$211 per vote: How Saikat Chakrabarti spent $8.8M on his congressional run

Saikat Chakrabarti’s campaign to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi in California’s 11th congressional district cost $211.30 per vote.

That is about $8.85 million spent for 42,049 votes, just 17.9 percent of the total votes cast. The totals are as of May 13, the latest date for which data is available, and likely to rise.

The two candidates who beat him spent far less. 

Scott Wiener, the state senator who led the field with 40.7 percent of the vote, was backed by $5.86 million in spending. That includes about $2.67 million from his own campaign, and another $2.56 million from independent expenditure committees. Each of his votes cost $61.24.

About a third of this outside spending — $887,511 — was from Abundant Future, a political action committee formed by wealthy tech figures who have spent heavily against progressives in San Francisco, like Chris Larsen, Garry Tan, Jeremy Liew, and Jeremy Stoppelman.

Abundant Future did not spend money supporting any candidates, according to filings — only on opposing Chakrabarti. Chan and Wiener likely benefited from spending against Chakrabarti. 

The total behind District 1 supervisor Connie Chan, who took the second spot with 29.7 percent of the votes, was just $1.75 million, including $1.2 million in outside backing. Her cost per vote? $25.09. 

Yes, Chakrabarti spent more than eight times as much per vote as Chan, and still lost to her by nearly 28,000 votes. 

Until now, the record for most spending per vote was held by Mayor Daniel Lurie, whose first-choice votes in the 2024 mayoral race were $156.14 each. But there’s a big difference: Lurie won. 

Half the money spent on a firm known for running progressive campaigns

About half of Chakrabarti’s spend — some $4.4 million — went to Middle Seat, a Washington D.C.-based digital advertising firm that specializes in progressive campaigns, organizations, and causes.

Chakrabarti’s campaign largely focused on his anti-establishment messaging and his desire to change the Democratic Party, with ads that promoted his ties to progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Senior staff members for Chakrabarti’s campaign in San Francisco who joined at the start of 2026 said they had goals to weave more personal elements into the messaging for his campaign. 

Their goal was to better connect Chakrabarti to the city and humanize him with details: He’s a family man raising his daughter in San Francisco with his wife, a thrift-shopping enthusiast. He has deeper roots in the city than most people realize. He has relationships with local  small business owners. 

But few of these messages wound up being used before the campaign ended. 

Advertising and messaging overall consumed $4.64 million, or about 52.5 percent, of Chakrabarti’s spending. David Ho, a political consultant for the independent expenditure committee supporting Connie Chan, said that kind of ad spending is typical for a candidate with low name recognition. 

“For a low name-ID candidate, it’s about voter identification and buying awareness from voters,” Ho said. “I think he was successfully able to do that — similar to Daniel Lurie.”

But, he added, there are limits. Ultimately, Chakrabarti, a self-financed progressive, was up against two strong, well-established, and well-connected candidates in San Francisco.

Wiener has been in San Francisco politics for about two decades and only lost one race, a June 2016 state senate primary to Jane Kim, (who later lost to Wiener that November). Chan is deeply rooted with local progressive and labor alliances and the city’s Chinese community. 

“He was in an uphill battle from day one,” Ho said. 

Well-paid staff and many, many consultants 

Chakrabarti prides himself on what he called the “largest field campaign in U.S. congressional race history.” His campaign hired a total of 378 staffers, including canvassers and well-paid field workers. 

A total of $1.63 million went to wages and another $524,648 in payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. Two top earners among employees:

• $72,404: Emily Hyden, the campaign manager.
• $70,799: Oscar Arbulu, who joined the campaign in July 2025 as chief organizing officer and later became the political director. Arbulu left the campaign in January 2026.

The top earners on the campaign, though, were outside consultants. The filings show that 23 consultants and 14 consulting firms earned a total of $599,505. 

Among the top consultant earners: 

• $143,601: Kick Research, which a 2023 tax filing indicates is related to Zack Exley, the campaign  manager turned senior advisor for Chakrabarti. Exley was a former advisor to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
• $91,000: Nathan Allbee, a political strategist and a former key aide to State Assemblymember Matt Haney.
• $72,823:  Nadia Rahman, a political director on the campaign.

Now Chakrabarti plans to use his money to help one of the candidates he failed to beat. 

Already, his PAC has spent $425,000 for Chan as she heads toward the November election — 24 percent of what she spent during the entire run-up to the June vote.