The candidates seeking to succeed Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco’s House representative held a debut debate Wednesday night, offering three different approaches to the seat.
It is open for the first time in almost 40 years.
Scott Wiener, San Francisco’s state senator and the presumed front-runner, took more moderate stances while pitching himself as the policy wonk who will be an effective legislator on Capitol Hill.
“I don’t just talk; I deliver,” he said.
District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan and Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff to New York City Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, held the progressive line but offered two different visions.
Chan, who is expected to be backed by many of the city’s unions, put herself forward as a voice for “working people in San Francisco” and touted her experience in local politics.
“I am the only candidate on this stage today that has beat back the billionaires and their PAC and won not once, but twice,” she said about her elections to the District 1 seat.
Chakrabarti, a multi-millionaire from his time working in tech, who originally ran to challenge Pelosi, cast himself as an outsider to the Democratic leadership in Washington.
“We’re going to have to take on not just MAGA Republicans, but corporate money and the failed Democratic establishment,” said Chakrabarti. “We need to completely change the direction and leadership of the Democratic Party.”
San Francisco voters were eager to start parsing differences between the candidates, with more than 1,000 people showing up for the event at University of California Law, San Francisco hosted by the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, California Working Families Party and the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club.
The forum was moderated by Cynthia Laird from the Bay Area Reporter and Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi. Not only did attendees fill the main auditorium and two overflow rooms, they also crowded up the nearby Beer Hall — it was Wings Wednesday — and thousands more listened in online.
The most raucous moment of the two-hour debate came in the closing lightning round, when the candidates were asked: “Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?”
Chakrabarti and Chan immediately flashed up the green “YES” on their double-sided signs. But Wiener didn’t give a straight answer, twirling the sign near his knees, the red “NO” and green “YES” coming in and out of view.
The crowd laughed and jeered. “Answer the question, Scott!” “Shame on you! Shame on you!” Several waved keffiyahs from their seats.
Regardless, whoever San Francisco sends to Congress will likely be voting against selling offensive weapons to Israel. In a press gaggle after the debate, Wiener said that he finds Israel’s actions in both Gaza and the West Bank “horrifying.”
“What the Israeli government has done in Gaza, in terms of killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and so many children … is an absolute moral stain,” he said. “I will not support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities in Gaza or the West Bank. Period.”
During the lightning round, Wiener also took a different stance from the other two candidates on whether Proposition C of 2018, which taxed businesses’ grossing more than $50 million to fund homelessness services, has been good for San Francisco.
The measure has been a bit of a lightning rod among some tech executives, who blame it for companies leaving town.
“At the time, I predicted that if Prop. C passed, the payments industry would leave San Francisco. And it did,” Wiener said after the debate, explaining that he thinks Prop. C was not done in a sufficiently “thoughtful, well-structured way.”
The controller’s office reports that Prop. C has since raised more than $1.8 billion for San Francisco.
When asked about his supportive vote for Prop. C following the debate, Chakrabarti said that he couldn’t remember what it was about without looking it up on his phone afterward.
“Yes, I’m for taxing businesses for homelessness services,” he said after figuring out which measure it was.
During the course of the two-hour debate, Wiener also didn’t take a stance on a potential 5 percent tax on California billionaires that some unions are proposing, saying that he’s waiting to see what tax measures make it to the ballot. Chan and Chakrabarti both said they supported the tax.
“Progressive taxation in all of its forms, in income taxes, wealth taxes, estate taxes are incredibly important,” Wiener said. But, for the billionaire tax proposal, “there is actually some tension and conflict within labor about whether it should be on the ballot.”
Other than those differences, the three mostly agreed with each other: They all threw support behind Medicare for All, want to expand the U.S. Supreme Court, and called the Trump administration fascist.
All emphasized the need to stand up for all members of the LGBTQ community, particularly trans people who have come under attack in recent years.
While Wiener’s answer to a question about what actions he would take to protect LGBTQ people focused on specific policies, like a “comprehensive federal civil rights law” for LGBTQ protections, Chakrabarti’s answer turned towards a common talking point: Primarying “corporate Democrats” who are ready to “throw the trans community under the bus.”
