Welcome back to our โMeet the Candidatesโ series, where the congressional candidates respond to a question in 100 words or less. Answers will be published every Monday.
CA-11, the congressional district that Connie Chan and Scott Wiener are running to represent, includes most of San Francisco. Some southern neighborhoods (the Excelsior, Portola, Visitacion Valley, and Ingleside) are a part of a neighboring district.
Scott Wiener and Connie Chan are facing off on Nov. 3 to be San Franciscoโs first new congressional representative in almost 40 years. One will succeed Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
From now until Election Day, weโll be examining where Chan and Wiener stand on the issues, asking them the same question every week and then publishing their answers.
Both Wiener and Chan are longtime legislators in the city. Wiener represented District 8, which includes the Castro and Noe Valley, from 2011 to 2016. He was then elected as San Franciscoโs state senator and has carved out a reputation for his work on housing, healthcare, and LGBTQ issues.
Chan was first elected to represent the Richmond in 2020. She has chaired the cityโs budget committee the past four years, working with politicians, city departments, unions, and city-funded organizations to finalize the budget.
In Juneโs primary, Wiener and Chan received 41 percent and 30 percent of the vote, respectively, to advance to the runoff. Saikat Chakrabarti, a tech millionaire and former staffer of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, received 18 percent of the vote and was eliminated.ย
Whoever wins the seat has the potential to stay in it for years and build up the seniority needed to join party leadership, or at least get a seat on Congressโs most powerful committees (like the ones that control money).
But freshman members of Congress typically have little power and choose to focus on a few key issues where they can actually make a difference.
For the first question, we asked: What is your No. 1 issue and what do you plan to do about it?
Connie Chan
- Job: San Francisco District 1 Supervisor
- Age: 47
- Residency: Homeowner, has lived in San Francisco since she was 13
- Transportation: Driving, public transit, and walking
- Education: Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis
- Languages: English, Cantonese, Mandarin
We have presented our Working Peopleโs Plan as a roadmap of what we need to do to expand healthcare, reform immigration, invest in education and tackle rising costs of living. But we know to successfully take on any of these issues, we need first to end the corruption of the Trump Administration and protect democracy.
As San Franciscoโs Budget Chair, Iโve successfully put $1.3 billion on reserve and funded safety net programs to safeguard San Franciscans from Trumpโs cuts to healthcare and food security, and his attacks on our immigrant and LGBTQ communities.
Read more here.
Endorsed by: Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, Congressman Ro Khanna, California Federation of Labor Unions, SEIU California, San Francisco Labor Council, Working Families Party, San Francisco Tenant’s Union … read more here.
Scott Wiener
- Job: San Francisco’s State Senator
- Age: 56
- Residency: Homeowner, moved to San Francisco in 1997
- Transportation: Public transit and walking
- Education: Bachelorโs degree from Duke, law degree from Harvard
- Languages: English, Spanish
My top priority is lowering cost of living for San Franciscans:
- Funding mixed-income social housing, expanding Section 8 rental vouchers, building homes more quickly
- Enacting Medicare for All to lower health care costs and expand access
- Scaling up transit to lower transportation costs
- National paid family leave
- Creating national low-cost childcare
- Scaling up cheap clean energy and modernizing our electric grid to end reliance on fossil fuels
Paid for by repealing the bulk of the Bush/Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
Iโm the only candidate in this race who has delivered on each of these priorities.
Endorsed by: The California Democratic Party, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sierra Club, San Francisco YIMBY, Grow SF, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, North Coast States Carpenters Union, Dolores Huerta … read more here.
Candidates are ordered alphabetically and rotated each week. Answers may be lightly edited for formatting, spelling, and grammar. If you have questions for the candidates, please let us know at io@missionlocal.com or yujie@missionlocal.com.
You can register to vote via the sf.gov website.
Scott Wiener is the clear choice for those of us who value fair housing, LGBTQ + trans rights, health care for all, etc.
He gets support from developers BECAUSE he supports more housing, not vice versa.
He’s always been eloquent and forthcoming in explaining his positions.
Chan, on the other hand, is the local dem machine candidate. It’s telling that so many former “progressives” have lined up behind her. I guess they like people who lack vision, and she’s a dependable lap dog.
Scott is the only true progressive in this race.
Senator Scott Wiener is, hands down, the superior candidate to represent CA D11 in Congress and has the track record to prove it.
He is the best legislator in the state and has the experience and collaborative skills to get legislation passed.
Connie Chan on the other hand hasn’t authored a single piece of significant legislation.
As a D1 resident she is my Supervisor and I can personally attest to the fact that she has been terrible with regard to her consistently anti-housing policies — the single most important issue of our time. She is a reactionary and represents the NIMBY status quo.
Accordingly she should not be allowed to advance further up the political ladder.
Scott Wiener for Congress — 100%!
scott wiener has actually accomplished things in the ca legislature.
Scott Weiner has no credibility to run on that list of progressive goals. His entire career has been spent writing legislation to benefit corporate real estate developers and AIPAC. His two biggest accomplishments in Sacramento include the total deregulation of housing development with the goal of unleashing a flood of luxury development and gentrification; and a virtual ban on teaching Palestine in public schools under the guise of โfighting antisemitism.โ Scott Weiner cannot be trusted !
Employers gentrify, not developers. You can stop gentrification by making it harder for high-skilled workers to be employed in the city or by expanding housing and transportation options so that we can all live here regardless of the size of one’s paycheck. Scott Weiner knows how to use the power of legislation to advance the latter option.
As a parent with children in SFUSD, I can’t imagine a concern further down the list of pressing issues than teaching Israel/Palestine relations. Nearly all of the parents I speak to agree, and the few that want it taught, don’t actually want it taught in an unbiased manner. Just “Israel bad aggressor, Palestine innocent victim”. Move on.
Scott Wiener is too dogmatic to be an effective senator. The housing legislation he wrote and/or co-sponsored is so focused upon punishing municipalities and โgetting NIMBY,โ especially San Francisco, that, even when giving him the benefit of the doubt regarding his motives (and I do not), resulted in a complete absence of review and oversight of what developers will be able to build. These laws allow developers to game the system by not building permitted projects for a few years so that they can escape any local zoning laws. Going against the will of Californiaโs voters, he is so extreme that he sought to exempt San Francisco from the California Coastal Commissionโs authority. Wiener is a smart man and a great advocate for human rights, but otherwise, he will not to be able to succeed in bringing people together like Nancy Pelosi has done over and over again. Iโm not sure what to expect from Chan, but she has my vote. We need effective leadership, not a brash legislator.