just following up on this, I was new to etcd and installed v3.5.x and was not sure how to list all keys etc,
turns out, I had to set ETCDCTL_API=2, and use the old version commands to list and del key.
export ETCDCTL_API=2 # ls does not work on v3
# i used default namespace and cluster name, so
postgres@db:~/patroni_demo$ ee ls --recursive /
/service
/service/batman
/service/batman/members
/service/batman/members/postgresql0
/service/batman/members/postgresql1
/service/batman/initialize --- this is the key we need to delete to reinit the db
/service/batman/config
/service/batman/leader
/service/batman/optime
/service/batman/optime/leader
postgres@db:~/patroni_demo$ ee get /service/batman/initialize
6981912157875070537
# solve i am not leader, server not starting up
ee rm /service/batman/initialize
PrevNode.Value: 6981912157875070537
and then run patroni <config> again as a fresh setup, and you get your leaders and replica just fine.