Step Back Shahid Buttar: The Left Needs Feminist Leadership

I was Shahid Buttar’s former campaign manager. Shahid has made public statements that we had significant differences in strategy and vision that resulted in many staffers leaving the campaign. This is a distraction designed to discredit and detract from the real story.

Truly, I left the Shahid Buttar campaign because it was a toxic workplace environment in which personal and professional boundaries were repeatedly violated. Personally, I was driven by a moral imperative to remove myself from a campaign, due to a candidate who was purposely misleading his staff, volunteers, donors and voters.

Working on this campaign deepened my sense of moral clarity, and since leaving I’ve devoted myself to centering an ethical responsibility to the left by pushing more folks in our communities to come forward and deal with the truths about how toxic work environments can exist in even the leftest circles. I’ve chosen to do so despite the fact that I will likely face political consequences.

Prior to my involvement in politics, I found my passion in advocating for workers rights in the specialty coffee industry that I had worked in for 13 years. I became more involved in political activism and began to work on campaigns after being inspired by Bernie and outraged by Trump. Shahid sought me out to manage his congressional campaign, having worked on upwards of 5 campaigns by May of 2019. After two months of significant thought and consultation with others, I accepted and was excited at the prospect of shaping an emerging left candidate who I felt might have the potential to join the ranks of AOC and other progressive champions.

The experience of managing his campaign provided the joy and responsibility of shaping the campaign message, managing the candidate, setting the stage for endorsements, communications, and fieldwork, as well as collaborating with amazing young socialists who were passionate about electoralism. It was a genuine privilege to be surrounded by so many talented folks. There was a real sense of excitement and possibility in the beginning of the campaign.

That excitement quickly turned to anguish. I found myself in a one-sided intimate relationship with a candidate who defined himself as vehemently against incumbent Nancy Pelosi, but who struggled to articulate a platform for himself. Behind closed campaign doors, he didn’t seem to be against the Democratic establishment any more so than he was against any other entity that he felt intimidated by. He seemed to be threatened by anything or anyone who challenged him or understood the world differently than he did. It became increasingly clear to me that Shahid easily identified issues, challenges, and sources of his anger, but struggled immensely with articulating a vision of what he was “for”.

Leveraging my Credibility

Despite the uphill battle of taking on the Speaker of the House and Shahid’s lack of direction, the potential for building the case for socialism in SF brought me much joy and purpose.

Unfortunately, even before I joined the campaign, Shahid had offended various respected progressive groups and people in the city. Once I started, I followed up after each mishap with the offended parties, to repair the relationships and leveraged my own friendships to attempt to keep his reputation clean. I convinced folks that this was a campaign to believe in, and that sticking with us was important for building progressive momentum in the city. Because I built a team with several widely respected individuals who’d worked on a variety of winning campaigns, we secured several campaign endorsements because of our own reputations.

I never expected the campaign I poured my hopes and energy into would end due to allegations of sexual harassment and media ploys intended to discredit me and others in order to try to save his campaign. Instead of owning up to and addressing allegations head-on, Shahid has tried to escape responsibility for his actions by discrediting me, sexual harassment survivor Elizabeth Croydon, and anyone else who came forward with allegations or characterizations that don’t fall in line with the image he projected.

But his reputation on a local level speaks for itself. I’m not alone in believing these allegations because concerns about his treatment of others, especially women, have been echoed throughout the progressive community in San Francisco for years now.

I will no longer let myself be scapegoated to give credibility to a congressional candidate who will not win. I never wanted to come forward about my experience, nor was I allowed to because of my non-disparagement clause, but now I feel a moral imperative to do so. The left must learn from this and move forward with new dedication to uplift, vet, and amplify only feminist voices.

“Strategic” Differences

My campaign team and I based our campaign strategy on the winning progressive San Francisco campaigns that won the November 2019 elections. This required an aggressive fundraising campaign to fund a substantial field program in order to get the votes necessary to win, using social media for the purpose of grassroots fundraising, getting the candidate and volunteers disciplined in rhetoric, and hyper-attentiveness to our finances.When discussing them, Shahid agreed with all of these strategies but struggled to follow through when he became overwhelmed.

