titanic election upset.
“It’s quite telling that people like AOC (OcasioCortez) have not endorsed him,” Campos said of Buttar. Pelosi “has really been there for the left in San Francisco the last couple of years.”
And while Crowley was criticized for raising his family out of his district and not spending enough time at home, Ball said inattention to San Francisco has not been an issue for Pelosi.
“Things can always change, and we are certainly in a moment of rising energy on the left, but the results over the years indicate that San Francisco voters see (Pelosi’s) combination of progressivism and clout as a better fit for her constituents,” Ball said. “She also spends a lot of time attending to her constituents, so they are less likely to feel she’s neglected their concerns to focus on Washington.”
Pelosi isn’t alone among Bay Area House members in not scheduling election debates. Only one, Palo Alto Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, has committed to a forum — she’s set to debate Saratoga City Councilman Rishi Kumar, a fellow Democrat, on Sept. 26.