“The only way we’re going to get these laws passed is if we replace a whole lot of the Democratic Party,” he said.
While Chakrabarti was aggressive against the Democratic establishment nationally, Chan highlighted her local connections.
Her response to the question about protecting the queer community involved touting her support of keeping City College free for residents and the city’s investments in community clinics.
“So goes San Francisco, so goes the nation,” she said.
Candidates will go through a jungle primary on June 2, with the top two vote-getters facing off in the general election on Nov. 3, regardless of party affiliation. It is all but certain that both candidates in November will be Democrats, and two of the three candidates on the UC Law stage Wednesday night.
Eskenazi closed the event with words to the audience from blues musician Sunnyland Slim: “Be careful how you vote.”
> “Regardless, whoever San Francisco sends to Congress will likely be voting against selling offensive weapons to Israel.”
Respectfully to this reporter, it’s unimaginable Wiener would vote against the US/Israel MOU, which will be voted on by 2028 when the current MOU expires (and which lobbyists are trying to extend for 20 years). Also, Wiener generally includes a contingency, caveat, or specificity when answering such questions, which any mention of Iran could negate. Anyways, if you’ve never checked it out, look into the MOU, which lobbyists are trying to extend for 20 years and bump up to $5b/yr. There is an attempt to accelerate the process meaning potentially it could be voted on before the next candidate enters, but likely vote will happen after the election. And again, it’s completely unimaginable Wiener would oppose.
I would be completely shocked if Wiener votes against funding and arming Israel even once – I assure you, he will come up with some excuse about the process or minutiae of the bill to explain why he had to vote yes, but he will vote yes.
I also want to say, as someone who has spent too much time on Twitter, I believe that Scott Weiner has deleted a lot of tweets, especially from the time of the student protests in the spring of 2024, when he accused protesters of being antisemitic and aligned with terrorists. (There are tweets I remember that I can’t find now.) This is not someone who’s going to stand up against fascist repression universally – Scott likes a little repression when he agrees with it – look at his support for AB 715, which was opposed by the ACLU. Absolutely the wrong candidate for this moment in history.
Why is Scott Wiener the only candidate who gets to talk to the press AFTER the debate and who gets to be quoted in length about it??
Why is Mission Local writing that “Regardless, whoever San Francisco sends to Congress will likely be voting against selling offensive weapons to Israel” That is absolutely NOT true. If Scott Wiener goes to Congress he will vote to support Israel in its racist war of extermination of the Palestinian people. Scott Wiener was the only vocal politician who opposed the San Francisco Resolution for a Ceasefire in December 2023. Scott Wiener is the author of a law that criminalizes the teaching of the history of Palestine in public schools and that equates antizionism with antisemitism.
Hi Loula —
You seem to have missed Saikat Chakrabarti also speaking to the press afterward to clarify his positions. He was quoted in the article you read and subsequently commented on.
Best,
JE
Hi Joe,
What I am not missing though is the fact that Mission Local is predicting the future and telling us that Scott Wiener will not vote to send weapons to Israel if he is elected to Congress.
The most significant difference between Scott Wiener and the two other candidates is the fact that he is a staunch zionist and they are not. He is a fervent supporter of Israel and he has never been shy about it until it became clear that support for the genocidal state is a liability for politicians running for public office. It feels like there is an effort in this article to “erase” this important difference between the 3 candidates, why?
My very best,
Loula
Loula, who decided that Israel is the deciding factor in how people will vote in this election anyway?
From my perspective it is way down the list of voting priorities.
Then your perfect candidate is definitely Scott Wiener, Jim. No need for him (and the media) to pretend that he cares about the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people with our tax dollars.
But again Loula, most people vote based on matters and issues closer to home, rather than foreign policy and obscure wars in remote parts of the globe.
People vote based on things like the economy, affordability, jobs, taxes, housing, immigration etc.
Joe,
Fair point about quoting Saikat as well, but I agree with Loula there’s no reason to believe Wiener will vote against selling offensive weapons to Israel. He didn’t even support the SF Board of Supervisors ceasefire resolution, passed by a supermajority and with 3 of the 4 supervisors of Jewish descent in favor.
