Nancy Pelosi can be succeeded. She cannot be replaced.

"There's a ripping yarn about England's 10th Duke of Marlborough, who, roughly a century ago, ambled downstairs in a tizzy because his toothbrush wasn't "foaming properly." The duke, by this point a grown man, had never realized that toothbrushes do not replenish automatically, and that his valet had been squeezing toothpaste onto the toothbrush."

"Pelosi's Nov. 6 valedictory video highlighted a series of city achievements of the past 38 years. And it was lost on few that these were all things - healthcare improvements, scientific research, infrastructure transformations - that were largely enabled in San Francisco by its elected congressional representative directing a firehose of money westward."

"This is what the city stands to lose. Since the 1980s, it was as if some occult hand had simply recharged the city's toothbrush. Pelosi is 85. Clearly, it was time. But San Francisco became accustomed to this treatment. We now must become accustomed to not getting it."

""I have no fucking idea how it worked," said former longtime supervisor Aaron Peskin of Pelosi's ability to direct funds back home. "It just showed up." "You name it," he continued. "From fixing Aquatic Park to multi-billion-dollar subways. And everything in between. There was no aspect of federal largess for San Francisco that she was not seminally involved in.""

Nancy Pelosi will not seek reelection after serving as San Francisco's congressional representative since 1987. She channeled substantial federal funding to the city, enabling healthcare improvements, scientific research, and major infrastructure projects. Her influence delivered projects ranging from park repairs to multi-billion-dollar subways and post-disaster rebuilding. Residents and officials often experienced consistent federal largess without a clear explanation for its source. Pelosi exercised outsized influence even before formal House leadership positions, producing early and sustained results. San Francisco now faces the challenge of replacing that institutional leverage and securing comparable federal support under new representation.

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