Voters seem to want something new. Does that look like Scott Wiener?

On Sept. 8, 2023, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, then 83, kinda-sorta surprised a gathering of San Francisco politicos at a labor hall by announcing she would run for a 20th congressional term.

An observer recalls the crowd standing and cheering in unison — with the near-solitary exception of a disgruntled hyper-partisan backer of congressional aspirant Scott Wiener. That guy, instead, remained seated while pounding out a furious series of texts. 

This year, others would be left to send out messages with a surfeit of exclamation marks. State Senator Wiener jolted the political firmament last month by opting to jump into the race for Pelosi’s seat, whether or not Pelosi cares to keep occupying it. 

Pelosi has had this job since 1987, when Wiener was 17. It is unlikely that a high school senior in quasi-rural Turnersville, N.J. dreamed of one day representing California’s 11th congressional district, but he clearly has pined for this post for quite some time. 

The man who methodically knocked on 15,000 doors between 2008 and 2010 before blowing the doors off the competition in the District 8 supervisor’s race has been laying the groundwork to succeed Pelosi. Last week, he repurposed his annual beer bash fundraiser into a congressional kickoff. 

Pelosi is monomaniacally focused on passing Proposition 50, and has steadfastly refused to comment on her political future until after Tuesday’s election.

Every indication right now is that Prop. 50 will win handily — and that Pelosi will not run for another term. Would it have killed Wiener to wait until after the election portrayed by the Democratic Party as a must-win to preserve democracy? 

“The speaker emerita has not said what she’s doing, and there is a race happening. And the filing deadline is in a few months,” Wiener tells Mission Local, offering a wan smile. 

In an ostensible sign of respect, Wiener never refers to Pelosi by name, only as “the speaker emerita.” During the course of a 45-minute sit-down, he used this term enough that your humble narrator’s notes are awash with the abbreviation “SE.” 

“Yes,” Wiener continues, “you can always say, ‘wait a little longer.’ That becomes a problem. You have to make a choice. You can always criticize or second-guess. People have told me I made a mistake not getting in three months ago. It’s never the right time, or it’s always the right time.”

Would Wiener have elbowed his way into the race if Pelosi was just facing her usual Joe Palooka challenger instead of Saikat Chakrabarti, a young, handsome, charismatic and obscenely wealthy tech bro turned progressive firebrand? 

He offers another wan smile. “I don’t want to speculate about that.” 

Saikat Chakrabarti delivers a speech to a packed room of supporters at The Chapel in the Mission District on Wednesday. Photo by Mariana Garcia.

Funny thing about reality: We don’t have to speculate about it. Chakrabarti is running, and so is Wiener, and one needn’t be clairvoyant to know that Chakrabarti, who worked for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager in 2018, forced Wiener’s hand.  

“I had coffee with him early in the year, right after he got in. He is a smart guy and he knows how to campaign,” Wiener says of Chakrabarti. “He has obviously been in campaigns for a long time. He has hired national talent. He has not limitless, but effectively limitless, resources. He has been doing tons of digital things all year.” 

The numbers coming through the grapevine on what Chakrabarti is paying canvassers and staff resemble the sorts of money that Daniel Lurie was able to throw around. And you know how that worked for him. 

Chakrabarti’s vast wealth — he is a centimillionaire — and an increasing appetite for change within a Democratic Party defined by its gerontocracy is a potent coupling.

Money may not buy you happiness, but it can buy you a field program: Veteran Bay Area politicos, glancing at photos from Charabarti’s well-attended Oct. 9 kickoff, repurposed a line from cutthroat San Francisco political strategist Jack Davis: “I don’t see a single precinct-walker in that crowd.” 

It will be intriguing to see what Chakrabarti’s field campaign looks like. While anyone and everyone left of center would want to liken themselves to New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, this would appear to be a facile comparison.

Mamdani amassed an army of precinct walkers over the course of years, well before he declared for mayor. The infrastructure that will likely propel Mamdani to victory was assembled in large part by the Democratic Socialists of America. 

Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Photo by Abraham Rodriguez.