Shahid would demand explanations for certain electoral tactics he was unfamiliar with, derail planning conversations with his seemingly unrelated aggressive responses. He would change already scheduled events in favor of spur of the moment events and generally had a lack of understanding of how a winning campaign is run. He resisted putting in the hard work necessary to run a successful campaign like making structured donor calls, participating in morning visibility and knocking on doors.. When he struggled to see how these tedious tasks were essential in building a winning campaign, I would remind him of AOC’s worn-out shoes from months of canvassing and that running to win entails having the discipline to persevere through the repetitive and tedious tasks. It was confusing and demoralizing for the campaign team to see him avoid the hard work when we were working over 60 hours a week to make his campaign a success.

I and the rest of the team were patient with him and were willing to use other tactics he thought were more useful if they helped us win the election. Ultimately, he provided different tactics like holding banners with his name at BART stations in the evening, bringing dozens of volunteers to various electorally irrelevant protests in and out of San Francisco, and organizing his social media to gain more followers but could not articulate how these tactics connected to our strategic vision. His lack of direction translated to chaos on the campaign. The one theme that these tactics did have in common was raising his national profile / name recognition by grandstanding around the hatred of Pelosi which me uncomfortable because they didn’t help the movement or our constituents. Because he was a first time candidate with no experience in electoralism other than in his own campaign, I did the best job I could to manage him but unfortunately, Shahid was very resistant to listening to me.

Why I Quit

Ultimately, the reason that I and 12 other staffers and contractors left the campaign after winning the primary was because we had dealt with and tolerated violations of professional and personal boundaries. It was not because Shahid wouldn’t support our campaign strategy or wanted to use tactics that did not get us votes. We left because of Shahid’s disrespect, gaslighting, public humiliation, blaming, and dismissal of us, women and men alike, but especially the women on his team. The content of the conversations might have seemed to be about tactics at face value, but our failure to ever find tactics that we could agree were helpful without going through a cycle of being demeaned, discredited, and publicly embarrassed was nearly impossible.

Shahid’s Behavioral Pattern

Shahid’s moods and reactions fell into a predictive pattern. Shahid would grow defensive and agitated while his staff would try to pacify him. He would then misunderstand a situation or challenge my decision about something. This required me to literally schedule and devote substantial time and resources to manage his emotions in order to keep the campaign running. It required organizing back-up in order to de-escalate and redirect Shahid. Finally, Shahid would feel shame around creating a conflict and would require me to pacify his guilt before he was able to refocus back on the campaign. When I first started this cycle looped 3–4 times a month but by the end, it was a near daily occurrence.

The Buildup

When normal (albeit difficult) situations would arise on the campaign, Shahid’s defensiveness and reactionary style derailed the campaign from concentrating on its long term goal of winning the election. My approach (and, later, our team’s approach) was to recenter our goals and keep our conversations as solutions-focused as possible when Shahid became defensive. I went to great lengths to help my campaign staff manage the complex and stressful emotions of working in an environment that had the constant threat of verbal harassment. I’m proud of our team’s ability to manage this strain for months especially given the standard pressure they were under when running a campaign. The power dynamic that naturally centered Shahid was, at times, nearly unbearable for many of us, but our shared vision of replacing Nancy Pelosi kept us going.

I took the responsibility of tempering his behavior seriously, however difficult it was for me to manage. I’d regulate his anger by getting him food, or letting him vent to me about his stress even if I was not responsible for it. I became responsible for addressing his self-care because he demanded it of me both explicitly and implicitly, which made me uncomfortable. I kept track of the number of hours he slept and if he had gone on a run to anticipate his moods for the day. I knew more details about his sex life than ever should have been appropriate. I worked with his girlfriends (two at the time) to schedule time with them because without a regular sex life his outbursts were unmanageable and too frequent. Further, his girlfriends became so enmeshed in my life that they were pulled into mediating conflict to reign in his anger outbursts as well. Whether I wanted to or not, when it came to Shahid, I knew it all.

