Climate activist, billionaire, philanthropist, and former gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer endorsed state Sen. Scott Wiener in the race to succeed Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in Congress.
“We have two good candidates for Congress in San Francisco, but I’m voting for @Scott_Wiener,” Steyer said in a tweet today, calling Wiener “a tireless fighter for the city” and citing his efforts to combat climate change and bring down costs for Californians.
Steyer’s brand as a progressive funder could help Wiener establish credibility and expand his coalition to include more progressive voters — a major part of his competitor Supervisor Connie Chan’s base.
“Water is wet. Sky is blue. Billionaires for Wiener. Although it is always nice to see the owners publicly endorse management,” Chan’s campaign spokesperson Ian Krager said in a statement.
Krager also pointed to Chan’s platform calling for lower energy costs and utility reforms.
Also today, another progressive made an endorsement: Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich endorsed Chan, becoming the highest-ranking current or former U.S. official apart from Pelosi to weigh in in this race.
“The concentration of wealth in America has become a concentration of political power. … In San Francisco, that divide is forcing too many people out of the city they call home,” Reich said in a statement.
Chan, who has support from both the California Federation of Labor Unions and the San Francisco Labor Council, has made taxing the billionaires a core part of her campaign messaging, and is the only candidate who supports Proposition 40.
Reich’s reputation as a prominent critic of concentrated wealth and big corporations could reinforce those credentials. He has a combined over 10 million followers across social media platforms. He is a public policy emeritus professor at UC Berkeley, joining the university in 2006 and becoming emeritus in 2023.
Robert “fought against 10 units of housing being built in his neighborhood” Reich supports Connie Chan? Yeah we would have guessed!
Reich said something like it would detract from the residential/single family neighborhood he had lived in for 15 years. Amazingly tone deaf.
Of course the arch-NIMBY (and Pelosi-sycophant) Robert Reich would endorse his fellow NIMBY, Connie Chan.
My letter to Dr. Reich
Dear Dr. Reich,
Connie Chan represents everything that is retrograde and wrong about San Francisco’s housing policies. She has always opposed market rate housing and only supports government subsidized housing. Which is a nice idea I guess, but since housing costs $1M a unit to build, just housing the homeless along would cost over $7B. And that’s just the homeless. And just in San Francisco. There is a long tradition of so-called Progressives opposing housing. It started with Calvin Welch got the whole city downzoned in 1972 and has continued on in the careers of Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, and now Connie Chan. I have lived in San Francisco for 33 years and watched friends and family forced out by wave after wave of gentrification. And the do nothing policies of the fake Progressives. All of course who own their own homes and have benefited personally from the housing crises they fostered.
The evidence is overwhelming that the only solution for a shortage is to build more. Connie Chan and her crew are personally responsible for the fact that my daughter, who is off in college, might be able to move back to the home of birth; the place that she loves so well. She can live with me for a while. But what kind of life is that: she can’t even afford to share a house with roommates, which is what I did when I first moved here as a broke queer young man in 1993.
Anyway, you put your stake in the ground. You claim to stand against billionaires but support Nancy Pelosi and Willie Brown’s hand picked candidate and the darling of the Pac Heights fundraiser set. Perhaps you have been fooled by her rhetoric. But she is no friend of the working class and even less a friend of anyone who does not already have a home here: either by purchase or by a rent controlled apartment. Scott favors Elizabeth Warren’s ultra millionaire tax which would tax wealth above $50M at 2% and and an extra 4% on billionaires. Yearly. And more importantly, his record of success means that he will actually get things done.
El Monstro,
Well stated!
If you’re “for” so many important issues, but don’t do any meaningful work for those issues, does it matter much? Vote for Wiener!
Ian Krager must be talking about Connie Chan. I am with the Chronicle on this one; between Chan and Wiener, it’s not even a choice. Chan may get there one day, but her campaign was founded on, and deeply relies on, Nancy Pelosi playing the adult in the room. While Scott Wiener is the adult.
Connie Chan’s legislative agenda in SF has been to maintain property values for incumbent owners. Not at all my idea of “progressive.”
Reich is dead on about concentration of wealth and political power. SF is exhibit A. The priority agenda is unbridled market rate housing growth because it fulfills the demand for business expansion and real estate profits. No problem with businesses expansion – great problem to have actually – but most of our new housing needs to be affordable for average and lower income people. Connie is more focused on solving for that outcome. Chan for congress.
Steyer for Weiner tells us everything we need to know about both him and Weiner.
