It was a frenzied three days for congressional candidate Connie Chan.
At Portsmouth Square, she addressed a crowd of over 200 and proclaimed herself a daughter of Chinatown. In the Mission, she stood before 100 supporters and vowed to tax billionaires. At the Sunset Recreation Center, she spoke to another 100 attendees, promising to be a fighter for working families.
Chan, the current District 1 supervisor, wore a lot of hats and leaned into different facets of her progressive bona fides during three campaign kickoff events over the weekend. She tested out messaging on her Chinese roots, her immigrant background, and her affinity for taxing the billionaires “all the way.”
“We have fought billionaires and billionaires’ PAC, as candidates but also at the ballot box with different ballot measures that we make sure that we are for the working people in San Francisco,” said Chan at In Chan Kaajal Park.
With the primary vote looming in June, the race to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi is off.
A lot happened in just the past week. On Sunday, Chan’s opponent, Sen. Scott Wiener, secured the endorsement of the California Democratic Party. Chan countered with a steady rollout of endorsements of her own: unions representing nurses and firefighters, the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, AFT 2121, former mayors Willie Brown and Art Agnos, retired judge Quentin Kopp, former board president Aaron Peskin, and the Working Families Party.
In the same week, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club endorsed Chan, while the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club backed Wiener.
Friday’s Chinatown kickoff centered on electing the first Chinese American from Northern California to Congress. Two other major Chinese enclaves, New York City and the Los Angeles area, have already elected Chinese congresspersons. Rep. Judy Chu, a Chinese American who represents communities including Pasadena, has endorsed Chan.
“Look at our history, we’ve been told we can only stay in Chinatown and we cannot go outside,” said Chan, dressed in red, to a crowd of over 200 participants at Portsmouth Square. “But look at who we are today in 2026. We are not only in Chinatown. We are actually in the Richmond. We’re in the Sunset. We’re in Bayview. We’re in the entire Bay Area.”
Chinese votes are central to Chan’s path to victory. California’s 11th congressional district has fewer Chinese voters than San Francisco writ large, but it still includes over 73,000 of them, accounting of around 16 percent of its 470,000 voters.
Supervisor Chyanne Chen, acting as emcee at the Feb. 20 event at Portsmouth Square, joked that she and Chan were “the double Chen” on the board, pronouncing the two last names the same.
Chan urged a community known for low voter turnout to cast ballots in June and November. “Many people want to divide us, saying Chinese voters don’t need representation. They don’t understand our pain,” she said in her mother tongue, Cantonese.
Chan said that though she was raised to be quiet, the strong “tiger mom” in her would come out for this campaign. “Chinese Americans know how to fight!”
“Now I’ll translate it for those white folks,” Chan said, finishing her speech in Cantonese and turning to English: “The Chinese American community, they should know I prioritize them because I’m a daughter of Chinatown.”
Peskin, who was in attendance and represented Chinatown for the better part of 20 years as District 3 supervisor, introduced his former legislative aide as “a daughter of North Beach, a daughter of San Francisco.” He contrasted her with Wiener, a Harvard Law School graduate, saying Chan would not play the “I went to Harvard, I’m smarter than all of you” game but would instead “unify people.”
In Chan’s kickoff in the Mission District at In Chan Kaajal Park on 17th and Folsom, masked Chinese seniors were replaced by union members chanting “Hard work!”
Chan, who had centered the previous day on her Chinese American identity, broadened her message to immigrants and workers.
“Chinese American immigrants in San Francisco, I think that is the same for Latino immigrants and Filipino immigrants and all the immigrants in San Francisco,” said Chan, outfitted in a black sweatshirt printed with the word “makibaka,” Tagalog for “fight.”
“For the longest time, you don’t get to go out, you don’t get to buy a home, you don’t actually get to be here,” she said. “You don’t get to own a business.”
She repeated her personal story as an immigrant daughter and English learner who came to the United States with a single mother and a younger brother. “Only in San Francisco and in a sanctuary city, someone like me … gets to run for office and win,” said Chan, to the roughly 100 attendees. Now, she said, she wants to continue that story in Washington, D.C.
Chan was joined by drag artist Kiki Krunch, union leaders, former supervisor Dean Preston and supervisors Shamann Walton and Jackie Fielder.
Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, said Chan is the only candidate who does “kitchen table economics” and understands the struggles of putting food on the table, childcare, and keeping a roof over one’s head in San Francisco.
Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, listed Chan as a working-family fighter alongside New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson. “I’m not interested in finding a good billionaire big brother to fight against the bad billionaires,” Mitchell said. “I’m interested in finding working families fighters … to challenge the billionaire class.”
“Guess what?” Chan replied. “We’re gonna tax them all the way!”
But to fight moneyed interests, one needs money, and Chan, who joined the race in November, is lagging behind in fundraising: She had amassed just over $174,000 by the end of 2025.
Both her main opponents, Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti, finished 2025 with well over $1 million raised. Wiener formed a committee as early as 2023 to explore the possibility of a congressional race. Chakrabarti, who made a fortune in tech, gave $1.47 million to his own campaign.
Chan closed her three-day kickoff Sunday at the Sunset Recreation Center with more union leaders, an even hoarser voice after a packed weekend participating in the California Democratic Party convention, and no mention of the neighborhood’s most heated topic: the Great Highway.
Emcee Rudy Gonzalez of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council said introducing Chan, who he called “our future Congresswoman from San Francisco,” was like introducing Pelosi back in 2018.
Chan invited District 4 candidate and Walton chief of staff Natalie Gee as one of the speakers. Selena Chu, activist in the recall campaign against Joel Engardio, was also in the audience.
Chan, who was described by Gonzalez as “a working mom with an immigrant story,” specifically acknowledged the struggles, the silence, and “especially woman warriors” of the Filipino American community, and pledged to represent all the different voices of the Sunset.
“I know that we have different politics and a whole spectrum of it,” she said. “You’re sending our voice collectively to Washington, D.C.”