Meet the Candidates: San Francisco’s congressional race

Connie Chan

Scott would probably be better at fundraising in Congress. As for an achievement, I admire his ability to consistently draw attention to his agenda.

Scott Wiener

Connie Chan is definitely building relationships with the D.C. establishment, since she is raising significant donations from D.C. lobbyists, is spending significant time raising money in D.C, and is endorsed by quite a few establishment figures who have played a key role blocking Congress from regulating Big Tech and AI.

I appreciate that Supervisor Chan has worked with Mayor Lurie on the budget. I know how important that collaboration is. Unlike Chan’s strong allies and endorsers Aaron Peskin and Dean Preston, who thrived on conflict, she recognizes the importance of having a good relationship with the Mayor’s Office.

See Wiener’s full answer here.

Scott Wiener

Mayor Lurie is doing a phenomenal job shepherding our city’s strong recovery from the pandemic. The Mayor and I partner closely on street conditions and public safety, housing, and funding for Muni, BART, and Caltrain to prevent service cuts. The Mayor is an invaluable partner, and he has my support.

When I get to Congress, I’ll continue to partner with the Mayor to ensure San Francisco has the federal resources it needs to continue the city’s economic recovery, ensure our transit systems thrive, and build the affordable homes we so desperately need.

Connie Chan

As budget chair, I have worked with Mayor Daniel Lurie to protect essential services, strengthen our reserves against Trump’s cuts, and advance tenant protections. We have faced serious challenges and together provided strong, collaborative leadership at City Hall.

While we have not agreed on every decision, I appreciate his pragmatic approach, his willingness to listen and his focus on getting results. The mayor hasn’t announced whether he’ll seek reelection, so my priority is continuing our partnership and delivering for San Franciscans now.

Connie Chan

Democratic leaders have taken steps to oppose Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, but they have not consistently met this moment with the urgency to deliver solutions for working people.

I want to be part of a Democratic Party that can fight boldly and strategically against Trump’s attacks on our democracy, immigrants and economic security.

Any candidate for Speaker, including Hakeem Jeffries, will have to earn my vote by presenting a clear strategy to confront Trump, take on corporate power and deliver meaningful results for working families in San Francisco and across the nation.

Scott Wiener

While House Democrats have been quite unified in opposing Trump’s extremist agenda, Democrats have also made some real missteps. 

Ending last fall’s government shutdown without concrete steps to prevent healthcare cuts was a mistake, and Senate leadership should have done more to keep the caucus aligned. 

Democrats are facing a credibility crisis and need to do things differently. We must focus like a laser on using the power we have. 

I look forward to electing Hakeem Jeffries Speaker and pushing hard to ensure House leadership aggressively opposes Trump, passes a bold affordability agenda, and reins in AI corporations.

See Wiener’s full answer here.

Scott Wiener

I strongly support progressive taxation and have a long history of advocating for it. Everyone, including the wealthiest, must pay their fair share to support essential needs, such as health care, housing, child care, and clean energy investments. 

In Congress, I’ll fight to repeal the Bush and Trump tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations — tax cuts that have cost us nearly $10 trillion in federal revenue that supported critical needs. 

I support Elizabeth Warren’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax, which will create a wealth tax for people with more than $50 million in net worth and a higher wealth tax for those … read more here.

Connie Chan

Billionaires should not pay less in taxes than working families. They and the largest corporations should pay their fair share.

My Working People’s Plan would tax fortunes above $50 million, unwind Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, establish a corporate minimum tax, close carried-interest and offshore loopholes, and tax excessive CEO pay and companies that replace workers with AI.

Households earning $400,000 or less would receive expanded credits for childcare, education, healthcare and first-time home purchases. I’m also proud to be the only candidate in this race supporting Proposition 40, asking California billionaires to help offset Trump’s … read more here.

Connie Chan

D: San Francisco’s ballot process should be accessible to ordinary people, not just wealthy interests. Proposition D would quadruple the signatures required for voter initiatives, putting grassroots democracy out of reach for neighborhood groups, workers and community advocates.