El Monstro, Scott’s success in the state legislature is due to his doing the bidding of Real Estate, Building and Developer investors (check the records). In the last year alone, he took more than twice as much from the above as any other state legislators – he didn’t need the $ he was in a safe seat but he gave to other candidates and they voted him into leadership. They vote for his legislation because they owe their elections to him. But he owes Real Estate Industry and Building Industry so he has sponsored legislation that pre-empts local govt from making planning decisions, that eliminates environmental safety requirements, in 2025 as chair of Budget Committee he slipped a bill into the budget in the last 48 hours that dismantled much of CEQA and allowed advanced manufacturing with no environmental review. Scott’s housing legislation has allowed for local residents to possibly lose their homes/apartments if they are in single family or duplexes that are near public transit, so developers can build “market rate large apartment houses” – with a small fraction being “affordable.” Market rate $4,000 for a 1 bdr. More gentrification by millionaire tech bros, moving families out to where? In contrast as Supervisor, Connie Chan voted against her constituents losing their rent controlled house, she voted to protect the residents home owners and renters and small businesses in the neighborhood in her district. She has the best record for protecting renters among the Supervisor, perhaps because after coming her with her single mother and brother she lived in a small rent controlled apartment and had compassion for people. Scott talks about needing housing and ending homelessness, yet he opposed Prop C in 2018 which affordable housing and tenants advocates worked to put on the ballot – it would have produced affordable rental housing.
More recently AI and tech companies asked Scott to carry “safety legislation” that they wrote – to level the playing field and protect their investments, Even Elon Musk liked Scott’s first AI legislation which Newsom vetoed, AND they have contributed millions of dollars to Scott. In fact in this Congressional race, a Tech/AI super PAC has given over $3.5 million dollars and produced hit pieces against Connie Chan.
US Senator has appealed to Tech multi-billionaires and their companies to not use AI in elections. Maryland passed legislation prohibiting AI from being used in campaigns, yet the first ad Scott produced created a bot using the image and voice of Connie Chan and it answered questions with lies but with a heavy Chinese accent. Scott was forced to take it down by public outcry. It was the kind of racist sexist thing Trump would do. Now Steyer or Reich. I don’t trust billionaires who self fund their campaigns like Steyer did, he’s a nice guy but his money funding himself in the Governor’s race was disgusting. He tried to buy votes not earn them. Steyer has no experience federal government service – he’s an ultra wealthy successful businessman. Robert Reich a former Secretary of Labor – he’s a professor and an excellent person to judge of who has the integrity to not be bought and who will best serve in Congress. CA has several members of Congress who ran as County Supervisors – they are in tune with the residents of the district: former Nor Cal Congress-members: Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Anna Eshoo, Jackie Speier, Mike Honda, Sam Farr, current Representatives Mark DeSaulnier and Zoe Lofgren are examples of Supervisors who we sent to Congress. Connie Chan came here as a young teenager, learned English in SF public high school, attended UC Davis and returned to SF to work in the Community. In the last 20 years she has worked for members of the Board of Supervisors in two districts and then ran in her own district so she knows the entire city. She is a person of integrity, she is does not take corporate PAC money, she’s supported by labor, by residents who want to live where they work, in SF: nurses and teachers and firefighters, small business owners, service industry employees – not the tech AND crypto billionaires. Scott claims he supports US Senator Warren’s ultra rich tax. Perhaps he should support the companion legislation in the House introduced by one of Connie Chan’s endorsers: Rep Pramila Jaypal – perhaps he doesn’t realize he will be voting in the House not the Senate….. Connie has accomplished much in her life as an immigrant, as a working mother who cared for her own mother as she aged. She led the unanimous passage of the City’s budget restoring $28 million cut by the mayor to vital services and job restorations adding $1.3billion in reserve funds against federal cuts and creating a $400million reserve to protect healthcare, food and housing from potential federal cuts, she restored millions for LGBT health cuts including, rental subsidies, and housing/legal services, transgender youth services and more. Important now that ICE is patrolling our city, she introduced a supplemental budget for immigrant legal services defense, aid and education. She supported 100% affordable housing developments like senior housing at 4200 Geary. She proposed gap filling strategies during city deficits and more. Connie hold the values of San Franciscans, and is accuntable to them. She sees what the wealth gap that former Labor Secretary Robert Reich talks about right here in San Francisco and wants to prevent it from worsening. I agree with him.
OK Boomer,
Your TLDR diatribe is 100% NIMBY Nonsense® — like this gem:
“She supported 100% affordable housing developments like senior housing at 4200 Geary”
The only reason that project — the only significant housing development in her district during her entire tenure — was able to be expeditiously approved and constructed is because of Scott Wiener’s pro-housing legislation SB35 — which Connie Chan opposed (and continues to oppose)!
I actually voted for Steyer for governor because of his progressive positions at the time. But endorsing real estate/tech lapdog Wiener? P.U.!