Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Oh, San Francisco…what has happened to you?

Fuck Pelosi and Sheehan.

Sheehan was at San Francisco City Hall on Friday to take out papers for her independent run for Congress, but without those signatures from voters in the district, her name won’t show up on the ballot.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Sheehan, who vowed to run against Pelosi in July after the speaker refused to start impeachment proceedings against President George Bush. “But I’m excited about the signature-gathering process. It’s going to be an opportunity to talk to people about our campaign.”

Election challenges are nothing new to Pelosi, who has faced token Republican opposition in most of her November races, along with occasional primary challenges. But since she beat former San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt in the 1987 special election to replace the late Rep. Sala Burton, Pelosi’s political resume has been short of opponents anyone other than local political junkies has ever heard of.

Sheehan has name recognition, particularly for her Camp Casey crusade.

“I said last year that I was going to take a break (from the anti-war movement) and then come back,” Sheehan said in an interview at her Mission Street campaign headquarters.

But when the president commuted White House aide Scooter Libby’s prison sentence last summer, she said, she decided “that seeing George Bush impeached would be a victory for humanity.”

Calls for impeachment from Sheehan and other progressives didn’t move Pelosi, who already had declared that impeachment was “off the table” when it came to the Democratic congressional agenda.

“In this political environment, the speaker has to work for those things that are possible,” said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi.

An impeachment effort, he said, “would be divisive, we couldn’t get the votes, and we would have to spend all our time on it.”

(SFGate)