Chakrabarti, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s former campaign manager and chief of staff, has a curious pedigree for a candidate appealing to San Francisco’s left: He espouses national left-wing positions, but not necessarily local ones.

In fact, he put significant money into unseating former supervisor Dean Preston, at the time the only democratic socialist and DSA member on the Board of Supervisors, and he also donated to fellow tech-dude-turned-politician Michael Lai. 

Saikat Chakrabarti’s first name, incidentally, rhymes with “boycott.” It remains to be seen whether that’s just what city lefties do. For them, a race between Chakrabarti and the moderate stalwart Wiener would be like picking sides in a political Stalingrad.  

Sen. Scott Wiener speaks at a 2019 campaign rally. Photo by Abraham Rodriguez.

Scott David Wiener is 55 years old. He has been a prominent mover and shaker in San Francisco politics for a generation, and has been overtly angling to succeed the speaker emerita for years.

Voters seem to be desirous of something new: Does Wiener, middle-aged, a seasoned political veteran and a longtime congressional aspirant, fill that bill? He thinks so: Wiener says he’s already courted volunteers who had gravitated to Chakrabarti before coming to him. They just wanted somebody new. 

Wiener and Chakrabarti can both beef with Trump and his gang on TV and on the Internet, but only Wiener can also sell himself as a substantive legislator who takes on big issues and gets things done.

Housing is Wiener’s signature topic — but here, believe it or not, Chakrabarti and Wiener, the godfather of the YIMBY movement, are sounding more and more alike.

“The federal government used to play a huge role in housing around what we used to call public housing or social housing,” Wiener says. “We need to get back to that. We need to implement a massive social housing program in this country.”

While Wiener isn’t exactly new to pushing social housing, this isn’t what city lefties likely expcted to hear. But perhaps they’ll take it: It’s bad form to look a gift giraffe in the mouth. 

Where Chakrabarti and Wiener figure to differ more, however, is on Israel and Gaza. Just what everyone wanted: Mideast politics may be a consequential factor in a local political race. 

At his beer bash kickoff, hecklers repeatedly interrupted Wiener to demand an answer on whether he’d accept money from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. They were drowned out by the pro-Wiener crowd. When repeatedly asked in an interview if he would, Wiener declined to directly answer the question. 

Wiener, who is Jewish, noted that, beyond AIPAC, much of the scrutiny “gets into a very McCarthyesque situation about Jewish donors.”

“I have some significant differences with AIPAC,” he continued. “I don’t support sending offensive arms to Israel as long as they have a government that’s not committed to peace or democracy, which is the case with this current government. So that’s a pretty significant issue for AIPAC. They are very opposed to conditioning aid to Israel.” 

Wiener, for the record, will not take money — hard no — from Big Oil, payday lenders, tobacco companies or the prison-industrial complex (he has long been a voice in the wilderness in the California legislature, willing to oppose the prison-guard union).

But when asked, multiple times, if he’d take AIPAC money, Weiner did not give a hard no. Instead, he replied that he didn’t think they’d give him any: “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

After publication of this article, a Wiener campaign spokesperson sent the following statement:

“Senator Wiener and AIPAC have significant policy differences regarding the current Israeli government and its actions within Israel and toward Gaza and the West Bank. As a result, Senator Wiener is not seeking or accepting AIPAC’s support in this race.”

But that’s still more complicated than “hard no.” Chakrabati has a more straightforward position for the city’s progressives: He called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” during his campaign kick-off, and vowed to vote against sending Israel weapons if he were elected to congress — period. 

So, it’s going to be an interesting race. And, assuming Pelosi does indeed bow out, it will be only more so if Supervisor Connie Chan enters the fray — and does so as Pelosi’s preferred successor.

Chan and Wiener diverged on Prop. K, the 2024 measure that closed the Great Highway and led to the recall of District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, a Wiener ally.

Nobody seems to think a ballot measure in 2026 to reopen the highway would pass. But if such a measure were to be put before the electorate, and if a bloc of Chinese voters ran to the polls, and if there were a Chinese candidate running in a high-profile race — well, that would surely be interesting, too. 

All of that, and more, may come to pass. Wiener is ready. 

“I have learned in life,” he says, “that the only thing I can control is what I do.”