2026-05-11T11:00:50.934Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/11/politics/nancy-pelosi-california-primary-scott-wiener-saikat-chakrabarti-connie-chan
旧金山——
上一次旧金山选民选出非南希·佩洛西的国会代表时，街头还没有自动驾驶出租车，黑什特-阿什伯里区的扎染商店周围也没有人工智能广告争抢版面。当时有资格投票的最年轻旧金山居民如今已临近退休年龄。
“我不确定是佩洛西先出现，还是旧金山先成型，”加州州长加文·纽森近期对CNN表示。他是佩洛西的亲密盟友，也曾任旧金山市长。
如今，距离接替佩洛西的首轮选举仅剩数周，这座自由主义的标志性城市——其国会选区几乎完全覆盖全市——正试图探寻未来方向。
民主党内部正就“何为进步派”“基层选民想要何种斗士”“如何解决民生负担”乃至“是否应使用‘种族灭绝’一词描述加沙局势”等议题争论不休，这场交锋在佩洛西自1987年起代表的美国众议院席位所在城市正趋于白热化。
多位候选人及其顾问坦言，尽管他们已为这一时刻筹备多年，但仍在苦苦摸索。
他们正开展外联活动，向选民解释佩洛西不会参加6月2日的无党派初选，并在抨击唐纳德·特朗普总统与聚焦本地议题之间寻求平衡——比如围绕太平洋海岸的大公路持续存在的争议，该公路有一段已禁止车辆通行。
佩洛西长期以来对这场竞选保持低调，但随着6月2日选举临近，她对潜在支持对象的表态愈发明确。佩洛西出席了旧金山市监事会成员陈卓敏（Connie Chan）的活动，并积极评价陈卓敏在国会可能发挥的作用。
不过，这位前众议院议长的发言人仍援引她去年宣布退休时的声明称，她不打算进行背书。
“这个席位空出来，对这座城市而言太不寻常了，”旧金山市长丹·勒里对CNN说道。他在2024年的选举中击败 fellow 民主党人当选，那场选举本身就成为了一场关于传统民主党治理是否已让这座城市失败的公投。“我认为我们甚至都不太清楚该如何应对。”
一位候选人的长期抱负
斯科特·威纳多年来一直在为这场竞选做准备。威纳在新泽西州长大，已在卡斯特罗区生活了近30年——该区域是美国最知名的同性恋社区之一。他最初从事律师工作，随后从LGBTQ政治活动家逐步晋升至旧金山市监事会（相当于市议会），再到代表与佩洛西的众议院选区几乎完全重叠的州参议院选区。
威纳为追随佩洛西所做的多年准备，就像经常出现在渔人码头的巨型海象“琼克斯”一样引人注目。这一度让佩洛西感到厌烦。威纳承认，两人最初关系良好，但随着他明确表示将在佩洛西宣布退休前参选其席位，且不会为佩洛西的女儿克里斯汀让路——后者目前正在竞选威纳的州参议院席位——两人的关系变得“有些紧张”。
“事实就是如此，”他说。
威纳是那种频繁往返于选区与萨克拉门托出席活动的本地政客。保持中立的纽森称他“在推动法案方面堪称本地传奇”。前竞争对手、如今已转为背书人的拉斐尔·曼德尔曼上周称他为“公交超级英雄”，以表彰他为阻止旧金山公交系统逃票所做的工作。但曼德尔曼随后在采访中也提到，有时部分人眼中威纳的执着会显得过于强硬。
威纳就外界批评他与开发商过从甚密一事给出了娴熟的回应：“开发商是建造住房的人”，他称这是应对这座城市核心危机的务实思路。他表示，被贴上“建制派”标签只是因为他已任职多年，但他一直都在挑战传统惯例。
威纳称，在佩洛西卸任后，他的从政经验将尤为宝贵，包括争取基础设施资金，并将他在加州人工智能监管方面的领先经验，以湾区思维带到华盛顿。
“人们可能不清楚所有细节，但他们普遍明白南希为旧金山带来了巨大的资源，”他说。“旧金山选民不想要只会夸夸其谈、发表大量尖锐观点却毫无实据的人。”
威纳口中的“这类人”并非陈卓敏或胜算渺茫的玛丽·乌拉比尔，而是一位与众议员亚历山德里亚·奥卡西奥-科特兹有关联的首次参选候选人。奥卡西奥-科特兹与佩洛西也曾关系紧张。
赛卡特·查克拉巴蒂二十多岁时搬到旧金山，数年前重返这座城市，随后开启了这场最初看似是挑战前众议院议长的竞选。
查克拉巴特别强调自己不接受企业、房地产或人工智能利益集团的捐款。但这主要得益于他此前在科技行业积累的数百万美元个人财富——他曾是金融服务公司Stripe的创始工程师。
他的竞选团队有一项惯例：为任何全职投入的志愿者提供生活工资，这让他在一家前银行内拥有了一间宽敞的办公室，团队员工多达200余名，包括现场组织者、敲门游说者和电话银行员。根据竞选财务记录，他迄今已为自己的竞选活动注入了480万美元。
查克拉巴蒂在该选区每位选民身上的投入，都超过了亿万富翁汤姆·斯泰尔在州长竞选活动中每位选民的投入。
查克拉巴蒂将竞选的很大一部分重心放在了与来自美国另一端的政客的联系上：奥卡西奥-科特兹。他曾担任后者的竞选经理和首任幕僚长，并声称自己为奥卡西奥-科特兹早期的多项成功贡献良多，包括称自己撰写了《绿色新政》。在某次论坛上，他还提到了“我在国会任职时”的经历。
查克拉巴蒂表示，他还从加州众议员罗·卡纳的行动中获得灵感——卡纳曾围绕杰弗里·爱泼斯坦事件制造媒体关注度，帮助推动了一项几乎全票通过的法案，要求司法部披露有关这名定罪性犯罪者的文件。
“你发起这类斗争，就能在华盛顿特区之外积累权力，”查克拉巴蒂对CNN说道。“然后你可以利用这种外部权力作为杠杆，在内部推动事务落地。这就是我在奥卡西奥-科特兹第一任期内看到的做法。”
