Democrats Who Are Afraid of San Francisco Values

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

In a recent online fundraising pitch, the now-pundit Gingrich asked supporters, "Will everything you've worked so hard to accomplish be lost to the San Francisco values of would-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi?" In Thursday's National Review Online, House Speaker Dennis Hastert asked, "Do we really want Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco values leading the culture war?" Neither elaborated on the meaning of "San Francisco values."

But while politicians and pundits who wouldn't know Coit Tower from a Taqueria La Cumbre burrito invoke San Francisco values, the hometown reality is that the inverse is true: Campaigns adjust their values -- or at least their media messages -- when they come to the city. While visiting campaigns want to acknowledge San Francisco's liberal voters so they can partake in the region's prodigious political contributions, "they don't want to say something that is going to get them in trouble in another part of the country," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic political strategist who has worked on several national campaigns and lives in San Francisco. Historically, Lehane said, the challenge "was to get in and out of San Francisco with a lot of money but no sound bites that could be launched against you in a 30-second commercial."

Politicians are coached to talk differently, avoid certain questions and alter their media campaigns when in San Francisco and the more liberal parts of the Bay Area.

Lehane remembered accompanying a national candidate to San Francisco who was asked in a media scrum whether "he would support federal funding not only for transgender sex changes -- but to fund transgender sex changes for those who had already undergone such a procedure and wanted to reverse it." The candidate, whom Lehane declined to identify, responded with a generic response about how the country lacked even a basic national health care plan, and then was moved quickly by an aide to another questioner.

Most towns in America don't have more dogs than children.