But his demeaning behavior didn’t just happen toward me and others behind closed campaign doors. It happened in staff meetings, endorsement meetings, field events, rallies, and, on some occasions, with donors. Wherever Shahid went, the risk of him lashing out followed.

The Blow Up

The peak of the conflict usually went one of two ways. One way was belittling. Shahid would respond to a source of embarrassment or insecurity by minimizing a concern that I or someone else had brought up. Shahid, who felt he was an authority on everything, was threatened by my work and would use my age to claim I had no knowledge of running a campaign. He tried to make me feel stupid for doing the job he hired me to do. The other way was humiliation. Shahid would become aggressive by publicly scolding me and barking orders at his team and even bringing up that he “paid my salary” in a threatening way. He trivialized my concerns and views, describing them categorically as invalid, even if those same ideas were presented and responded with praise when male colleagues brought them forward to him.

On the most difficult days, he wouldn’t allow me to speak and would cut me off when I spoke up. We would agree on certain commitments or tactics, then he would immediately do the opposite and then would gleefully tell me how it was the wrong decision. When his undoing of my work didn’t achieve the desired goals, he would blame me. This was not uncommon: when he made mistakes, he did not take any accountability for them. He would categorically deny his own culpability, while making a point to readily cast responsibility and blame on our team. Other times, when his actions resulted in negative consequences like losing a competitive endorsement or getting bad press, Shahid’s insecurity would block him from acknowledging that the end result was not positive and he would try to gaslight those around him into believing that what was happening was actually good. I have no doubt that even now he is trying to spin the demise of his campaign as a win because he is too afraid to acknowledge that he is the only one to blame.

There were times when I spoke to him that he would smile patronizingly, look away or visually communicate that he wasn’t listening to what I was saying. Not always, but in many instances, it seemed as if he enjoyed his attempts to make me feel inferior to him as if he felt elevated. I was denigrated so frequently that I became numb to feelings that once led me to feel humiliated. To survive, I habituated to the disrespect and just kept my focus on doing my work. I just got used to it.

The “Apology”

Shahid rarely “apologized”, but when he did, he wouldn’t acknowledge that he did anything wrong. He would simply justify the anger, providing a rationale of why he was right to express it and he would seek to control my negative reaction to it. He would, however, feel guilt and looked to me to pacify that guilt in order for him to feel forgiven to maintain dominance. He needed me to comfort him, seemingly because he didn’t have the coping skills necessary to comfort himself. It proved difficult for him to empathize or understand the concerns of others that did not center him, and this was a pattern that presented itself not only to me, but to the various women inside and outside of his polyamorous relationships, the campaign, and the various political organizations we interfaced with.

The absolving Shahid of his “guilt” was the part of the cycle that made me feel the dirtiest. I was repeatedly hurt by him but was made to clean up his emotional mess even within himself. Instead of taking accountability for the harm he caused, he showered me or others with praise about how I was “incredibly skilled and competent” to cover up his insults on my youth or experience level. We can see Shahid doing this now in public on Twitter when he writes “I respect my former staff, their contributions to the community, and wish them all the best in the future” days after he told the press that he cut ties with his former staff because of “performance issues”.

I did everything I could to make a bad situation work, but the fact that he’d never respected my boundaries publicly or privately. I’ve spent a lot of time writing out this behavioral pattern of Shahid’s but there’s a much simpler phrase to sum up what I, my campaign team and likely the current campaign team are going through: emotional abuse.

Shahid Doesn’t Want to Win

Shahid’s words don’t often line up with his action but on one specific occasion Shahid was truthful to me about his actual priorities for the campaign.

