The race to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress is a rare, and critical, political event in San Francisco. The next member of Congress will likely be there for decades and have a huge influence not just on national policy but on local politics.

Pelosi decided early in her career that she wanted to move into leadership, and her constituency quickly became the national Democratic Party, not the voters of San Francisco. She became the first woman speaker, helped build Democratic majorities, and largely stayed out of San Francisco issues.

She also privatized the Presidio, leaving what should have been part of the National Park Service vulnerable to Trump’s attack.

We are looking for a representative who will take progressive stands in Congress, who will work for taxes on the rich, reductions in military spending, money for social housing, basic civil rights for all, including immigrants and trans people, and so much more. The Democrats may win a majority this fall, and Trump will be gone two years later; there’s a huge agenda to repair the damage he has done and rebuild a country nearly destroyed by economic inequality.

We also want a member of Congress who will help build, expand, and promote progressive politics back here at home, someone who will endorse, support, and raise money for candidates and ballot measures that advance the progressive agenda.

Three serious candidates are in the race. Our clear choice is Connie Chan.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, who has the citywide name recognition and huge amounts of money from Big Tech and Real Estate, likes to talk about how he would be a San Francisco liberal in Congress, and on a lot of social issues, he would be fine. But on economic issues, he represents the dangerous, losing, and ineffective side of the Democratic Party, the neoliberals who argue that free market solutions can address things like housing affordability and that taxing the rich is too hard and too divisive.

As a supervisor, he sided with landlords over tenants. As a state legislator, he has been the champion and darling of the YIMBYs, pushing legislation that deregulates housing and gives private for-profit developers huge breaks. He has ignored all the evidence that the free market won’t solve this problem, and has given big breaks to developers by eliminating affordable housing requirements for luxury projects. He’s also freely and actively used his influence to elect corporate Democrats to local office.

That’s not a good sign for our next member of Congress.

Saikat Chakrabarti talks about all the right things. He made millions in tech, as did plenty of others, but now argues that rich people like him should pay more taxes. He was an early supporter of AOC and her first chief of staff. He also worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders. All good reasons to support him.

But he also spent thousands of dollars helping the corporate Democrats take over the local party, and his money helped neoliberal Bilal Mahmood defeat the city’s only democratic socialist supervisor, Dean Preston. When we and others have asked about that, he talks about his friendship with Mahmood, and at points called him a “progressive.” That demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how local politics works in San Francisco.

In every ad and every statement, he makes, he hypes his connections to AOC and Sanders. Neither of them has endorsed him. That says something. So does the fact that not one legitimate local progressive organization has endorsed him.

We appreciate Chakrabarti’s national agenda, but we want a member of Congress who will work to build the progressive movement in San Francisco, and his record suggests he’s not that person. In fact, he has supported candidates who have sought to undermine the progressive movement.

Sup. Connie Chan has a long record in San Francisco. In the past few years, as the chair of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, Chan has almost single handedly protected services for tens of thousands of people. She is by far the most pro-labor member of the board, and one of the most pro-labor politicians in San Francisco.

She’s also a Chinese immigrant—and electing her in the Trump Era would send a strong message that San Francisco will not support attacks on the immigrant community.

Chan has a strong progressive track record in public office. Wiener has a record of favoring landlords and Big Tech. Chakrabarti has no record in office.

We are happy to endorse Connie Chan for Congress.

Source (https://www.sfbg.com/2026/05/06/endorsements-for-the-june-2-election/)

What a godawful mess.

The race to replace termed out Gov. Gavin Newsom has become a prime example of everything wrong with the Democratic Party in California. The former front-runner is a serial sexual harasser and possibly rapist who kept getting elected to Congress because nobody in his own party called him out. Every single candidate still in the race is a YIMBY; every one of them argues that the private market, if deregulated, will produce more affordable housing. There is no Zohran Mamdani in California politics, no Bernie Sanders, no AOC. The two leading progressives, Betty Yee and Tony Thurmond, were able to raise little money and get little traction. Newsom, who cares about nothing except his presidential ambitions, has shown no leadership at all, creating a situation where it’s possible that two Republicans will emerge on top of the primary, leaving no Democrat in the November race.

So now we are faced with supporting the best candidate in the race, a billionaire who made a fortune investing in, among other things, fossil fuels and private prisons.

Electing a billionaire who has no experience running anything remotely the size and complexity of a big city or state has not worked out well in San Francisco.

But Steyer has a lot going for him, including the support of many labor unions and Sanders’ national group, Our Revolution. He has no record in office, but a long record (once he got out of the hedge fund business) of putting money and effort into serious efforts to take on climate change. He is the only major candidate talking seriously about economic inequality and taxing the rich. Those two issues form the basis of the existential threats facing humanity, and it’s encouraging to see a candidate for governor who recognizes that.

He says he wants to reform Prop. 13 by eliminating the loophole that lets big investors like Donald Trump cheat local governments out of critical revenue (https://48hills.org/2020/09/big-real-estate-escapes-360-million-in-annual-sf-taxes/). He also says he supports single-payer health care in California (although Newsom said the same thing when he was running and abandoned that promise the day he took office).

None of the other major candidates are even talking about these issues.

Besides, PG&E is spending $10 million to defeat him. We can’t think of a better reason to support a candidate.

So, with all of our usual caveats (rich people can promise whatever they want, and Newsom’s betrayal on health care is a case in point), the best of the candidates is Steyer, and he has our support.

Source (https://www.sfbg.com/2026/05/06/endorsements-for-the-june-2-election/)

Shirley Weber

At a time when Donald Trump and his allies want to destroy democracy by making it difficult or impossible for millions of Americans to vote, it’s critical to have a state elections officer willing to fight back. Weber, appointed to the post by Gov. Gavin Newsom, has been a strong advocate for voting rights, and we are happy to endorse her for a full term.

Source (https://www.sfbg.com/2026/05/06/endorsements-for-the-june-2-election/)