Would anyone confuse Daniel Lurie and Saikat Chakrabarti’s political messaging? Probably not. But their playbooks for winning elected office? That you could confuse.
Chakrabarti, one of the three leading candidates to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi, appears to have adopted Lurie’s winning formula: lavish self-financing, a sentiment of anti-status quo and a robust ground game with a battalion of paid canvassers — and especially a record number of Chinese-language canvassers.
Lurie enjoyed an exceptionally well-staffed Chinese field team — 23 paid canvassers at its peak — who brought him dominant support from Asian voters and, ultimately, a mayoral victory.
Chakrabarti has taken a page from that campaign: He now runs one of the largest paid canvasser operations in San Francisco history, with over 250 paid canvassers, including two dozen who speak Cantonese, according to the campaign.
By contrast, the other leading candidates, Sen. Scott Wiener and Supervisor Connie Chan say they have no paid staff whose sole job is canvassing, with this work largely undertaken by volunteers.
Both Lurie and Chakrabarti kicked off their campaigns with low name recognition, and are largely free from the constraints of endorsements — unshackled by meeting the expectations of those who endorsed them. They even share the same headquarters at 800 Irvine St., and Chakrabarti voted for Lurie in 2024.
Also reminiscent of Lurie’s campaign: There seems to be no ceiling for centimillionaire Chakrabarti, whose largely self-funded effort stands at $1.77 million as of Dec. 31, 2025, including $1.47 million of loans to himself. (The next campaign finance filings deadline is April 15.) He is now spending tens of thousands of dollars every week on ads alone.
Chakrabarti’s numbers game
Eager to do a lot of walking? Do you speak Cantonese? Chakrabarti’s campaign is hiring and paying $45 an hour. “If I spoke Cantonese, I’d go walk a precinct with this guy,” political consultant Jim Ross said.
His English-speaking canvassers make between $30 and $35, also higher than the typical $25 to $30 range in San Francisco campaigns, according to political consultant James Stearns.
“This is no different than tech companies outpaying each other for tech workers,” said Thomas Li, president of the Edwin M. Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club. Li led the Asian and Pacific Islander outreach for former mayor Ed Lee’s 2011 campaign. “There’s a limited supply of talent and you really want the best to build your team.”
The toughest soldiers are those who have worked previous campaigns, and still commit to the grueling work. They have thick skin and don’t mind having doors slammed in their faces or being yelled at when they approach voters, Li said.
One of Chakrabarti’s two Cantonese field organizers, Albert Lam, echoes the point. “It’s a very niche supply,” said the 23-year-old, a UCLA graduate with an economics BA. With the high hourly wage, “it’s not hard to find motivated people,” said Lam.
But he needs more: workers who really resonate with Chakrabarti’s platform, and are willing to see things from voters’ perspective.
Culture is a challenge. Team Chakrabarti needs to find people from the Chinese American community — one that often feels unheard — who care about politics, believe the government can work better for voters and are passionate enough to walk around to talk about it, said Lam.
The campaign gathered its soldiers through the job search website Indeed, paper posters and, most importantly, word of mouth (the pay is irresistibly good). Some canvassers still quit after walking up too many hills, but those who stay include troopers who have deep community ties, including some multilinguals who speak not only Cantonese and English, but also Mandarin, Toisanese and Spanish.
“The core of Lurie’s strategy was recognizing the Chinese vote was important and important enough to invest heavily into,” said Jeremy Lee, president of the Rose Pak Asian American Club. “Saikat is doing that strategy as well, given that he’s paying top dollar for canvassers who very well might not be good.” Chinese-American voters account for more than one-sixth of the electorate.
The rule of thumb with canvassers is that they can reach between six and 12 people an hour, according to political consultant Ross. That means that with over 200 dedicated canvassers — a historical number in city political history — it’s possible to saturate a mid-sized city like San Francisco with door knockers at least once in the two months leading up to the June primary.
Chakrabarti’s paid canvassers usually work 3 to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends. The over 250 paid canvassers — a growing number, and there are also a legion of volunteer canvassers — are technically able to cover all the 446,000 voters in California’s 11th congressional district. But that still doesn’t mean Chakrabarti is locked in for a top-two spot in the June primary.
“Basically what he’s buying is a couple percentage points,” said Ross, because many of those canvassers’ attempts will be met with empty homes, voters who completely disregard this election, and voters who’ve already decided to support other candidates. Even in the most professionally managed teams, there’ll be canvassers who “go to a coffee shop and read a book” during work hours, Ross added.
But it could be worthwhile, since only the top two finishers advance to November’s general election. The race for second place in June may come down to as few as a couple thousand, or even a couple hundred, votes.
Different approaches from Wiener and Chan
Paying 250 canvassers top-dollar is a luxury the other two leading candidates, Wiener and Chan, don’t have. They’re running campaigns with far fewer paid canvassers, if any, both due to less cash on hand and different strategies.
Canvassing isn’t as valuable for Wiener and Chan as for Chakrabarti — both already have decent name recognition in San Francisco, and many voters have already formed opinions about them. Chan is also hamstrung by having raised less than $200,000 by the end of 2025, compared to $2.8 million for Wiener and $1.8 million for Chakrabarti. Wiener also needs to set aside a significant portion of his war chest for the general election — he will all but certainly be in the top-two spot in June.
Chan’s campaign currently has no paid canvassers, according to campaign spokesperson Julie Edwards. But with the support of organized labor, various political groups and Asian community groups, more than 100 volunteers have canvassed and phonebanked for Chan since February, Edwards said.
That’s enough for them to dispatch people reflecting the characteristics of each neighborhood to various corners of the city, Edwards added — ideally, the canvassers sent to knock doors on Pacific Heights are not the same ones sent to the Mission.
Chan and Wiener are able to “tap into those deep networks to have people that have actually gained from what they’ve done for them,” said Eric Kingsbury, manager of former mayor London Breed’s 2024 campaign. People like that, Kingsbury continued, can be more persuasive than paid canvassers because they are undoubtedly passionate about the candidate and can share firsthand examples of how the candidates have changed their lives.
Kingsbury, for example, said that a paid Chakrabarti canvasser showed up at his door, reading off a script but demonstrating little understanding of the talking points.
For Wiener’s campaign, around 15 salaried field staffers coordinate about 40 volunteers and join them on canvassing runs, according to spokesperson Joe Arellano. Given Wiener’s high name recognition — he has won three citywide races and has held elective office since 2011 — common campaign tactics like putting up window signs no longer carry the same weight.
The campaign is “more about reminding voters and refreshing their memory about everything he’s done for San Francisco, and less about introducing him,” said Arellano.
And, Arellano said, Chakrabarti’s campaign is not the only one that’s learned from the most recent mayoral race.
“One of the lessons from 2024 is that the public doesn’t view wealthy candidates negatively if they have real connections to San Francisco — the way Mayor Lurie does with Tipping Point and Levi’s,” Arrelano said. “That gives candidates with money the ability to spread their message far and wide, with the potential to catch fire and go on to victory.”
In other words: You can’t allow a campaign loaded with cash to spread its message unimpeded. With that in mind, Wiener‘s campaign recently began targeting Chakrabarti, labeling him as a rich guy trying to buy San Francisco’s seat. A tech-funded PAC has done the same, cutting ads describing Chakrabarti as an outsider from Maryland.
Chakrabarti’s campaign has fired back, describing Wiener as a politician “who will do anything just to build a political career.”