Connie Chan said in a December 29, 2025 Instagram post* that if elected she will become an immediate co-sponsor of the Block the Bombs Act. Has Wiener made a similar commitment? (As far as I know, no.) Why is Mission Local giving Scott Wiener so much unwarranted benefit of the doubt on this?
*https://www.instagram.com/p/DS3A8kCEnGn/?img_index=1
This is a commitment to something:
“I will not support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities in Gaza or the West Bank. Period.”
And there’s certainly a tone there that you won’t hear from the average pro-Israel member of Congress.
But on reading closely, it doesn’t at all promise that he won’t vote for selling “offensive weapons” to Israel. In Israel’s telling, after all, zero percent of the weapons they buy are for the “destruction of Palestinian communities” — it’s all for self-defense. Even from a more skeptical point of view, they buy plenty of weapons that they use against Iran, or Syria, or Lebanon, and nowhere near Gaza or the West Bank.
Joe, was the no-offensive-weapons point a paraphrase of something Wiener explicitly said that wasn’t in the quote? Or is it an inference from the quote? If it was an inference, I agree with Scott F and other commenters here that we haven’t heard Wiener actually make this promise.
Labor against the billionaire tax? Uhh nope. SEIU is throwing a party celebrating it getting on the ballot. Weiner has sold out to developers and other rich folks at the expense of San Francisco. He should not be our next representative, period.
The candidate sitting in the middle should never get elected..he can’t spell genocide.
Here we go again…
“Scott Wiener […] took more moderate stances [..]”
This is wrong. Despite the conventional usage of “moderate” in the New York Times, NPR, and the rest of the corporate liberal media to present corporate, deregulatory, war machine Dems in a favorable light to their audiences that have neither the mental bandwidth nor critical thinking tools to see through the fog, being more conservative does not make one more moderate, it makes one more conservative.
I’m voting for Connie.
of course you are
No Kings, but it’s “Pelosi’s seat”. A position she’s held for nearly 40 years.
Have mercy, they all suck so hard.
Campers,
I made my ‘Connie for Congress’ sign and had it out for field testing on my trash cart on New Year’s day and as an overlay on one of my cane signs that afternoon.
My custom is to keep a chosen candidate’s name in view from my window all year and carry it for a total of 400 miles on my daily walks in the last hundred days and beginning this year it moves to my trash pickup Rube Goldberg contraption for a thousand hours of exposure as Skippy and I do our daily route cleaning our near neighborhood sidewalks and gutters.
I missed any comment on Saikat’s endorsements from Bernie and AOC and Jackie Fielder and Dean Preston ?
They’re all Democrat/Socialists right ?
Word on my trash route is that he’s another opportunist from the billionaire crowd trying to buy a public office and that Sanders and AOC took his money but have seen through his charade.
On a more important front I think Shanahan saved his A game and players for the Eagles whom he thinks he’ll have to face to get back to the Super Bowl on his home field and that Fred Warner and Trent Williams will both be out there Sunday afternoon and I’d be interested in Joe’s thoughts on the matter and would he consider doing a piece on Sunday’s game ?
Connie for Congress !!
h.
Pelosi is a zionist. She is finally retiring from Congress. Wiener is a zionist and handmaiden of real estate. I don’t want another zionist representing SF and me. Aren’t there enough dead Palestinians already?
Chakrabarti touts his being Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s chief of staff and his being a progressive. He supported Mahmood ousting Dean Preston, district 5, the only DSA member of the Board of Supervisors . AOC has not endorsed Chakrabarti. Just how progressive is he?
Chan is not rich nor the handmaiden of the billionaires. Seems to be the last woman standing.
This was not a “debate” but a forum in which views were presented.
Having candidates ask questions of each other and having questions from the audience was sorely needed.
It should have started earlier.
“Israel, developers”……Please focus. We need to elect people who will stand against Trump and his evil machine. Nothing else may matter….soon.
i can’t wait for chan’s decisive loss. she is not broadly popular here in sf.
it’s time to start volunteering against connie chan.