With the election of Marina resident Kat Ander-son to San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee (DC3), the City’s Democrats have put one more piece in place for ending what has been at times a destructive intraparty contest.
Anderson, who was sworn into office July 25 for a two-year term, said it is time the City’s left-wing and moderate sides of the Democratic Party stop fighting each other and focus on shared issues. That, she told the Marina Times, will be a top priority in her new position.
Politics is a lifelong interest for Anderson, extending back to her childhood in Little Rock, Ark., where she babysat Chelsea Clinton, daughter of the future president and secretary of state. After moving to California and earning degrees in political science and law, she married and moved to the Marina District to start her family with husband Dave Anderson.
Anderson’s election to the DC3 is her first personal political victory, and it came in a race in which she was endorsed by much of the moderate establishment of the local Democratic Party, including Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Mark Farrell. She had sought the District 2 supervisor’s seat in 2010; though unsuccessful, it served to raise her profile and to create positive connections with local political leaders, including the winning supervisorial candidate, Farrell.
In her position on the DC3, Anderson will represent Assembly District 19, which includes the Marina and stretches west to the ocean to encompass most of the southern and western portions of San Francisco.
The committee’s job is to register voters, raise funds for party candidates, endorse candidates in local and state races, and build relationships with charter Democratic clubs. “It’s the grassroots work of the Democratic Party,” said Anderson.
Anderson intends to champion a number of causes that are important to her, including women’s issues such as fair pay and equal opportunity, as well as marriage equality and labor issues. But her No. 1 priority on the committee is to “inculcate unity within the party,” and help the local Democratic Party heal the rifts between the moderate liberals and the populist Left that have made San Francisco politics so interesting – and at times volatile – in the past decade.
