A new mailer hitting SF mailboxes is going hard at a familiar angle in local politics: the carpetbagger question. The target? Sanjay Chakrabarti, and the argument is straightforward — the guy simply hasn't put in the time.

The mailer, paid for by a PAC called Abundant Future (you can look them up on the FEC site if you're into that sort of thing), draws an implicit contrast that's worth spelling out. Nancy Pelosi moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s and didn't win her congressional seat until 1988 — that's roughly 13 to 18 years of grinding it out in SF politics before voters sent her to Washington. Scott Wiener moved here in 1997, worked at a law firm, then the SF City Attorney's Office, and has been embedded in the city for nearly three decades.

Chakrabarti? He has nothing comparable.

Now, look — in a free society, anyone who meets the legal qualifications has every right to run for office. We're not arguing otherwise. But voters also have every right to ask: What skin do you have in this game? When someone parachutes into one of the most expensive, complicated, and dysfunctional cities in America and immediately asks for a promotion to Congress, skepticism isn't xenophobia. It's common sense.

San Francisco has a long and inglorious history of electing people who treat the city as a stepping stone rather than a community they're accountable to. The result? Decades of bloated budgets, crumbling infrastructure, and a political class that answers to ideology and ambition rather than the people footing the bill. We don't need more of that.

The carpetbagger framing works here because it taps into something real: representation should come from people who understand the city — not from their policy papers, but from living here. From navigating Muni. From watching a favorite restaurant close because the permit process took nine months. From stepping over needles on their way to vote.

Whatever you think of Abundant Future's motives, the underlying question is fair game. If you want to represent San Francisco, maybe start by actually being from San Francisco — or at least putting in the years to earn it.