At Tuesday’s debate between Connie Chan and Scott Wiener, the real action was not on the stage. Ahead of the candidates’ discussion of housing, AI, foreign policy, or who should replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, union workers supporting either Chan or Wiener loudly confronted each other in the street outside the Sydney Goldstein Theater in Hayes Valley.
“Who’s got the union plan?” a woman with a megaphone called out on the corner of Franklin and Hayes Streets. “Connie Chan, Connie Chan!” the supervisor’s supporters shouted in unison, some blowing whistles.
The Chan camp was repeatedly interrupted by Wiener supporters wearing bright orange and blue shirts with matching signs. “Scott Wiener! Scott Wiener!” they shouted. Passing cars honked their horns for whichever side (it was hard to tell).
Doug Wydler, vice president of IBEW Local 6 and one of the pro-Chan organizers, explained to me that Chan is “the first candidate in a long time that backs labor 100 percent, and her opponent doesn’t.” Chan’s appointment of Rudy Gonzalez, the secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, to serve as her campaign manager is proof of her commitment to labor, Wydler said. Both Chan and Pelosi have been at Wydler’s union hall making calls to San Franciscans, he said. Residents couldn’t believe Pelosi was actually on the line with them, he told me.
Wiener, Wydler acknowledged, has the support of at least one union. “There’s some carpenters over there that are hiding, that don’t want to be seen,” he said to me, pointing across the street. He claimed Wiener’s campaign enlisted paid protesters at $21 per hour on Craigslist.
Across Hayes street was Seán McGarry, a senior field representative for Carpenters Local 22, standing on the corner in plain view with his Wiener sign. “Scott builds,” McGarry told me in an Irish accent. “He’s the hardest working politician I’ve ever come across, you gotta appreciate that. He’s got legislation that actually gets shit done.”
McGarry noted the historic Alexandria Theater in the Richmond district, which Chan has said should be converted to housing. “It’s just rotting there on 18th Avenue,” McGarry said. “Scott will make something happen. Connie, she’s done nothing for private sector unions to get things built,” he said. “Scott has.”
McGarry told me the claim that the Wiener rally relied on paid volunteers was a false, negative narrative. “I didn’t see that, I didn’t even smell it,” he said.
I asked McGarry what accounts for the split in union support: Why are the carpenters supporting Wiener while other trades rallying for Chan?
McGarry said he’s been a union member for about 30 years, and based on his experience, members of all the unions would wake up the next day and work together. “You know, there is no division, that’s how things get built,” he said. “But on silly things like this, basically there’s differences.”
