Wiener Faces San Francisco’s Jewish Voters

Scott Wiener, candidate to succeed outgoing Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, has spent his congressional campaign informing San Francisco’s most Israel-committed Jews that their non-negotiable stances are, unfortunately, irrelevant.

How is this representation or coalition-building?

It’s his bold gamble: tell the people who today still treat Jewish national sovereignty as fact that they are behind the curve, outdated and being left behind. Charming.

In about one month from now, we will find out how his gamble traveled from a debate stage to Shabbat table to polling place.

Wiener is a Jewish Democrat in a city with tens of thousands of Jewish residents, (estimates as high at nearly 80,000). The Orthodox schuls, Chabad houses, Sephardic congregations, and traditional Russian-speaking refusenik families in the city’s Richmond and Sunset Districts are a significant portion of this population.

Wiener insulted and sidelined us all.

We are the part that still means it: Israel has the unequivocal right to exist as a Jewish state. Israel as a sovereign nation and United Nations member since 1949 has a right to counter and finish a war started against it with a horrendous massacre October 7th. And we show support for a government actually fighting that war.

We pray. We make donations. We vote. We also talk to each other faster than any consultant’s political telephone polling.

We don’t need to see flashy congressional race websites, slogan-filled mailers or to stop by his campaign office.

What happened? Simply, Wiener gave us a word we will not dilute. After years of shunning the call to label Israel’s campaign in Gaza a so-called “genocide”, he adopted the explosive charge on the campaign trail, after a very public stumble where he would not answer the genocide question – while other candidates on stage eagerly did.

He then explained that the “genocide” term is painful for Jews, which is touching – because he used it anyway.

He talked about blocking offensive arms while Israelis were still burying their own dead and hunting down the people who butchered them.

Result? He lost the co-chairing leadership of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, the lawmakers in Sacramento.

At least five Jewish organizations did not treat his shocking pivot as courage. They treated it as a politician discovering how he could get more votes at the expense of others .

Wiener’s genocide labeling is actually not where Democratic moderates sit. Chuck Schumer, Jacky Rosen, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Josh Gottheimer, Brad Sherman, and Jerry Nadler can dislike Benjamin Netanyahu all they want and yet they still refuse the genocide label and a general cutoff of U.S. arms.

This is the establishment Jewish-Democrat lane: the U.S. – Israel alliance holds, the “G”-word stays off the congressional floor, and Israel’s existence is not an argument to be reopen every primary.

Wiener exited that lane. On this issue, he is clearly no moderate. He is running with the Israel-critical extreme left.

The company he joins is far from subtle, by any stretch of the imagination. Bernie Sanders became the first U.S. senator to label Israel is committing genocide, spending years trying to block arms sales to the Netanyahu government. Becca Balint became the first Jewish House member to make the same charge. Sara Jacobs led the “Block the Bombs” fight.

This is Wiener’s chosen legislative neighborhood: genocide language, no weapons transfers. It is much closer to Sanders and Balint than to moderates Schumer and Rosen.

The Religious Zionist voters in San Francisco can tell the obvious difference.

For families here who’ve spent three years watching synagogues graffitied, Jewish students isolated, and “Zionist” used as a curse-slur in the city we pay taxes in, Wiener’s declaration landed as abandonment.

We are not asking whoever ultimately becomes our representative-member of Congress to love every government minister in Jerusalem. We are asking them not to sign the gravest indictment in Jewish historical memory and then act surprised when the people who bury their relatives in Israel stop returning fundraising calls.

Moreover, we do not need to be half of San Francsico’s voters to make a difference. We could simply boycott. In a tightening top-two race between Wiener and challenger Connie Chan, there’s a reason to stay home and refuse to vote.

Wiener can recite YIMBY talking points until the fog burns off, and blabber about housing, AI, Gay Rights and “the future of San Francisco.” It will matter if we Jews who expected a Jewish senator to defend the Jewish state are inextricably tied to conclude he sold his soul for the same applause Sanders and Balint already get.

Strangely, he still recites that Israel’s existence is “critically important” in the same breath as calling its government an abomination. But San Francisco’s observant Jews show staunch support for both Trump and Netanyahu.

Wiener cannot explain himself – he’s already lost the room.

If Wiener wants our all-important votes though, the path is ugly and public.

Drop the genocide charge. Stop treating Israel’s war as a play of good and evil staged for San Francisco donors.

Come back toward the Schumer-Rosen lane on the core accusation or admit he’s chosen the Sanders-Balint lane and stop asking Orthodox and religious Zionist Jews to pretend we cannot read the writing on the wall.

A Democrat can lose this seat without losing Democrats. He only has to lose the voters who thought he was one of ours.

Wiener is running his experiment in real time. The religious Zionist vote in San Francisco is small enough to sneer at in some back-of-the-napkin strategy memo yet large enough to turn his election night into a very expensive and embarrassing lesson.