Susannah Luthi

When I was Susannah Luthi’s editor years ago, she kept pitching stories about a California lawmaker named Scott Wiener. One day I asked her: I realize these policies are crazy, but why do we care so much about some random state senator?She responded that one day, Wiener was going to run for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress, and all these stories would be incredibly relevant. I trusted her and saved that email.Susannah was right. Two weeks ago, Wiener announced he was running for Pelosi’s seat. And now Pelosi is hanging up her hat after 40 years in Washington. It’s finally happening.Like Zohran Mamdani, Scott Wiener is the frightening face of a new Democratic Party, in which letting children get transgender surgeries is just the tip of the iceberg. From letting the state take gay kids away from their parents to legalizing pedophilia, Wiener makes even the most radical member of Congress look like a moderate.No one knows more about Scott Wiener than Susannah, and she’s been right about him so far. We should all pay attention. — Tim Rice***If you think men don’t belong in girls’ bathrooms, kids shouldn’t get irreversible sex changes, or cops should stop street prostitution of minors, Scott Wiener probably thinks you’re a bigot.Indeed, it seems easy to offend Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat running for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D.) seat — and anyone who holds mainstream or conventional views on biology, women’s or parents’ rights, or conservative governance frequently does.Last month, Wiener found it “gross” that San Francisco women turned up at his annual Halloween event to protest his transgender policies. He called the late Charlie Kirk a “vile bigot” before and after the conservative activist was brutally, publicly murdered. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are also “bigots,” and Republican diplomat Richard Grenell is a “self-hating gay man.”The people he approves of are very different — like a gay porn-purveying drag queen from the anti-Catholic drag troupe Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whom he honored on the California Senate floor as “one of the very best community leaders,” as well as San Francisco’s former soft-on-crime district attorney George Gascón, with whom he has collaborated on legislation. San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair, a public nudity-and-group sex festival whose attendees are advised to watch out for men peeing on one another, is a “beautiful community” that Wiener is “proud to stand up for.”Wiener’s personal proclivities loom large in the California State Senate, where he’s served since 2016. But they could soon have national relevance: Weiner announced his intent to run for Pelosi’s seat a full two weeks before the veteran California Democratic operator announced she would retire after four decades in Washington.Pelosi’s retirement will kick off a brutal succession bid in California. The former speaker reportedly favors San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan as her successor.But Wiener is a real contender — which is bad news for anyone who wants California to keep its policies to itself.Justice For PedophilesIn the Golden State, Wiener has pushed socially seismic policies that allow male sex offenders live in female prisons if they claim to be transgender, to exempt gay sex offenders from the state registry if the minor is at least 14 and within a 10-year age gap, and to make California a “haven” for out-of-state kids to come for sex changes without their parents’ consent.And these laws have already wreaked notable havoc. One of the first male inmates to enter California’s female prison is standing trial for allegedly raping two women cellmates — with the judge insisting that the offender be referred to as a woman throughout the proceedings, even though he impregnated at least one female inmate.Wiener also authored a bill that decriminalized streetwalking because he found anti-loitering laws “discriminatory” against transgender people and “people of color.” The law has effectively blocked cops from taking trafficked minors off the streets and led to an uncontrollable spike in sex trafficking of young girls, so much so that even the New York Times finds the law problematic.But Wiener shows no signs of backing down. His critics say it’s due to the personal nature of his policy stances, which make it impossible to get him to moderate his legislation.“Since I’ve been going to Sacramento to his legislative hearings, I’ve seen him treat us pretty badly, in public, during sessions,” said Julie Lane, co-founder of Women Are Real, a Bay Area feminist advocacy group that fights gender ideology. “He’ll have long discussions on his committees and as soon as it’s an issue we’re involved with, he’ll leave the room, or get on his phone, or say we’re ‘anti-trans activists.’”“He won’t listen to us.” “He’s Looked At As A Bully”Wiener was born in Philadelphia and grew up in New Jersey, where, after graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked for the state supreme court justice who wrote a landmark 1975 decision deeming that a trans-identifying man should be treated as female in a marriage contract and could collect spousal support after his divorce.He moved to San Francisco in 1997, practicing in a now-dissolved corporate law firm and working in the city attorney’s office before he was elected to the county’s Board of Supervisors.There, according to one conservative local, he was “popular and moderate and even likable” when he first started.“What we’ve learned over time is that career politicians start slipping further left year after year. And the farther up the ladder they go, they get even more left,” said Richie Greenberg, a leader of the successful recall campaign of the city’s former left-wing district attorney Chesa Boudin.Greenberg added that many San Franciscans see Wiener as a “carpetbagger” who went to Sacramento as a state senator to force changes in the city that he couldn’t make as a local lawmaker.