At 9:30 this morning, the Golden State Valkyries play Game 6 of the WNBA Finals in Atlanta, up three games to two. One more win, and a team that played its first game seventeen months ago becomes the league champion. Five days later, District 8 elects its next supervisor, and my name is on the ballot. Neither is settled, though I have my hopes.
Institutions decide who gets the chance to show up, then read their own decision back as a forecast. I learned that from this basketball team before I learned it from my own campaign.
Like more than 15,000 others, I put down a deposit on Valkyries season tickets when the team had no roster and no record. We just wanted the team to be here. A sportsbook set the over-under on their wins at 8.5, the lowest in the league. They won 23 and became the first expansion team in league history to make the playoffs in year one. I was proudly in Ballhalla for most of it.
Then there was Veronica Burton. The season before, in Connecticut, she averaged 3.1 points a game. In Golden State, she averaged almost 12, led the team in points, rebounds and assists, and won Most Improved Player. What changed over one winter was her role. Her coach, Natalie Nakase, handed her the ball, and when Burton declined to copy Nakase’s harder style, Nakase let her lead as herself. What a gift, to be trusted to lead in your own way.
When I told people in San Francisco politics I was running in District 8, I heard more than once that a woman can’t win this seat. I was advised to move districts, start a neighborhood association, or run for a more appropriate seat. Those people were describing who gets introduced to whom, whose calls get returned, and who is allowed to be imperfect while they learn. Most voters are shocked to hear it. Since 2000, District 8 has never elected a woman. Every supervisor has been a gay man, a history I am proud of and should not be pitted against. In the first of those races, Eileen Hansen lost a runoff by 712 votes. That record reflects outcomes, and outcomes follow opportunity.
By September, neighbors were canvassing their own stretches of the district. At the door, we hear one of two sentences: I’m with you, or I’ve never heard of you. I hear the second as the shape of the problem. Awareness was always the constraint, and a community can build it when institutions will not: coffees with constituents become house parties, which grow into volunteers who show up daily.
Valkyries fans did the same. A group of LGBTQ supporters called the ValQueeries started organizing before the team had won anything. One organizer, Megan Doherty-Baker, wore a rainbow bandana to an early meetup so strangers could find her. Rikki’s, the women’s sports bar in the Castro, exists because women crowdfunded a place to watch women’s sports. In April, it hosted a packed forum for all four D8 candidates. Nobody in that room was endorsing anybody.
The stories differ. The Valkyries belong to the Warriors’ owners and are reportedly worth more than $800 million. A title is settled by a score; a supervisor’s seat is a mandate to serve even the people who ranked you last. And the players and fans are not endorsing me by appearing here. What they share: who gets a real chance to compete is decided before the competition starts, and a community can widen that decision if it shows up early and keeps showing up.
I want them to win this morning. I want to win on Tuesday. Neither is inevitable. After the Valkyries’ comeback win in September, Kaitlyn Chen said they did it the hard way: they got stops, they got the ball back, and they gave opportunities to the players they believed in. This morning I find out whether that was enough for them. Tuesday night I find out whether it was enough for us.