On the 32nd floor of a luxury condominium high-rise with panoramic views of San Francisco Bay, Heidi Sheek popped open a bottle of champagne, put on Beyoncé's “Freedom” and waited for her fellow “Kamala OGs” to arrive to watch the presidential debate on Tuesday night.

“It's very stressful,” said Ms. Shekh, an abortion rights activist and longtime political activist in San Francisco, who met Kamala Harris at a house party in 2003, where she stood on a milk crate in high heels and a pearl necklace and urged party-goers to vote for her for district attorney.

But by the time Tuesday's debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump turned to abortion rights, Sheik said his watch party was doubling as an abortion fundraiser. City ballot measures to strengthen access to reproductive health careI felt good.

“Kamala, fix it!” Sheikh yelled at a big-screen TV from his seat on a leather couch, sharing popcorn and chips with friends and Harris supporters. “She's doing great. Beat him! Beat him!”

For San Franciscans like Sheik, an early supporter of Harris and a longtime volunteer for her campaign, Tuesday night's debate was a victory for the local team.

This intimate party was at least Dozens of events across the Bay AreaHarris made her mark decades ago as Alameda County attorney and then San Francisco district attorney before going on to serve in state government and the White House as vice president.

In a city where political activism permeates the local culture, Ms. Harris' friends and former staffers joined other excited Democrats for a night of motivation and reminiscing, drawing hundreds of guests to the party. Political insiders watched Ms. Harris on the big screen and bragged about knowing her all their lives. They cheered when the vice president mentioned Mr. Trump's bankruptcy and laughed with her when he claimed, without evidence, that he was bankrupt. Immigrants were eating pets.

At Manny's, an events venue in the Mission District, owner Manny Yekutiel greeted guests dressed as women in pink wigs and sequined dresses.

Party-goers enjoyed ice cream from a local creamery. Created a special flavor line In a move aimed at election season highlighting local presidential candidates, the store served its beer in cups bearing Harris's photo and the name of the flavor, “MVP,” which can mean “Most Valuable Player” or “Madame Vice President.”

At the San Francisco Democratic Party's new campaign headquarters on Market Street downtown, hundreds of people were cheering on Harris, including Mayor London Breed, City Attorney David Chiu, state Sen. Scott Wiener and East Bay Congressional candidate Latifah Simon.

Breed called Harris' performance on Tuesday “candid and honest” and recalled a fellow Democrat she has known since the 1990s who first encouraged her to get involved in politics.

“I honestly never thought someone like me could exist in this world,” said Breed, San Francisco's first black woman mayor, “and she's so adamant that I should exist in this world.”

Chiu walked around in a T-shirt that read “Asians for Kamala,” a hangover from her 2003 run for San Francisco district attorney.

Pointing to the lotus flower on his red shirt, he explained that “Kamala” means “lotus” in Sanskrit.

“The lotus sits in the muddy water, unsullied and ready to bloom,” Chiu read from the T-shirt. “Twenty-one years later, this to me speaks to where America is today. We are led by joyful warriors, and we must get it done.”

Harris has a long history in the Bay Area: she was born in Oakland and spent part of her childhood in Berkeley public schools. She graduated from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Currently at the University of California, San Francisco School of Law — before he was elected San Francisco's top prosecutor.

She is from San Francisco “Tough politics” It shaped her ambitions and propelled her to the White House as vice president and now presidential candidate, where she met powerful figures like former mayor and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, with whom she dated in the 1990s, and competed for the spotlight with other rising stars, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a former mayor.

Alex Tork, a San Francisco activist for 30 years, including in both the Brown and Newsom campaigns, was rooting for Harris at Avery. He described the San Francisco political race as a “knife fight in a phone booth” but said Harris always had what it took.

He met her in 2000, when Brown was struggling. Ranking selection voting He then tasked him and Harris, “two of the toughest political operatives,” according to Tooke, with helping to get his preferred candidates onto the Oversight Committee. They failed, but Tooke looks back on his five weeks with Harris as a real victory.

“At the time, of course, we didn't think she'd become president of the United States, but we all knew she was someone special,” Tooke said. “Tonight, she's one of our own.”

But not everyone in the city was rooting for Harris. Nearly 100 Republicans, including Jacob Spangler, president of the San Francisco State University Republicans, gathered at a bar in the Haight-Ashbury district, known as the epicenter of hippie counterculture, to sip beer and support Trump.

He said it's hard to be a conservative in such a liberal city.

“It's hard for young people to survive socially here in San Francisco,” he said. “When you meet a new friend, you have to wait a few months to sit down and tell them you're a Republican.”

Within this group, Harris seemed more like a distant politician than a local comrade.

Kathleen McCrea, 69, a registered independent who voted for Trump in the past two elections, said she plans to vote again this time because of Trump's stance on immigration and the economy.

McCrea called Harris a “quintessential San Francisco Democrat” who “knows how to win the hearts and minds of wealthy people,” and said the former president was “very well prepared” compared to Harris.

Back at Sheikh's condo, which offers breathtaking views of the bay and the city skyline, his hostess was moved to tears as she recalled her experience at last month's Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

She volunteered at the Democratic National Convention when President Biden was still a candidate, and now it's Harris, the longtime ally who sat at the table with her years ago, plotting how to make her city better, how to get more women elected, and who was always happy to write her a letter of recommendation, no matter how busy she was.

“I was looking at that podium,” Sheik said, recalling waiting for Harris to take the stage at the Democratic National Convention, “and all I could think about was those milk crates.”