“What he supports is often not agreed on by constituents here, and that’s what gets locals upset,” he said. “He’s looked at as a bully, among other things. He has passed legislation that has stripped away the ability of cities to control things.”Wiener touts his past post on the national board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign — a radical George Soros-funded organization behind the push to force transgenderism into the medical system and K-12 schools.He’s done the same thing in the state legislature. Wiener has proved a powerful figure on the California state senate’s public safety committee, where he’s fought to soften criminal penalties and permit open public drug injection sites. Last year, he caused a furor when he opposed making it a felony to purchase 16 and 17-year-olds for sex, stating that “Sending an 18-year-old high school senior to state prison for offering his 17-year-old classmate $20 to fool around isn’t smart criminal justice policy.”Those who have opposed him in hearing rooms or in the real world say he either ignores them completely or hits them with emotional arguments divorced from reality.Consider SB 132, his 2020 law that allowed men into female prisons — and which, from its early days, led to a long string of complaints by women that some of their male cellmates were threatening, harassing, and assaulting them.Amie Ichikawa, founder of the group Woman II Woman, which advocates for women prisoners, said Wiener’s office has answered her about other, unrelated issues but continues to ignore her reports about this law.“I had gotten a phone call about a rape, and I said, ‘I need to speak to Sen. Wiener about SB 132 and the people taking advantage of it — I can’t take another phone call about another rape,’” Ichikawa said. “I never got any responses to that.”Later, she went to the state capitol and personally handed Wiener letters from female inmates themselves about SB 132. “The letters were pleading with him and the governor to remember them, said that we’re all survivors of sexual abuse, how can you do this to us?” she said.He never responded.Last year, one of Wiener’s Republican State Senate colleagues responded to the growing reports of SB 132’s safety risks by introducing a bill that would have established separate housing for the trans-identifying males and banned convicted sex offenders from moving into women’s prisons at all.Wiener opposed these proposed reforms during a hearing and claimed the state’s sex offender registry targeted “LGBTQ people.”“We also know that LGBTQ people have been massively and disproportionately targeted and subjected to being slammed onto the sex offender registry,” Wiener said at the time. “That’s the whole history of the sex offender registry.”“Just A Little Bit Off”A longtime Bay Area activist who knows and likes Wiener personally agreed that he fails to look at the true effects of his legislation — although she attributes the reason to the powerful funding groups behind progressive policies he pushes.“I think he has good intentions,” said Naomi Akers, whom Wiener nominated for the San Francisco Entertainment Commission in 2010. “I think there are a few things that are just a little bit off because I don’t think he’s getting informed from the community, but from a funder-driven activist agenda that is bypassing the community.”Formerly incarcerated herself, Akers said most former prisoners within the prisoner rights organization she worked with opposed SB 132, but said, “I guess we have to go along with it.”“I said something about it, and I got fired,” she said.Akers saw similar issues with Wiener’s SB 357, which legalized “loitering with the intent to commit prostitution.” The law has been blamed for a spike in sex trafficking and for turning city neighborhoods into dangerous red light districts.“I think it harms the residents and young women in a community,” she said of the law. “I think it’s unsafe for children and other women walking around. It degrades the safety of a neighborhood and has a detrimental effect on everyone.”Parents who have fought Wiener on bills like SB 107, which grants “sanctuary” for gender-confused youth to run away to California for sex-change drugs and procedures, see outright hostility when they voice their opinions in hearing rooms.“Name-Calling Is All He Has.”“Senator Wiener habitually hurls derogatory remarks at us because he cannot engage in a coherent conversation that can justify placing males in females’ spaces,” said Erin Friday, co-lead of Our Duty, a group for parents of gender-confused kids. “He cannot rationalize sex-rejecting interventions, especially the removal of sex organs of children. Devolving to name-calling is all he has.”In 2023, he co-authored a bill that could have stripped custody from parents who didn’t “affirm” their child’s transgender identity. He blamed public outcry on “a pretty massive misinformation campaign about this bill by the right-wing media,” and claimed opponents wanted “to erase trans kids” and mount “an attack on gay and lesbian kids.”Yet even as he regularly attacks Californians who oppose him and has consistently voted to lower penalties for violent crime, Wiener has been quick to build up his own defenses — most notably with a co-authored law that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) signed in 2023 to allow politicians to use unlimited donor money for private security.“Since I was first elected to public office in 2010, we’ve seen a terrifying spike in threats and violence against elected officials — myself included,” he said when the legislation was unveiled. “It’s been harrowing to deal with endless threats on social media; I’ve gotten thousands over the past few years.”The race to replace Pelosi has yet to take shape, but Wiener seems poised to take the lead. The day he announced his candidacy, he raised more than $730,000 to add to his existing $1 million war chest. His top donors include powerful unions and real estate developers who have backed his laws to override local zoning laws to build dense housing blocs.Still, Greenberg thinks Wiener’s public manner could hurt him if the race turns competitive.“He is lashing out,” he said. “It’s like he and Newsom both took petulant pills. I don’t know what happened in the last few months to make them so angry and so off-putting.”Susannah Luthi is the host of the Free Talk California radio program and a former political reporter.The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.