When labor leader Rudy Gonzalez agreed to run Connie Chan’s congressional campaign, the message was clear: Chan’s campaign is serious.
Gonzalez “is a son of the Westside. He’s born and raised in San Francisco and he knows the city. He went to school here,” said Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council.
And, Casey added, Gonzalez really knows city politics.
Many of Chan’s supporters — labor, Nancy Pelosi, Saikat Chakrabarti, progressives and conservative-leaning monolingual Chinese-speaking voters — are not natural allies. But for this campaign at least, they have decided to tolerate their differences, offering Chan an impressively diverse coalition, but one that will need managing.
If her run for congress is successful, said former supervisor and longtime union organizer Gordon Mar, it could be an example of how to build a broad enough coalition to counter what Mar describes as “the billionaire-funded YIMBY political machine” that has spent heavily in recent elections.
Coalition of unlikely allies
Chan has long enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with labor, especially unions of public-sector employees and those that lean progressive, like teachers and healthcare workers. But the decision for Gonzales to run her campaign wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
Instead, rival Sen. Scott Wiener’s well-established track record of sponsoring legislation that supports the construction of new housing makes him seem more like a natural ally to Gonzalez, who has served as secretary-treasurer for San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council since 2021. The council represents workers in the construction industry and has had a reputation for pro-housing advocacy since it was formed in 1896.
“The Building Trades are sort of the biggest bloc of the moderate unions,” said Mar. In 2024, for example, the Building Trades declined to endorse progressive candidate Aaron Peskin for mayor, and dual endorsed Mark Farrell and Ahsha Safaí. It did not support Chan in her 2020 race for supervisor, instead backing Marjan Philhour, her opponent, though it did support Chan’s 2024 run for reelection and now Chan’s campaign for congress.
Wiener has the support of some unions, including the California Conference of Carpenters, which has emerged as one of the most influential voices on housing in Sacramento. But, said veteran political consultant Jim Ross, while Wiener is pro-housing, “he’s not necessarily pro-housing built by union labor.”
Larry Mazzola, Jr., current president of the Building Trades, said much the same thing. In a 2024 message to union members, Mazzola described Wiener as a politician who “has made it his mission in recent years to have any and all housing built as fast as possible … His attempts to strip away ‘skilled & trained’ language from these housing bills goes against everything he previously stood for.”
Casey sees Wiener as a legislator who has sown division within the labor movement, “pitting one set of unions against another.” That, he said, makes getting Chan into Congress important for two reasons: “One is to beat Scott, two is to make sure that we have somebody who really does stand up for working families, and that’s Connie.”
Joe Arellano, the communications director for Wiener’s campaign, argued that the state senator’s critics are a sign of how effective he is as a legislator. “This is where San Francisco politics really work against what is best for the future of San Francisco,” he said. Voters “want people who are going to deliver results, and that’s what Scott has done.”
Gonzalez’s involvement has given Chan an opportunity to counter Wiener’s branding as a pro-housing candidate. We “would not support Connie if she was anti-development,” Gonzalez said.
Son of the Westside leading labor’s race
The son of a firefighter, Gonzalez carried his first union card at 18 as a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and quickly rose through the ranks of Teamsters Local 856.
In 2018, a then-34 year-old Gonzalez was the youngest person elected to lead the San Francisco Labor Council in its 125-year history.
To run Chan’s campaign, Gonzalez is taking a leave of absence, which shows how important this race is to labor, said Mar. Putting its top leadership directly at the helm of her campaign “goes way beyond the usual boots on the ground or financial contributions.” It also shows, he said, that labor believes Chan has a clear path.
As a past and present leader of the two most prominent labor organizations — the San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council and the San Francisco Labor Council — Gonzalez’s leadership could help translate into votes and support from many of its 100,000 union members, and their families. (As of June 30, 2026, 471,185 voters were registered in Congressional District 11)
Gonzalez, said Mar, will also help bring more “union-style organizing” to Chan’s campaign, which will mean “a lot more disciplined and structured” than political campaigns that rely on paid canvassers or volunteers.
