{"id":841214,"date":"2026-06-03T10:01:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T10:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/841214\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T10:01:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T10:01:16","slug":"wiener-and-chan-will-face-off-in-house-race-to-succeed-nancy-pelosi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/841214\/","title":{"rendered":"Wiener and Chan Will Face Off in House Race to Succeed Nancy Pelosi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">It is hard to imagine <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/11\/06\/us\/politics\/nancy-pelosi-house-retire.html?searchResultPosition=16\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">San Francisco without Nancy Pelosi<\/a> as its representative on Capitol Hill, but the city\u2019s voters for the first time since 1987 had <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/15\/us\/house-candidates-democrats-pelosi-nadler.html?searchResultPosition=2\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a wide-open congressional race<\/a> and could debate who should succeed her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">And debate it, they did. The campaign was marked by contentious candidate forums, nasty attack ads and big spending by tech titans. On Tuesday, the top two candidates in California\u2019s open primary system, both Democrats, moved forward to the November election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">The first-place finisher was <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/10\/22\/us\/pelosi-congress-scott-wiener.html?searchResultPosition=6\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">State Sen. Scott Wiener<\/a>, a prolific legislator in Sacramento and, before that, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which is akin to a city council. He is known for pushing legislation to allow for the development of more housing and to protect gay and transgender rights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">He is considered a moderate Democrat in liberal San Francisco, but is regularly blasted as a member of the \u201cradical left\u201d by Fox News and other conservative outlets, particularly for his work on transgender issues and his legislation to ban ICE agents from wearing face masks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Also on the ballot in the general election will be Tuesday\u2019s second-place finisher, Connie Chan, a member of the Board of Supervisors who represents the Richmond district, a residential swath north of Golden Gate Park. She received a boost late in the primary race when <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/18\/us\/nancy-pelosi-endorses-connie-chan.html?searchResultPosition=7\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ms. Pelosi endorsed her<\/a>. Both women have close ties to the city\u2019s powerful labor unions and have stressed the importance of improving affordability for working families.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Wiener and Ms. Chan edged out another contender: Saikat Chakrabarti, who briefly worked as the chief of staff for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/25\/us\/politics\/saikat-chakrabarti-aoc-sf-pelosi-seat.html?searchResultPosition=1\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">did not receive her endorsement<\/a> in the race. He did win the endorsements of two other members of the so-called Squad, Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. He said that mainstream Democrats were proving a poor match for the Trump administration, and revolutionary leaders with fresh ideas were needed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Mr. Chakrabarti is worth hundreds of millions of dollars from his early employment at Stripe, a payments processing platform, and spent more than $8.8 million of his own money on his race. He and Ms. Chan split the progressive vote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">The campaign drew big outside spending. Mr. Wiener received the most from individual donors, $4 million, many of whom gave the maximum of $7,000 apiece. Mr. Chakrabarti had more donors, but they gave smaller amounts. Ms. Chan struggled to keep pace with both of them in terms of donations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Tech titans also spent big on the race, largely supporting Mr. Wiener. He received donations from the cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen and from Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI. A political action committee backing Mr. Wiener was funded by Mr. Larsen and Garry Tan, a wealthy tech investor. In mailers, they painted Mr. Chakrabarti as a carpetbagger with few real ties to San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Ms. Pelosi, who served for 39 years and became one of the most powerful women in American political history, campaigned hard for Ms. Chan in the final days of the primary campaign. She attended a rally at Joe DiMaggio Playground on Friday in support of Ms. Chan, and the two women were joined by former Mayor Willie Brown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">On Saturday, the women were at a union hall heaping praise on one another.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">\u201cFor the last four decades, together, we elected Speaker Madam Nancy Pelosi,\u201d Ms. Chan told the crowd. \u201cShe is our accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is hard to imagine San Francisco without Nancy Pelosi as its representative on Capitol Hill, but the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":841215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[344468,77300,344470,9124,90,51,4351,239993,51826,50,49746,344469,344471,52,16852,93380],"class_list":["post-841214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-chakrabarti","tag-chan","tag-connie-1978","tag-democratic-party","tag-elections","tag-headlines","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-nancy","tag-news","tag-pelosi","tag-saikat","tag-scott-1970","tag-top-stories","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-wiener"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116685602017532326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}