查克拉巴蒂往往不会提及自己仅在奥卡西奥-科特兹手下工作了约7个月便离职的原因，这在旧金山政治圈已成为一桩小谈资，甚至有人制作了一辆车身带有“奥卡西奥-科特兹解雇赛卡特”标语的车，在他出席的部分活动中跟随游行。查克拉巴蒂曾因在推特上攻击奥卡西奥-科特兹的新众议院同事而声名狼藉，包括嘲讽那些称佩洛西为“立法大师”的人。
一位知情人士透露，这位新任女议员曾纠结是否解雇他，但当他提出辞职时还是接受了。查克拉巴蒂对CNN表示，这是“提前规划好的离职过渡”，因为他的女儿即将出生，但他并未否认奥卡西奥-科特兹接受了他的辞职。
显然，他的前老板并未为他背书。同一位知情人士表示，奥卡西奥-科特兹是从媒体报道中得知查克拉巴蒂参选的消息，而非通过他本人，这让她很不高兴。
查克拉巴蒂向CNN证实，他并未提前告知奥卡西奥-科特兹。他解释称，最初参选是为了挑战佩洛西，而当时佩洛西还未宣布退休，“我不想让她陷入尴尬境地，比如有人站出来挑战南希·佩洛西，她却要被问及此事。”
奥卡西奥-科特兹的发言人未就查克拉巴蒂离职的具体情况或她为何不支持他的多次置评请求作出回应。上个月，《Drop Site News》的一名记者问及她为何不支持查克拉巴蒂时，她谈到了自己在初选中试图扮演的更广泛角色，全程未提及他的名字。
除奥卡西奥-科特兹本人外，查克拉巴蒂表示，他正借鉴与正义民主党人团体合作的精神——该团体曾支持奥卡西奥-科特兹的首次竞选——在全国范围内建立自己的志同道合的众议院候选人网络。
就在上周，他邀请了其中六名候选人从全国各地赶来，参加由主播哈桑·皮克主持的集会。皮克因批评以色列而成为民主党内部纷争的焦点人物。皮克曾因发表美国“活该”遭遇9·11袭击的言论而受到批评，他后来表示对此感到后悔，还曾称哈马斯比以色列“好1000倍”。
尽管查克拉巴蒂表示，他经常试图将心中的全国性议题本地化——例如称，该市的高生活成本可以通过普及医保或将用于伊朗战争的资金重新用于修复公路和公共交通来解决——但几位知名旧金山政客对CNN表示，他仍然鲜为人知，他们甚至不确定该如何发音他的名字。
“告诉他们我的名字发音是‘什韦卡特’，让他们学学。他们可以来问我，我会很乐意教他们，”他说。
陈卓敏参选并非为了改变民主党，而是为了回归其根源。她在香港出生，在台湾长大，谈及所谓的“避难城市”保护政策和其他为移民所做的工作，并不断提及自己获得的工会支持。
“这是一个让我们做出选择的时刻：是选择像我这样的人——一名第一代移民、华裔美国女性，得到了劳工阶层、工会运动的支持——还是选择由亿万富翁资助的建制派民主党人，或是空降旧金山的科技富豪？”周三在兰德尔博物馆的山坡上举行的候选人社区论坛结束后，陈卓敏对CNN说道。
陈卓敏在论坛上表示，“旧金山永远将是美国和华盛顿特区的良心”。
在她看来，这意味着要击败支持威纳的资金，以及查克拉巴蒂用于自身竞选的资金。
“这座城市居住着最多的亿万富翁，”她说。“那么我们能否真正击败这座城市里的亿万富翁及其政治行动委员会，选出一名代表劳工阶层的众议员，前往华盛顿特区？”
但对陈卓敏而言，竞选更大的挑战或许来自她在候选人论坛上开的一个玩笑：“如果我当选，我面临的最大挑战就是我不是前议长南希·佩洛西。”
据一位匿名发言的盟友透露，佩洛西非常清楚，近年来旧金山已失去了多位知名女性议员，包括原本湾区的两位女性参议员如今已换成洛杉矶的男性参议员。威纳和查克拉巴蒂也都在佩洛西宣布退休前就宣布了参选意向。
此外，佩洛西欣赏陈卓敏，并在她组建的联盟中看到了志同道合的政治伙伴。据这位向CNN透露消息的盟友称，佩洛西近期频繁出现在陈卓敏的活动现场，包括上月出席了为她举办的华盛顿筹款活动，并计划开展更多相关活动。陈卓敏已获得佩洛西的亲密盟友、参议员亚当·希夫的背书。
当被问及佩洛西的动向时，陈卓敏笑着说：“这么说吧：我有信心，我是唯一有资格获得她背书的候选人。”
其中一场活动是周四晚为当地亚太裔委员会举办的。据《旧金山标准报》的“权力博弈”通讯报道，佩洛西当天的公开讲话比以往任何时候都多，她表示，陈卓敏若成为旧金山首位亚裔美国国会议员将“非常令人振奋”，并称赞她在华盛顿筹款活动中的表现。
“她会成为一名优秀的国会议员，”佩洛西说道。
获得前两名的候选人将进入11月的决选——届时佩洛西更有可能进行背书。如果查克拉巴蒂进入决选，那么她更有可能支持另一位候选人。
从旧金山当前的政治态势来看，这或许会让陈卓敏和查克拉巴蒂的支持者都感到满意。
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/01/science/video/chonkers-sea-lion-vrtc-digvid
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/08/politics/video/inside-politics-hasan-piker
Democrats’ internal fights sway the race to succeed Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco
2026-05-11T11:00:50.934Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/11/politics/nancy-pelosi-california-primary-scott-wiener-saikat-chakrabarti-connie-chan
San Francisco—
