Overnight, AI has become a central issue in the San Francisco congressional race, and at Thursday’s forum, both candidates made the case for why they would be the better regulator.
State Sen. Scott Wiener pointed to the AI regulation he has already passed. SB 53, approved in 2025, protects whistleblowers at AI companies, requires companies to report safety incidents to the state, and requires AI developers to publish their safety plans.
“I was the first state legislator in the country to introduce legislation to regulate AI for safety,” Wiener said to the audience at KQED’s headquarters in the Mission District. “It’s a strong law and it’s just the beginning.”
Supervisor Connie Chan tried to undercut that experience by calling Wiener untrustworthy because an AI-backed PAC is supporting his campaign.
“Can we actually trust politicians who are bankrolled by the AI industries to also write legislation to regulate the industries? The answer is no, we cannot,” she said.
While the candidates largely agreed on what kind of AI regulation is needed — independent safety checks and human oversight — the topic remained front and center at the debate co-hosted by KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle, and moderated by their reporters Marisa Lagos, Scott Shafer and Joe Garofoli.
Answers to four of the 10 questions touched on AI, offering a strong indication that it will continue to take center stage, joining the campaign’s earlier playbooks that focused on searing criticism of Donald Trump, addressing the affordability crisis, the cruelty of the American healthcare system, and pleas for progressive taxation.
The pivot began on Sept. 8 when AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, accusing AI labs of “gambling with our lives.” His post on X went viral, setting off a news cycle in which, all the sudden, government regulation of AI became the biggest political story in America.
Chan and Wiener’s campaigns quickly adjusted. Wiener trained his canvassers to be fluent in the minutia of AI safety, while Chan took to social media, posting her “late-night thoughts on the future of AI.”
On Thursday night, Wiener defended the $500,000 that Public First Action gave to a PAC supporting him. The Anthropic-funded organization advocates for AI regulation and was founded in opposition to other AI-industry PACs, which spend against candidates who want regulation.
If anything, Wiener said, that support is evidence that he will effectively regulate AI. “The people who are most focused on AI safety, they’re supporting me because they know that I have done the work to regulate AI, and that I will do the work in Congress,” Wiener said.
Chan also accused Wiener of hiding who had shaped the amendments to his AI law, calling the final version “watered-down.”
Wiener tried to pass a more stringent AI-safety bill in 2024, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed that bill.
“To refer to SB 53 as ‘watered down’ is a joke,” Wiener retorted. “Multiple states have literally cut and pasted this law and then built on it. … Other states don’t think it’s watered down. All the tech companies that tried to undermine and sabotage SB 53 don’t think it’s watered down.”
“It’s very easy when you’ve never lifted a finger for AI safety regulation to armchair-quarterback it,” Wiener added. “That’s fine. That’s politics. But I’m proud of the work that we’ve done.”
AI also came up because of the chatbot that Wiener’s campaign released in August. It was intended to be a parody of Chan that highlighted her history of opposing housing and transit projects.
But Chan accused it of sexism for “putting words in my mouth,” and racism because prompting it with “accent” made it say, “my San Francisco accent is so thick I can barely understand myself.”
Amid criticism, Wiener took the bot down, and at Thursday’s debate, he apologized to Chan.
“It was a terrible mistake, which is why we took it down, and why I apologize,” he said.
Chan and Wiener also responded to a question about ensuring that the United States stays competitive with China in the AI race.
Chan rejected the premise of the question.
“We should not allow the AI industries to pit our country, United States, with other countries in the name of competition,” she said. “It should not be in the framework of competition, but the framework of protecting our future, protecting our humanity, and protecting our workforce.”
Wiener called for cooperation between the United States and China.
“We do not need some mega arms race where we’re just like, ‘Who’s going to be the first to potentially melt down the world?’” he said.
He compared the situation to the U.S. and Soviet Union reaching agreements on nuclear arms, even though “that was a much more contentious relationship.”
“China is a rival, economically and otherwise, and that’s okay, that is normal, but we have an obligation to work with China on AI safety, on climate, on so many different issues,” Wiener added.
