Scott Wiener wins Nancy Pelosi’s seat after Connie Chan concedes

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Supervisor Connie Chan conceded her race to succeed Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday afternoon after the latest vote drop showed her lagging behind state Sen. Scott Wiener by 10 points, a 44.5% to 55.5% tilt.

Wiener will be San Francisco’s next member of Congress, replacing Pelosi in the city’s first competitive congressional race in nearly four decades.

He will be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2027.

“After reviewing the results and the ballots remaining to be counted, while we expect the margin to narrow significantly, we do not have a clear path to victory,” wrote Chan, the District 1 supervisor, in a statement.

“I congratulate Scott Wiener on his election and wish him success in serving San Francisco. We must keep organizing, holding those in power accountable and bringing more people into the fight.”

Pelosi had endorsed Chan, and Chan thanked the speaker emerita for her trust in her and four decades of “extraordinary service that have strengthened San Francisco and our country.” She also thanked her staff, volunteers, supporters and labor unions.

“This election has ended, but our movement and our commitment to one another carries forward,” Chan wrote. “I will be right there with you.”

Wiener wrote that he was “humbled to carry forward the powerful legacy of this seat” and cited the “mandate for Democrats in Congress” after Tuesday’s national results. He named housing, universal health care, the “threat of artificial intelligence” and holding “Trump and his cronies accountable” as priorities.

“I want to thank Supervisor Connie Chan for a spirited and hard-fought campaign,” he wrote. “We’ve had our disagreements, but we share a deep love for San Francisco and for our country.”

Pelosi, for her part, said Chan “brought courage, conviction and a deep love” of the city to the race. She congratulated Wiener, and said her office was “ready to assist in the transition.”

Chan announced her withdrawal at about 5 p.m., a little over an hour after the San Francisco Department of Elections released its latest vote tallies Wednesday. Those showed some 60% of the expected vote in San Francisco had been counted. Chan’s percentage deficit had not changed since Tuesday night.

The campaign had seen only a slim path to victory on Tuesday evening. It evaporated Wednesday afternoon.

Wiener is one of California’s most prolific state legislators and his election is a vindication of his YIMBY urbanist ideals — and a four-to-one spending advantage. The forces backing Wiener outspent those backing Chan by at least $10 million.

Wiener was elected to the California State Senate in 2016 and quickly developed a reputation for big housing bills — and in recent years for AI regulation. In 2025, he championed the first AI safety bill of its kind, before the issue was mainstream.

But his campaign was also backed by hundreds of thousands of dollars from Anthropic and OpenAI employees. A super PAC largely funded by San Francisco-based Anthropic spent $3.5 million to elect him.

Wiener has chalked up his support from AI employees to workers who have broken with their bosses to support regulation.

AI was a dominant issue in debates, and Chan wielded it to blast Wiener, asking why voters should “trust” a candidate with so much backing from the industry. She labeled him a “corporate Democrat.”

That message apparently failed to land. Wiener parried by saying he was the only candidate in the race who had sparred with tech giants to regulate them, and pointed to his long legislative track record.

Chan’s campaign struggled to send a strong and coherent message to voters about why the prolific Wiener would not be a good fit for the job.

She also had an unusual coalition marrying Westside homeowners, Chinese-American voters, progressives, socialists and even some Republicans. However she struggled, according to early election results, to dominate precincts in the traditional “progressive crescent,” namely those in Bernal Heights and Haight-Ashbury.

Chan was popular in the Sunset, the Outer Richmond and the Mission District; Wiener was popular across the city.

Chan and Wiener often agreed on national issues and are to the left of Democrats elsewhere in the country. Both support Medicare for All and abolishing ICE, for example. Chan did try to hit Wiener for his stance on Israel and Palestine — he did not use the word “genocide” in reference to Gaza until earlier this year, after he was jeered at a debate.

But they diverged on local issues. They had very different approaches to housing, land-use and transit, San Francisco’s dominant issue, and Chan was firmly entrenched in the city’s progressive camp while Wiener was a standard-bearer for its moderate one.

Wiener told Mission Local in an interview earlier this year that he would like to join the House of Representatives committees on energy and commerce, and financial services.

Chan, for her part, drew on her immigrant and working-class roots throughout the campaign — and at its end.

On election night at a Mission District theater, Chan said her mother, who immigrated to Chinatown about three decades ago, would not have been able to conceive of her young, immigrant daughter coming close to winning a seat in Congress.

She thanked her supporters for believing that “someone who speaks with an accent can be a voice for working people.”