In a meeting soon after the primary, Shahid and I attempted to find common ground through mediation with one of his girlfriends and a leader from a respected political club. We used a restorative justice framework to give Shahid the opportunity to learn from his mistakes. Shahid seemed genuinely sorry for the way he had treated me and promised to do better. With his guard down and insecurities laid bare, he finally told the truth about what he wanted.

Shahid’s girlfriend encouraged us to write out our priorities for the campaign on post it notes and lay them out from highest priority to lowest. My number 1 priority was, unsurprisingly, to win the seat with priorities of building socialism electorally and take over the Democratic Party as less important but still goals. Shahid wrote 12 different priorities and had difficulty organizing them. Ultimately, to my surprise, he declared that winning the seat was not near the top of the list. Further, he expressed that so long as he was able to accomplish his primary goals, including expanding his social media influence by spreading “Bernie Dharma” and “Supporting the Movement,” he would be okay with running a campaign not focused on winning. It became clear to me that this had always been his primary goal, even though he would obviously never admit that to his donors or supporters.

I had a sudden clarity about his behavior that had previously caused me confusion. His laser focus on pursuing niche endorsements that stoked his ego, growing a large Twitter following and appearing on random podcasts were tactics that connected to a bigger strategy — a strategy to boost his own brand and name recognition to leverage as a social media influencer. As a candidate, Shahid is able to control people around him and center his own personal ambitions while paying himself $100,000 a year from the pockets of working class progressive Americans who donate to him $4.20 at a time.

In this moment of realization on the floor of our campaign office, I broke down in tears. I felt like I had been lied to this whole time. I was heartbroken for every volunteer that gave us their time and energy and felt ethically responsible for managing an operation that had no intention of delivering on its promises. Certainly, I knew that defeating Pelosi would be unlikely, but that didn’t affect my drive to completely dedicating myself to trying to do the nearly impossible.

Looking back, I now see some of Shahid’s most destructive behavior as the moments when he was most transparent. He reacted with glee to the news that Bernie had suspended his campaign because of the fundraising boost it would give the campaign when his team reacted with devastation. He would hopefully speculate with donors that Nancy Pelosi would get COVID-19 and die because he thought that it would give him an easy win when COVID-19 cases were rising dramatically in the city. I lost all respect for the candidate that I’d worked so hard to get through the primary only to see him use his platform to enrich himself just as he called out Pelosi for doing the same.

I left the campaign because I felt it was morally unethical to work for a man who financially exploited the real pain of working class Americans, emotionally and mentally abused the women around him, and created conflict within the progressive factions of San Francisco.

Elizabeth Croydon

Although I didn’t know about Shahid’s sexual harassment of Elizabeth Croydon while I was on the campaign, I was not surprised when she shared her detailed description of his behaviors and harassment. Much to my dismay, I had heard stories about Shahid’s blurred boundaries with women that seemed consistent with Elizabeth’s account. Afraid of retribution, these women did not want me to bring it up with Shahid because they did not want to give him the satisfaction of him knowing that he made them feel dirty.

What convinced me that Elizabeth is telling the truth is the eerily similarities of Shahid’s behavior pattern in 2003–2013 and the behavior pattern I engaged with everyday. When reading her statement, I resonated immediately to the feeling of being taunted, pressured and degraded. Although none of my experiences with Shahid were sexual in nature, I realize that a man doesn’t have to sexually harass every woman he’s met to be a sexual harasser. This political moment has made it extremely clear just how common sexual harassment and workplace discrimination actually is. Sadly, what’s also common is the eagerness to discredit survivors when they come forward.

Shahid’s response to the many women telling the truth is typical of the behavior he exhibits when he’s insecure: deny, minimize, sabotage and then ignore. It’s been incredibly difficult to watch Shahid actively organize other people to carry out a smear attack to discredit Elizabeth Croydon. Shahid has connected old friends to write an open letter exonerating him, given the names and numbers of people ready to call Elizabeth a liar to reporters and worked behind the scenes to pressure notable progressive personalities to come out with renewed support for him. It’s not shocking that a campaign would seek to discredit a survivor, but Shahid is trying to paint himself as above that while behind the scenes doing the same predictable playbook.