Though much of the debate focused on AI, Lagos also made the candidates tighten their positions on military aid to Israel.
“In the past, you’ve said defensive military aid, such as funding for the Iron Domem should be packaged with humanitarian aid in Israel. Your campaign has said recently that you support a full arms embargo. Which is it?” Lagos asked Chan.
“Because it has changed,” Chan said, explaining that, to her, it’s become clear that even when aid is conditional on a ceasefire or humanitarian aid, the Israeli government is “time and again, violating the rights and committing a genocide and pushing forward the apartheid state.”
Wiener, for his part, was asked whether he would be open to restarting aid to Israel if a new government came into power, which he has previously said should be considered.
“There’s an election happening in about a month there. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition loses, does your position change at all in terms of what aid you think America should be selling or giving to Israel?” Lagos asked.
This time, Wiener said no. “This government, and it’s not just Netanyahu, is an absolute abomination, in my view, in terms of what it has inflicted on Gaza, in terms of Israel empowering settler violence and land grabs in the West Bank.”
Wiener lied about his support for the Gaza Ceasefire Resolution in 2023. In fact, he held a protest against it. He is silencing public school teachers and students from speaking about Palestine. Amnesty Int’l called Wiener’s AB715 legislation “chilling”, “shameful“ and “dangerous”.
Wiener runs a campaign like he is Trump or George Bush (both of them). Spend tons of money from huge donations by billionaires, real estate, AI, and other industry interests. Go very negative on the opponent. Ask for forgiveness after running bigoted ads via a chatbot and claim ignorance. You’d think there were big differences in policy between him and Connie Chan. He did the same thing running against Jane Kim in 2018. There is something wrong with his anything-goes campaigns and unbridled ambition.
Weiner used to be a decent guy, but when he left town, everything was suddenly just talk and even the things he did in the past really failed (eg. mission stuff). An now he’s gone full on negative. He put up that AI site – then took it down. I’ve literally gotten a stack of anti-chan flyers sent to my house, but never a positive weiner and never a negative weiner. Some a-hole has been spray painting “vote conne chen” around the area (eg Pacific and Jones busstop), which couldn’t be a more obvious weiner tactic and I certainly hope it’s just his supporters and not even with his tacit approval.
Anyway. She’s not exactly exciting, but she’s pretty smart and if we don’t like her, we can easily vote her out in 2 years. If Weiner gets that job, he’s going to do nothing but become more and more entrenched; he’ll be there until he’s as old as pelosi.
Whatever. On the whole, I am pretty disappointed with Weiner going from a really good guy who’d come to town halls and support the little guy, to this weird Israel supporting AI guy who’s biggest supporters are billionaires and centi-millionaires. Where the biggest part of his campaing is negative on his opponents instead of “look at how I did _____ and the result was _____”.
Speculation about why Nancy Pelosi backs a radical such as Connie Chan, who is
against Capitalist such as Paul Pelosi and others, Weiner declared his candidacy before Nancy Pelosi announced her intent to retire.
Ms. Pelosi believes that she has divine right to ordain her successor, as did Sala Burton when she (Sala) named the aforementioned Nancy Pelosi, who was a mega-fund raiser for the Burton Machine, to occupy the Congressional Seat which the then fatally ill Mrs. Burton was occupying.
Ms. Pelosi never forgets a perceived slight. If Weiner wins, it would be a bad omen
for the Burton-Brown-Harris machine. And, especially for Nancy Pelosi.
Good Lord, Chan is so utterly unqualified to represent CA D11 in Congress.
She’s been an unqualified disaster as my Supervisor in D1.
Time to end her political “career” once and for all.
Agreed. Weiner is the clear winner.
He is trustworthy, and gets the job done.
Chan has no experience and just showed up a few yrs ago. Weiner has been fighting for constituents and PASSING LEGISLATION THAT HELPS SAN FRANCISCANS & Californians.
It’s embarrassing that Chan has to stoop to undercut him when she’s basically done nothing.
Go Scott!
I don’t agree with all his policies, but he always try to balance needs and takes a ridiculous amount of flack for being a decent, hard working public servant.