I: I strongly support dedicated, long-term funding to build and preserve affordable housing. And we need reliable funding paired with a result-driven and adaptive housing strategy to build the most homes possible for working San Franciscans.

But transfer-tax revenue can be volatile and difficult as a dependable funding source. This is why I support Proposition C which will provide stable, growing investment … read more here.

Scott Wiener

Prop. D: The people’s power to place ballot measures on the ballot is a critical part of our democracy. San Francisco’s threshold to place ordinances on the ballot is dramatically lower than other cities in California. Prop. D strikes a reasonable balance, by ensuring the people’s power to place measures on the ballot, while more closely aligning our threshold with other progressive cities.

Prop. I: This measure is complicated and both helps and harms the construction of new housing. I’ve led statewide on reforming our broken housing system, so that we can build the homes we desperately need. I support … read more here. Wiener also elaborated on Prop. G, Prop. H and the regional transit measure.

Scott Wiener

We should avoid hampering technological progress unnecessarily, but we must not repeat the mistakes of social media and data privacy, where we allowed a technology to go completely unregulated, thus harming the public. I’m the only candidate in this race who’s shown the ability and determination to take on Big Tech and pass real regulation with my AI safety law.

We must avoid a data center Wild West, where they locate in inappropriate locations and raise electric bills. However, a blanket data center moratorium could undermine AI regulation.

AI companies will, and already are, building data centers overseas, which removes potential leverage.

See Wiener’s full answer here.

Connie Chan

America can lead the world in AI without asking working people and communities to bear the costs of that leadership.

That’s why I’m fighting for a nationwide data center moratorium until Congress establishes comprehensive rules governing the economic, environmental, and safety impacts of AI. And I’m proud to be the only candidate in this race to sign the AI Pact, which pledges a people-first approach to AI and accountability for the companies developing and deploying it.

We also cannot allow politicians to claim they support AI regulation while being bankrolled by Big Tech billionaires and corporate special interests.

See Chan’s full answer here.

Connie Chan

1. Seawall and waterfront resilience: Invest in strengthening the Embarcadero and surrounding infrastructure against flooding, sea-level rise, and other climate threats.
2. Downtown rail extension and subway expansion: Complete the connection between Caltrain and the Salesforce Transit Center and advance the Geary/19th Avenue subway to bring high-capacity rail to San Francisco’s west side, connecting more residents to jobs and opportunities.
3. Citywide emergency firefighting water system and electrical grid upgrade: Modernize San Francisco’s aging water and electrical infrastructure to ensure reliable power and adequate water pressure for firefighting during emergencies, strengthening our city’s resilience and protecting our neighborhoods.

Scott Wiener

1. Raising the Embarcadero to protect it — and the Muni/BART tunnels — from sea level rise
2. The downtown extension of Caltrain and high-speed rail
3. Two subway extensions (extending the Central Subway north to Fisherman’s Wharf, and building a subway down Geary Boulevard to Ocean Beach)

Scott Wiener

Democrats must use all leverage we have — whether in the majority or minority — to stop Trump’s destructive agenda. That means Democrats unifying to block bad budgets. For example, we must block DHS budgets that send unchecked money to ICE/Border Patrol or fund private prisons.

I’ll push for laws to ban private prisons, abolish ICE, make DOJ more independent of the President (no longer his personal law firm) and authorize lawsuits against ICE/Border Patrol for abuses. Even if Republicans block them, these bills will put every member on record and give Democrats a roadmap for when we retake the majority.

Connie Chan

I will work with colleagues on the House Oversight Committee and other committees of jurisdiction to investigate abuses of power, subpoena documents and testimony, and hold Donald Trump accountable to the law.

I will also work to pass legislation that strengthens checks and balances, protects voting rights, and uses tools like the Congressional Review Act to overturn harmful executive actions and regulations.

