On the 32nd floor of a luxury condo skyscraper with panoramic views of the San Francisco Bay, Heidi Sieck opened a bottle of champagne Tuesday evening, played Beyoncé’s “Freedom” and waited for her fellow “Kamala OGs” to arrive to watch the presidential debate.
“I’m very stressed,” said Siek, an abortion rights activist and longtime political activist in San Francisco. She met Kamala Harris in 2003 at a house party, where the first-time candidate stood on a milk crate in high heels and pearl sandals and urged partygoers to vote for her for district attorney.
However, when the debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump on Tuesday turned to abortion rights, Sieck, whose watchdog party also raises funds for abortion, launched a campaign for abortion rights. A city ballot measure to strengthen access to reproductive healthI was feeling good.
“Fix it, Kamala!” Sikes yelled at the big-screen TV on a leather couch as she shared bowls of popcorn and potato chips with friends and fellow Harris supporters. “She’s in the zone. Kick her! Kick her!”
Heidi Siek (left) hosted an intimate presidential debate party at Avery in San Francisco on Tuesday. Siek has been a Kamala Harris supporter for 20 years.
(MacKenzie Mays/Los Angeles Times)
For San Franciscans like Siek, who were among Harris’s early supporters and have volunteered for her campaigns for years, Tuesday evening’s debate was a win for the home team.
This intimate party was one such party to say the least Dozens of people detained in the Gulf regionHarris made her mark decades ago as Alameda County prosecutor and then San Francisco district attorney, before rising to statewide offices and the White House as vice president.
In a city where political activism permeates the local culture, some parties drew hundreds of guests as Harris’ friends and former staffers joined other excited Democrats for a chance to be inspired and reminisce on debate night. Political insiders saw Harris on the big screen and claimed they knew her before. They cheered when the vice president mentioned Trump’s bankruptcy and laughed when he alleged, without evidence, that Harris had colluded with him. The immigrants ate domesticated animals.
At Manny’s, an event venue in the Mission District, owner Manny Yekutiel greeted guests wearing pink wigs and sequined dresses.
Partygoers ate ice cream from a local creamery Created a special range of flavors For an election season that featured a hometown presidential candidate. Their scoop cup of Malted Salted Vanilla Ice Cream with Pecan Praline was imprinted with Harris’s photo and the flavor’s name: “MVP,” a name that could refer to Most Valuable Player or Madam Vice President.
Downtown, inside the San Francisco Democratic Party’s new campaign headquarters on Market Street, Mayor London Breed, City Attorney David Chiu, state Senator Scott Wiener and East Bay congressional candidate Latifah Simon were among hundreds of spectators cheering Harris on.
Breed described Harris’ performance Tuesday as “direct and honest” and recalled the fellow Democrat, whom she has known since the 1990s, who first encouraged her to get involved in politics.
“Honestly, I never thought someone like me could exist in this world,” said Breed, San Francisco’s first black female mayor. “And that puts a lot of pressure on me about my existence in this world.”
Chiu walked around wearing a T-shirt that read “Asians for Kamala” — a throwback to her 2003 campaign for San Francisco district attorney.
Pointing to the lotus flower on the red shirt, he said that “kamala” means “lotus” in Sanskrit.
“The lotus is found in muddy water, where it grows without any dirt and is ready to bloom,” Chiu said, reading the words on the T-shirt. “To me, 21 years later, this represents where America is today. We are led by our happy warrior, and we have to finish the job.”
Harris has a long Bay Area history. She was born in Oakland and spent her childhood in Berkeley public schools. She graduated from UC Hastings College of the Law — now UC Law San Francisco — before being elected San Francisco’s top prosecutor.
He founded the San Francisco “Hard-breaking politics” The city is where she met powerful people, including former Mayor and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, whom she dated in the 1990s, and where she vied for the spotlight with rising stars including Gov. Gavin Newsom, himself a former mayor, shaping her ambitions and leading her to the White House as vice president and now, potentially, president.
Alex Tuerkwho has worked in San Francisco for 30 years, including on the Brown and Newsom campaigns, was cheering for Harris in Avery. He called competitive San Francisco politics “a knife fight in a phone booth” but said Harris always had what it took.
He met her in 2000 when Brown was facing an uphill battle Ranked-choice voting and tasked him and Harris — his “two hardest political workers,” Tourk said — with helping get his preferred candidates elected to the Board of Supervisors. They failed, but Tourk views those five weeks with Harris as the real victory.
“Back then, obviously, I didn’t know she could become president of the United States. But we all knew she was someone special,” Tourk said. “Tonight, it’s one of our own.”
But not everyone in the city was cheering for Harris. At a bar in Haight-Ashbury — a neighborhood renowned as a center of hippie counterculture — about 100 Republicans gathered to drink beer and voice their support for Trump, including Jacob Spangler, president of the College Republicans at San Francisco State University.
He said it’s challenging to remain conservative in such a liberal city.
“Being young, it’s hard to keep up socially in San Francisco,” he said. “If I meet a new friend, I have to wait a couple of months and sit them down and tell them I’m a Republican.”
In this crowd, Harris was more of a distant political figure than a hometown mate.
Kathleen McCurry, 69, who said she is a registered independent and who voted for Trump in the last two elections, said she plans to vote for him again because of his stances on immigration and the economy.
McCurry said the former president was “very well-prepared” compared to Harris, whom he called “a stereotypical San Francisco Democrat” who “knows how to woo people with a money charm.”
Back at Seek’s condo with breathtaking views of the bay and city skyline, the hostess cried recalling her experience at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month.
She had volunteered for the DNC when President Biden was still a candidate, but now it was Harris, who had sat down with her several years earlier to plan how to improve their city, how to help more women get elected, a longtime ally who was always willing to write a letter of recommendation for her, even when life got busy.
“I’m looking at that podium,” Sieck recalled, waiting for Harris to come on stage at the DNC, “and all I could think about was that milk carton.”