“Unions are doing this day in and day out throughout the year,” he said. “I bet [Chan’s campaign] will look a lot different with Rudy in this next round.”
Some current and former campaign rivals also see the involvement of Gonzalez as an upgrade.
Wiener spokesperson Arellano said it signals a campaign trying to “professionalize itself” from “a bare-bones operation.” It’s “leveling up,” agreed Nate Allbee, a main consultant on Chakrabarti’s campaign who now works to support Chan.
The Pelosi connection
On a recent afternoon, Gonzalez described his new role as “a full circle moment.” His mentor, Fred Ross, Jr., a key architect of California’s farmworker movement, played a crucial role in Pelosi’s first run for Congress in 1987, and helped guarantee that Pelosi would be a “stalwart champion” of labor for the next four decades.
Gonzalez was only three years old during that fight. Now, he’s investing in a new labor ally who, at 47, is the same age as Pelosi when she first entered Congress.
Gonzalez is one of two San Francisco labor leaders closest to Pelosi. “If you watch any of the events that she hosts in the city, she normally has either Rudy there or she has Kim Tavaglione from the Labor Council,” said a former citywide campaign manager.
Pelosi was not involved in hiring him, Gonzalez said. “Connie asked me if I would take on this role. I told her I’d be honored, but I had to make a couple phone calls,” he said.
Gonzalez called his wife, Sarah, a former union lawyer, and his board chair at the Building Trades Council, Mazzola. Both gave their blessings.
The campaign clearly hopes that Pelosi will be active, opening access to a prodigious nationwide donor network and helping to secure coveted endorsements, such as Mayor Daniel Lurie, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that might otherwise be unattainable.
“The closer you can be tied to Nancy Pelosi, the better,” said political consultant Ross.
Gonzalez said he will reach out for Pelosi’s counsel frequently. Already, Pelosi has shown up more often for Chan’s campaign than Chan’s partner Ed, who’s a member of the beloved local firefighters’ union. And in the last three weeks, two fundraising emails in Pelosi’s name have gone out.
Wooing the undecideds
Chan still needs to win over the LGBTQ+ community, where Wiener is popular, and conservative voters and Republicans who might be put off by her progressive reputation.
Gonzalez, however, can be effective in securing support from unions “that are still non-committal between Scott and Connie,” said political consultant David Ho, who runs a pro-Chan independent expenditure committee funded mainly by unions.
A major component of Gonzalez’s role as campaign director will be raising money from national unions and mobilizing manpower from state and local unions.
Gonzalez’s links to Building Trades will help, said Casey. It’s one of these labor organizations that not only focuses on San Francisco but has interests “in Sacramento, in Washington, and of course, in San Francisco in City Hall.”
“I’ve had the benefit of being in this [labor] movement for a while now. And it is really fun to get to call my friends and colleagues” in D.C. and around the state, said Gonzalez.
However, for some local unions, there might also be incentives to keep Chan, who has been a reliable ally, in City Hall.
While fundraising for Chan’s campaign, Gonzalez will be constrained by the $5,000 limit that unions can donate. Donations to Ho’s independent expenditure campaign have no limit.
Local union chapters often need buy-in from their national umbrella union to donate to a federal candidate. That could get complicated. Any big player in national politics, unions included, may see more to gain from trying to flip Republican-held seats nationwide, as opposed to taking sides in the all-Democratic matchup between Chan and Wiener.
But potential support is considerable. In 2025, labor-affiliated federal PACs raised a combined $215 million. Moreover, the seat that Wiener and Chan are vying for is deemed a “leadership seat” by Capitol Hill insiders, meaning whoever wins is poised to grow into a national leader.
Gonzalez thinks Chan could be that leader. Connie overperformed in the primary, he said, to the point where she surprised some of the unions that had hesitated to commit to her candidacy.
Now, he thinks, they will: “I don’t think it’s good enough to have any Democrat represent San Francisco.”