Even in the minority, members can hold hearings, force votes, work with inspectors general, and use every opportunity to expose Administration misconduct. Sunshine is one of Congress’s strongest checks on executive power, and I will use it relentlessly.

Connie Chan

We have presented our Working People’s 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 Francisco’s Budget Chair, I’ve successfully put $1.3 billion on reserve and funded safety net programs to safeguard San Franciscans from Trump’s cuts to healthcare and food security, and his attacks on our immigrant and LGBTQ communities.

Read more here.

Scott Wiener

My top priority is lowering cost of living for San Franciscans:

1. Funding mixed-income social housing, expanding Section 8 rental vouchers, building homes more quickly
2. Enacting Medicare for All to lower health care costs and expand access
3. Scaling up transit to lower transportation costs
4. National paid family leave
5. Creating national low-cost childcare
6. 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.

I’m the only candidate in this race who has delivered on each of these priorities.

Scott Wiener

It is one of the factors, for sure. Over the last 50 years, we’ve made it systematically harder and harder to build housing. We have put more and more restrictions, more and more rules, at times arbitrary rules. 

For example, you used to be able to build multi-unit apartments pretty much anywhere in San Francisco. And then in the ’70s, the city downzoned and overwhelmingly banned new apartment buildings. Today, you can go around Noe Valley or Pacific Heights or the Sunset or other neighborhoods that are largely low-density and you see a 20- or 30-unit apartment building that was built before the downzoning. We should have zoning, but when zoning is too restrictive, that is a government regulation that limits the amount of housing you can build. 

And then there’s permitting. If the permitting process is either onerous, or designed to allow anyone with an ax to grind, or anyone who’s opposed, to turn your permit process into a five-year morass, that fuels the housing crisis.

Connie Chan

I believe that there is a difference between efficiency of government versus regulation of government. Just because a process is not efficient doesn’t mean that we should not have regulation. We can have regulation, like zoning and planning, and be efficient. We just need to do better with issuing the permits and evaluating the project more efficiently and in a timely fashion.

Connie Chan

No, I believe that if your demand is affordable housing, then your supply has to be affordable housing. At the end of the day, when it comes to luxury housing, housing that is just driven by the market and that is being built and provided with the sole purpose of the biggest margin of profit, then you end up only going to be able to be in the hands of those people who can afford it. 

This is a moment that government does have a role, to recognize that almost any housing that we now build in San Francisco, if we want it to be affordable to working people, that’s including people who are middle-income, it will have to be subsidized either during the time of land purchase or during the time it’s being built and developed, or even at the time that it’s being sold or leased.

Scott Wiener

Yes, absolutely, we need all of the above. Mixed-income housing is incredibly important, but it’s not going to be the entirety of the solution, it’s one piece of it. 

One of the worst parts of the housing policy debates is when different kinds of housing get pitted against each other, as if you have to pick only one type of housing that you like, and therefore you have to hate all the other forms of housing. I find that to be really counterproductive. 

Historically in this country, the private sector has built the vast majority of new housing. Even if we significantly ramp up public investment in housing, which I very much want to do, the private sector is always going to play a significant role. 

Scott Wiener

There’s a Republican member of congress, Kevin Kiley, who recently became “declined to state” (Kiley switched his party affiliation from Republican to independent), as his district got blown up in redistricting. I don’t know if he’s going to be in Congress when I get there because his district got dismantled with Prop. 50, but he was in the state assembly during my time in the state senate. We have huge disagreements on many issues, but on housing, he’s rock solid. He was on one of the committees that hears housing bills in the assembly. He was always like, he got it, he voted the right way, he was helpful. Someone like that who is good on an issue that matters in his community and my community is someone I can work with.

There’s also a guy in Southern California, Jay Obernolte, conservative Republican, we have many disagreements. We have disagreements on technology policy. He’s a tech person. He made quite a bit of money with a gaming company. When he went to Congress, we had conversations about AI policy and he checked in with me to get my feedback on ideas. Again, we don’t always agree, but he is a thoughtful person and someone whom I’ll be able to work with.

