Let's be clear about what happened here. Airport service workers have legitimate wage concerns. Paying people $30 an hour in a city where a one-bedroom apartment averages north of $3,000 a month is, as one local put it, basically "the new $20." Nobody serious disputes that SFO workers deserve a living wage.

But let's also be clear about what else happened here: elected officials turned a labor dispute into a photo op. And San Franciscans see right through it.

One SF resident summed up the mood perfectly: "What's up with Connie Chan and the single zip tie cuff? Did she ask to be cuffed then change her mind? Neither cop holding Mandelman is even paying attention to him." The whole thing had the choreographed energy of a campaign shoot — which, for Chan, who's actively running for Congress, it essentially was.

Here's the thing that drives people crazy about San Francisco politics: these are the same supervisors who have the actual power to make workers' lives materially better. They sit on the board that governs this city. They write policy. They approve budgets. They could be fast-tracking housing so that $30 an hour actually stretches somewhere. As another local noted, Chan will do "anything but building new housing and allowing people to move to her neighborhood."

Instead, they block a road at the airport and get a glamor arrest that'll look great on a mailer.

The workers walking the picket line at SFO deserve better advocates — ones who spend as much energy governing as they do getting photographed in handcuffs. If you're an elected official and your most visible act of the year is getting performatively detained, maybe the question isn't whether you're fighting hard enough. Maybe it's whether you're fighting smart enough.

San Francisco doesn't need more theater. It needs supervisors who do their actual jobs.