“Scott Wiener has been an extremely effective legislator and visionary leader in the state Senate. His achievements include - Being the earliest and most powerful pro-housing legislator, including on a national stage. He passed SB 828 to get SF to build 80,000 new homes in 8 years, and also passed SB 35 and SB 423, which make it easier to get housing developments approved in California and have directly led to thousands of new homes. - Pro-LGBT, progressive activism, and not backing down despite receiving some horrible abuse from the right. - Pro-transit, including being a key figure in stabilizing BART and MUNI funding and keeping the systems running through and after the pandemic. - Supporting deregulating hallucinagenic drugs and letting bars and clubs continue selling alcohol until 4a, instead of the current 2a. He’s now running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress (in the House), and while the federal government is even more polarized and broken than the CA state government, I am optimistic Scott will continue to find ways to work across the aisle with Republicans and more moderate Democrats to craft effective policy. He has two credible opponents in the primary: Connie Chan and Saikat Chakrabarti. (If you want to protest vote because all three are to your left, vote Marie Hurabiell, a former Republican who recently became a Democrat and has good policies on eg small modular nuclear reactors and Prop 36). All three of Scott, Connie, and Saikat have similar headline policy positions: oppose Trump, abolish ICE, expand healthcare access, etc. [I covered a recent congressional forum here.](https://www.notion.so/Muted-Rivalry-CA11-Congressional-Candidates-Stick-to-Talking-Points-in-Forum-359e203cbcef80269937ead5bf76ef8c?pvs=21) Policy-wise, Connie and Saikat are to Scott’s left: they support the proposed 5% billionaire tax prop that has already driven Sergey Brin and other rich people out of the state and would hurt our economic climate and startup scene if passed. They also are more strident on the hot-among-the-youth issue of Israel. Along with Scott, they oppose (in their words) the genocide in Gaza and the sale of offensive weapons to Israel; but they go farther and [also oppose selling defensive weapons](https://missionlocal.org/2026/01/sf-congress-foreign-policy-wiener-chakrabarti-chan-1/) to the lone liberal democracy in the Middle East, the only Jewish state (while having no comment on arms sales to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan). Saikat Chakrabarti earned $100M+ as an early Stripe engineer and now opposes essentially all forms of campaign funding other than self-funding. He moved back to San Francisco sometime after [losing his job](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/saikat-chakrabarti-aoc-22232859.php) as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC’s) chief of staff after 7 months on the job, in 2019. He lacks support from local progressive groups (they’re supporting the ineffectual Connie Chan), so instead leans on nationally prominent leftist figures like Hasan Piker and youth energy for his platform of radically changing the Democratic Party by refusing to work within the system and instead applying outside activist pressure. His housing platform is pretty good, actually, and if he toned down the slopulism and zero-sum vibes (tax-the-rich, all corporations are bad, etc), I could imagine supporting him for a different seat. But Scott Wiener is a uniquely effective leader that has already delivered the kind of change Saikat is promising — he almost-singlehandedly made the California government support YIMBY policies rather than blocking new homes in our metro areas. On an issue like AI regulation, Saikat has murky promises to nationalize the labs and give workers the profits from AI, but Scott is the one who’s actually crafted regulations that Gavin Newsom was willing to sign into law.”

“I’ll admit it: I supported Ro Khanna when he ran for Congress; I even [interviewed him](https://www.dailycal.org/archives/congressional-candidate-ro-khanna-discusses-tech-and-education-in-berkeley-forum-event/article_7be0eb18-b286-5308-b68d-f936039faebc.html) as a Berkeley student back in 2014! He ran as a tech-aligned moderate against Mike Honda, who was the union-aligned incumbent. Soon after he won, though, he pivoted hard to the Bernie, populist left. US House District 17 is Silicon Valley; it should have a representative that understands and supports technology companies and their employees, within reason (I do support antitrust in some cases and some social-media-related regulation). Khanna is against self-driving trucks to curry favor with the Teamsters union, and unlike most elected Democrats, supports the 5% one-time billionaire wealth tax that would hurt California’s competitiveness in startups. Ethan Agarwal does not appear to be a particularly strong challenger; he has a checkered personal history and doesn’t seem to have major establishment endorsements. But he’s running as a Democrat and does have Mike Honda’s support, as well as that of Silicon Valley legend Ron Conway. Regardless, I support kicking Ro Khanna out of office, or at least showing weakness in his support to encourage other challengers in two years.”

“Rob Bonta has done a great job as Attorney General, finally going after cities, working with the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to force cities to approve plans for more homes and come into compliance with new state laws to encourage housing production authored by GOATed State Senator Scott Wiener. He will win reelection handily as the only Democrat running.”

“Malia Cohen will also win reelection as the only Democrat in the race. [GrowSF approves](https://growsf.org/voter-guide/#controller) of her job performance, too.”

“This race has been a mess. Eric Swalwell, a former front-runner, withdrew his candidacy after multiple women accused him of sexual harrassment. Incumbent Governor Gavin Newsom has not endorsed in the race, having various personal beefs and issues with the Democratic candidates. There are also exactly two prominent Republicans, and it is plausible, although no longer likely, that they would both be the top-two candidates leaving an all-GOP general election in June. Matt Mahan is the best serious candidate in the race. He has been effective as Mayor of San José, increasing trust in government and reducing unsheltered homelessness. He also has no union support, allowing him to run as a reformer and in a more moderate lane. He’ll still give the base some “gas tax holiday” slop, but he does not support the incredibly poorly-designed one-time billionaire tax which may be on the ballot in June. He also supported popular-among-voters-though-not-Dem-elite policies like Prop 36 in 2024 to increase penalties for drug crimes and thefts in CA. See [my report from last month](https://www.notion.so/Mahan-masters-policy-at-Manny-s-but-missing-mojo-350e203cbcef8058ba61d3094f905839?pvs=21) for more of his policies and persona. Unfortunately, though he’s ~doubled in the polls in the last month, that’s only to ~9%, and he only has an [8% on the Kalshi prediction market](https://kalshi.com/markets/kxgovcaprimary/ca-primary/kxgovcaprimary-26). So, in this case, I have a #2 recommendation for pragmatic voters that don’t want their vote to go to waste: Tom Steyer. Tom Steyer is a billionaire founder of a successful hedge fund, who instantiates the logical culmination of the far left’s stance that raising money from any external sources is icky: the only pure candidates they have left are, ironically, the ultra-rich. Steyer has been running on an unabashedly left-leaning platform, including [abolishing ICE](https://www.tomsteyer.com/issues/abolish-ice). He’s also the most pro-housing (he has the YIMBY Action endorsement) and by far the smartest of the two leading Democrats in the race. His opponent, currently leading in polls, is Xavier Becerra. As far as I can tell, Becerra is the most machine of machine Dems in CA right now. He’s running in a “center of the party” liberal-but-not-as-leftist lane with support from unions. His chief of staff and several other staffers were [arrested and changed with federal crimes](https://www.kcra.com/article/xavier-becerra-new-questions-after-campaign-funds-stolen/71143407) last fall; he proposes freezing state home insurance rates, which would drive more insurers out of the state. For governor, vote Matt Mahan, unless you’re either very liberal or worried about wasting your vote, in which case vote Tom Steyer.”