Saikat Chakrabarti, who failed to score a place on the November ballot for California’s 11th congressional district, said Wednesday that he will support Connie Chan’s race through the November election.
Already, his newly formed SF Solidarity PAC has spent $425,000 for Chan.
“I’m gonna do what I can to help her win,” said Chakrabarti.
Earlier, Chakrabarti offered his campaign staff of some 250, mostly paid canvassers, the option of working on his new independent expenditure committee to back Chan through July 10.
Now, his support of Chan will be through the general.
The field team plans to return to residents who were Chakrabarti supporters in the primary and persuade them to vote for Chan in November.
It’s unclear what the campaign will do after that outreach is finished.
“We’re going to look at where we are at the end of the month [July 10] to see how much more work is left to do, and to see what we need to do to actually make sure she wins,” said Chakrabarti.
Nate Allbee, Chakrabarti’s campaign consultant who now works on the SF Solidarity PAC, oversaw Chakrabarti’s campaign’s field operation, one of the largest paid canvasser operations in San Francisco history, with canvassers paid top dollars.
So far, Albee said on Tuesday, they have talked to 500 Chakrabarti supporters in Wiener’s old supervisorial District 8. Some 80 percent of them said at the end of the conversation that, yes, they’d vote for Chan, according to Allbee.
“I mean, that’s really high,” he said.
Chakrabarti won 17 percent of the vote in District 8 compared to 26 percent for Chan and 51 percent for Wiener.
Chakrabarti, who self-funded his own campaign with $10 million, is also committed to spending whatever it takes to help Chan.
“We haven’t made a decision on how much funding the campaign will need, but the goal is absolutely to make sure Connie wins,” said Allbee.
Chakrabarti said, “this is about trying to help the progressive movement at large in Washington.” He added he’s also putting “significant financial support” towards helping close to 20 other progressive candidates across the country. He’s still trying to decide how much money to put into each race.
Locally, Chakrabarti sees himself playing whatever role necessary to help the progressive movement and fix issues in the city. He’s been a generous donor to nonprofits, and he’s willing to contribute more right now when many are facing budget cuts.
He’s also open to being a supporter — and possibly a sponsor — for ballot measures that represent causes he supports. “There’s no calculus of which faction or which tribe or whatever,” he said. If he agrees with the idea, he said, “I’m going to support them,” giving as an example Wiener’s November measure to fund public transit.
Map by Kelly Waldron.
How significant are Chakrabarti’s money and endorsement for Chan?
Chakrabarti’s endorsement of Chan doesn’t mean his votes will automatically transfer to the 47-year-old supervisor of District 1.
Before the primary, the general perception was that whichever candidate, Chan or Chakrabarti, advanced would need almost all of the other’s votes to have a chance to defeat Wiener in November.
Until the last few weeks of the campaign, Chan and Chakrabarti were careful to avoid upsetting each other’s supporters and instead directed most attacks at Wiener. That now makes it easier for Chan to convert Chakrabarti’s voters, his campaign said. “We never said, ‘Don’t vote for Connie,’” when knocking on doors, said Allbee.
However, with Chakrabarti clearly antagonistic to Representative Nancy Pelosi’s way of doing business, it’s unclear if his supporters will embrace Chan, the candidate with Pelosi’s endorsement.
And it’s unclear how much Chakrabarti’s quick backing of Chan means.
Joe Arellano, Wiener’s campaign spokesperson and advisor, said many of Chakrabarti’s supporters who are urbanists will transition to Wiener, who has branded himself as the pro-housing candidate in the race.
And some may just disengage entirely from the process, “because they were in it for the cult of Saikat and his personality. It doesn’t simply transition over to Connie as soon as he’s gone,” said Arellano.
“Some of Saikat voters who were really motivated by his outsider and anti-establishment messaging, might not feel excited about either candidate” and may sit out the general election, added Mike Chen, a Wiener supporter and a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee.
“It’s one thing to win some votes for yourself, it’s much harder to use your own profile to sway an election where you are not on the ballot,” said political consultant Derek Jansen. Chakrabarti “is just not a real factor in San Francisco.”
The two assets he could bring to Team Connie are funding. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement would help as well, but his campaign fell short of earning the latter and Chan could earn that on her own.
“I don’t think [Chakrabarti’s endorsement] is gonna have a huge impact. But it is not nothing,” San Francisco State University political science professor Jason McDaniel said.
To an extent, “she doesn’t need him to get progressive voters. She got more of them than he did,” he added. For the remaining ones, “I don’t think they liked him and hated her,” meaning they would go to Chan, the sole progressive candidate in November, even without Chakrabarti’s support.
Chan may be her own best advocate
A plus for Chan is that she has few political enemies. In a two-person race, where the competition to claim support and allegiance in San Francisco’s political circle has been fierce, Chan has created an environment where “she’s made it easy to come over and help her. And I really appreciate that,” said Allbee.
This may have something to do with Chan’s philosophy as a politician. “I believe in direct communication and building intellectually honest and respectful relationships,” she said in response to a Mission Local Q&A in May.
Allbee agreed. “Connie doesn’t have a lot of enemies for a reason. It’s just how she acts in politics and how she treats people. It’s not surprising to me that she has such a broad coalition at all … When you disagree with Connie on something, there’s a basic level of respect.”
“Over the years,” he added, “I’ve always felt like Connie was somebody that I could disagree with in a friendly way.”
