State Sen.Scott Wiener makes remarks at a rally for transgender youth rights in San Francisco on Jan. 31, 2025.
Benjamin Fanjoy/Special to the Chronicle
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who has represented San Francisco in the Legislature and on the Board of Supervisors since 2011, officially announced Wednesday that he would do something he promised not to: seek a seat in Congress before Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement.
Wiener’s decision does not necessarily mean he will be challenging Pelosi: She has repeatedly deflected questions about whether she is running for reelection and recently told the San Francisco Examiner she wouldn’t make any announcements about her future until after the Nov. 4 election.
“Speaker Pelosi is fully focused on her mission to win the Yes on 50 special election in California on Nov. 4. She urges all Californians to join in that mission on the path to taking back the House for Democrats,” her spokesman Ian Krager said.
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If she does enter the race, she will have at least two challengers: Wiener, 55, and Saikat Chakarabarti, 39, a founding engineer at Stripe and the former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Chakrabarti officially launched his campaign this month.
Wiener has been a leader in the Legislature for pushing California to build more housing. This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB79, a measure he authored that would to make it easier to build housing near transit hubs. He has also been a leading advocate for public transportation, and for LGBTQ rights.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi enters the opening reception for San Francisco Climate Week at The Exploratorium in San Francisco on April 21, 2025.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Wiener has, until now, been deferential toward Pelosi while running a campaign-in-waiting. In 2023, he headlined a fundraising event in San Francisco called “Women for Scott,” to benefit a House campaign he said he would only launch once Pelosi said she wasn’t running for reelection.
“Thank you, all of you, for choosing to be here for a race that’s not happening,” Wiener joked to an audience of 80 women — and a handful of guys — gathered on the backyard patio of a home in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. “Nancy Pelosi is gonna do what she’s gonna do, like she always does — and she should,” Wiener told his audience. “And when she’s good and ready, she’s going to make that decision for herself.”
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Either Wiener grew tired of waiting for Pelosi to decide, or he has reason to believe she’s not running.
Both Wiener and Chakrabarti say they’re running regardless of what Pelosi decides. But it would be a far different race should the nation’s first female speaker of the House — someone who has raised more than $1 billion for Democrats over the last quarter-century — stays in the race. If Pelosi runs for reelection, the race would become a nationally watched referendum on whether voters in the nation’s bluest district want generational change.
For those looking for signs of what Pelosi may do, her fundraising does not offer much in the way of clues. She has raised about $2.1 million so far this year, which is just above the median of what she has raised through this point of the fundraising cycle over the past 15 years, though a drop from the past two years, according to a Chronicle analysis of federal campaign finance statements. She raised huge amounts of money during her tenure as speaker, a position from which she stepped down in November 2022. She currently doesn’t serve on any committees in the House.
Saikat Chakrabarti, a founding engineer at payment platform Stripe, is running for Congress in 2026.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
If Pelosi doesn’t run, Chakrabarti will likely focus on running against another establishment candidate in Wiener. While Chakrabarti is calling for “transformational change,” Wiener has praised Pelosi as “a transformational force” responsible for the Affordable Care Act and a longtime protector of LGBTQ rights and democracy, and noted in 2023 how “deeply lucky we are to have her, to be able to call her our member of Congress.”
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Wiener was cryptic Wednesday when asked why he switched gears and announced a bid. “The world changes and this is the right time for me to get in the race,” he said.
He said he did not know if Pelosi would run again. “You’ll have to ask her,” he said.
Wiener said the biggest change to his plans has been President Donald Trump “trying to create an authoritarian regime. The Democratic Party needs to pivot to address that and to refocus in making people’s lives better.”
Wiener pointed to how he has been unafraid not only to challenge Trump but to take on historically Democratic groups, like organized labor and environmental groups by passing state laws making it easier to build housing — including by reforming the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA.
“It’s not just enough to break glass. You have know how to get it done. And work with people you don’t always agree with. You have to challenge the establishment,” Wiener said.
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But without Pelosi in the race, Wiener would likely focus on his own experience versus Chakrabarti, who has never held elective office. Chakrabarti, a centimillionaire, will have tons of money to spend — but will need it to introduce himself to voters. He has already spent $720,000 of his own money on the campaign, according to federal campaign disclosures.
Wiener, meanwhile, has high name recognition after being on the ballot for more than a decade for many voters in the district. He was undaunted by the prospect of facing potentially two wealthy candidates, saying he “absolutely will have enough money to get my message out.”
He has also become a target of abuse from the far right for his efforts to expand protections for transgender people and LGBTQ youth. He’s received bomb threats at his home and he’s been followed by protesters who have harassed him in public. Wiener, who is Jewish, has also been harassed repeatedly by anti-Israel activists.
Christian Leonard contributed to this report.