I am concerned about what Shahid will say about me publicly now that I have shared my story about him. Personally, I have a lot to lose in coming forward and very little to gain. Future employers might shy away from me because they may believe that I’m wrong for sharing about the dysfunction in a campaign I managed. I may be harassed by Shahid supporters and called a Pelosi plant like Elizabeth is dealing with right now. But I don’t believe that dirty laundry should always stay hidden. If we as a left movement wish to be feminist in our policies and actions, we need to get comfortable talking about the sexism that is pervasive in our community.

Accountability

Moments like these are challenging to deal with and it’s tempting to replicate patterns of shame and banishment when someone does something bad. But none of us are perfect and this situation calls for empathy, nuance and justice. Shahid should be held accountable for his actions. I’d like to see Shahid take responsibility for the harm he’s caused by taking a step back to fully comprehend the damage that’s been done to the left. I hope that he recommits himself to the progressive movement after he’s taken time to honestly reflect on the issues he’s had, not just with the women who’ve come forward, but with all of the folks in progressive circles who Shahid has offended. Clubs that have endorsed him like the SF Berniecrats, Democratic Socialist of America SF, Tenants Union and Progressive Democrats of America (SF chapter) to the clubs that have come close but have decided not to endorse him like the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, Latino Democratic Club, San Francisco Young Democrats, Our Revolution, Brand New Congress, and Sunrise Movement deserve an apology.

Even though Shahid has caused me enormous amounts of emotional pain, Shahid is still a comrade, and I do not want to see him “canceled”. I believe that he will only change if he honestly dedicates himself to transforming his insecurities and wounds. He is lucky to have so many people who support him and will hold him through this process.

Shahid should apologize for his harmful behavior, suspend his campaign and spend some time looking inwards.We as a movement can hold both truths that Shahid should not represent us and that he should not be thrown away entirely. The speed at which Shahid will be absolved of his misconduct will be entirely dependent on his willingness to work on his insecurities, narcissism and misogyny.

Politically Inconvenient

The statement’s of Elizabeth Croydon, Shahid’s former staff, and this statement of mine call into question how we as a movement are willing to respond when we are presented with information that is politically inconvenient.

We’ve seen a number of examples of women who have come forward to discuss the behavior of abusive and powerful men, and many of their stories fall into a predictive pattern. Take Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations toward Brett Kavanaugh. Democrats found them politically convenient while Republicans found them inconvenient. Regarding Tara Reade, progressives against Biden quickly rallied around her, while centrists discredited her. Elizabeth Croydon and I are unique because our stories are not seen as beneficial to the left even though we would not have spoken up if we did not fully dedicate ourselves to justice. We are calling attention to the substantial misogyny in left circles that we must deal with if we are to create a future that is equitable for all. Hopefully Shahid can provide some leadership and be an example for others by dropping out and learning from his mistakes.

I’m saddened by some progressive’s unwillingness to hold other progressive men accountable. It’s especially hard to examine a person that aligns with one’s own political beliefs. I stayed in an emotionally abusive relationship because my own feelings were politically inconvenient to me. For a long time, I wanted to stay on the campaign to change Shahid and because I wanted to defeat Pelosi more than I wanted to take care of myself. Ultimately, I made the decision to stand up for myself and walk away from an abusive situation. I left knowing that I deserved a better work environment and candidate and that I won’t martyr myself for the sake of the movement especially when I know that the candidate doesn’t live up to his own stated values.

This moment is a gift for the left. We get to choose where our values are at this very moment. We can reaffirm our support of non men. We can look around at our comrades and see feminist leaders who are already in the trenches with us. Let’s focus on democratically picking our candidates by selecting women who are already doing the work in our chapters, streets, friend groups and workplaces.

The left is ready for new feminist leadership.