Connie Chan

It is important to have partnerships with members of the California delegation. There are issues that face our state that are non-partisan like healthcare and education, aid for disasters like wildfire, and labor and workforce issues.

I would work with any Republicans who are willing to fight for working people in their districts and have a track record of opposing those cuts (many of the districts hardest hit by Medicaid cuts are Republican). There are people who are wildly different from me who may share my concerns about housing affordability or breaking corporate monopolies — I would start with common ground and whip the votes to deliver results.

Connie Chan

I have never been afraid to confront leadership when I disagree — you can ask board presidents former and current, Aaron Peskin and Rafael Mandelman, about that. In general, I believe in direct communication and building intellectually honest and respectful relationships. But I will utilize every tool in my toolbox to stand up and continue to be a voice for San Francisco.

Scott Wiener

If house leadership takes a position that harms San Francisco, I’m going to stand with San Francisco, always.

I have gone to the mat to make sure that we’re bringing transit money into the Bay Area for Muni, Bart, Caltrain, AC Transit. At times where it was very lonely for me to do that and I did not have support and I just kept pounding my head against the wall. If you pound your head against the wall long enough, eventually you’re going to break through the wall, and that’s what I was able to do on transit funding. That’s just how I roll.

Scott Wiener

The U.S. Supreme Court for 50 years has interpreted the First Amendment to allow a tidal wave of money from wealthy people and corporations. We need to change the Constitution or change the Supreme Court, and I support expanding the Supreme Court to get rid of these ridiculous rulings. We should overturn Citizens United. We should have smart campaign finance laws.

But it goes beyond Citizens United. It was in the ’70s and the Buckley case that the Supreme Court said that wealthy people have a First Amendment right to provide unlimited self-funding for their campaigns.

We’re seeing that in this race. We need public financing of campaigns.

Connie Chan

It’s obvious that we have uneven playing fields. I mean look at this campaign. You all wrote about it — I’m backed by working people: hotel workers, dishwashers, teachers and nurses. We must know that these are elections, they are not auctions.

We absolutely need to overturn Citizens United and I’d go further and say we should have publicly financed campaigns like we do here in San Francisco. A candidate shouldn’t have to have deep-pocketed donors or a tech fortune to run for Congress.

Connie Chan

I would co-sponsor the Block the Bombs Act with the understanding that the Netanyahu government, at this moment, has violated human rights and committed war crimes ,and the United States should not be aiding that effort.

Scott Wiener

The Block the Bombs Act is aligned with where I am. The one caveat I would say is that the Block the Bombs Act, right now, is permanent. I think that it should be for a set period of time, and then reviewed to see if the situation has changed in terms of the Israeli government. 

As a Jew, I believe strongly in the critical importance of Israel’s existence as a Jewish homeland that matters to Jews globally. Israel matters to me. That’s why it’s particularly painful to me that we have a government in Israel that is so extremist and messianic. That includes people who are just vile, in my view, such as [Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Bezalel] Smotrich. My hope, as a Jew, is that in the future, Israel will have a different kind of government that’s committed to peace and democracy. 

Scott Wiener

The U.S. should support Taiwan’s defense, and I support the current U.S. policy of selling defensive arms to Taiwan.

Connie Chan

The U.S. has a longstanding one-China policy since 1979, and that also comes with the Taiwan Relations Act in the same year. The goal is that the United States will always act as an agent for peace. That is the position that I’m going to be consistent with. 

There is no reason to impose an arms embargo on Taiwan at the moment. Arms sales to Taiwan from the U.S. government has been a very longstanding policy that has been affirmed by both Republican and Democratic presidents.

I was born in Hong Kong. I went to grade school in Taiwan. My family roots clearly trace back to China. I think, on a personal level, that I do appreciate this longstanding U.S. one-China policy, and also the Taiwan Relations Act since 1979.

I still have family in Hong Kong. I have friends in Taiwan, and definitely still have family back in China. I know that everyday people living in Hong Kong and Taiwan and China would always hope for peace, and would always hope for a stabilized economy where they can actually travel and visit. 

To somehow think of them as just simply one space and not the other, that there’s no linkage of people, that people don’t travel, and that people don’t do business or have family and friends all across, that’s not us. We have all those linkages all across. For me, that’s deeply personal.

Connie Chan

No. The United States, in terms of what we have gained from the agreement, has consistently projected less than what we thought it was going to be. I would be in a position to support the renegotiation of NAFTA, and particularly to ensure that labor standards are consistent across the board.

Scott Wiener

I think that NAFTA has had some benefits, for sure. But it’s also had some real detriments, in terms of so much manufacturing leaving the US. We’ve seen communities that have gone into free-fall. NAFTA went beyond where it should have gone.

There was the reform back in 2018, 2019, and NAFTA should be subject to reevaluation. I’m not saying get rid of it, but we want to make sure that American workers are being treated fairly and environmental standards, etc..

But with all of that said, Canada and Mexico are critical trading partners for the US, and we should not be engaging in firehose trade wars with them.

Scott Wiener

I support dense housing at the Marina Safeway site. The current proposal is reasonable, and the city has already zoned the site for 550 homes, even without state law. The city has long planned for dense housing here.

I’m confident the developer will work with the City to refine the project to be the best possible. It’s also important to work toward keeping the Safeway open in some form during construction, or at least minimizing the length of the closure. Supermarket closures significantly impact residents, so minimizing the length of any closure is critical.

Connie Chan

This is the Sacramento version of housing that destroys our neighborhoods. As this project has made clear, State Sen. Scott Wiener and legislators in Sacramento have put developers in the driver’s seat and we are all just along for the ride.

We need housing that’s affordable for working people and families. The proposed development at the Marina Safeway will only produce 10% — 86 total — of affordable units, out of almost 900.

I’ve advocated and negotiated for housing projects, including 100% affordable senior housing and market-rate family housing with affordable units on site. I’ve worked with non-profit housing developers and property owners on projects that have significant development, protect our small business, are built with prevailing wage and labor standards and preserve our history. That’s what we accomplished at the Alexandria Theatre. We can build the housing our neighborhoods and communities need.

There’s potential to rethink these Safeway sites in a way that truly serves San Franciscans, and builds housing that our teachers, nurses, firefighters and construction workers can afford.

Unfortunately due to state laws, it no longer matters what San Francisco needs — or our residents want.

Connie Chan

I am supportive of the overpaid CEO tax. Not only that, I, in fact, had our own version of it earlier this year. But we withdrew when we began to realize our labor partners had a very similar proposal, so we thought that signature-gathering is absolutely the way to go. It’s a lower barrier (50+1 percent vs. 66.7 percent) and I always think signature-gathering is in the San Francisco style. It’s very community-driven and allows conversations with voters.

It addresses overpaid CEOs — CEOs paid 100 times or more the median income employee of their company. It’s about, how do we address the gap between the CEOs and the workers? It really is a significant gap. We have seen, on the federal level, billionaires and corporations are getting tax breaks. At the same time, we’re getting health care cuts, food security cuts and education cuts from the federal government.

I want to see us revert to pre-Prop. M (of 2024) and make sure these corporations are paying their fair share in San Francisco.

Scott Wiener

Our city, like our state, faces a financial crisis in part because of Trump’s massive health care cuts that are paying for tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. I have a long track record supporting progressive taxation — for example, I support increasing the state corporate tax, the extension of California’s 2012 income tax increase, and elimination of most of the Bush and Trump mega tax cuts. I am also very focused on the regional and local public transit revenue measures that are so essential for our transit systems. I do not support Props C and D.

While I understand and respect the effort to generate revenue for city services, the gross receipts tax contained in Prop. D was brokered as part of Prop. M in 2024 — a consensus business tax reform that resulted from extensive negotiation, including by labor and business and for which I campaigned. I don’t support revisiting that negotiated tax measure.