The last time this city’s voters had someone other than Nancy Pelosi representing them in Congress, there were no self-driving taxis on the streets, no AI ads competing for space around the tie-dye shop in Haight-Ashbury. The youngest San Franciscans who could have voted then are nearing retirement age now.
“I’m not sure what came first, Pelosi or San Francisco,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a close Pelosi ally and a former mayor of the city, told CNN recently.
Now with just weeks to go in the first round of the race to replace Pelosi, an iconic center of liberalism — one that sits almost fully within one congressional district — is trying to figure out what comes next.
As the Democratic Party churns over what makes a progressive and what kind of fighters its base wants, how to tackle affordability, or even whether to use the word “genocide” about Gaza, those fights are coming to a head in the city Pelosi has represented in the US House since 1987.
Candidates and their advisers admit that though they’ve been preparing for this moment for years, they’re still struggling to figure it out.
They’re building outreach programs, explaining to voters that Pelosi isn’t running in the June 2 nonpartisan primary, finding the right balance between attacking President Donald Trump and digging in on parochial issues like the enduring controversy over the Great Highway running along the Pacific Coast, a stretch of which has been closed to cars.
Pelosi had long been quiet about the race but has become more explicit about her potential preference with time running out before June 2. Pelosi has appeared at events for Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and speaking positively about what Chan could do in Congress.
Still, a spokesperson for the former speaker points back to a November statement after she announced her retirement that she did not plan to endorse.
“For her seat to be open is wild for the city,” Mayor Dan Lurie told CNN, sitting in the office in City Hall he won by ousting a fellow Democrat in a 2024 race that became its own referendum on whether traditional Democratic governance had failed the city. “I don’t think we even know quite what to make of it.”
A candidate’s long ambitions
Scott Wiener has been preparing to make something of it for years. Raised in New Jersey, Wiener has lived for nearly 30 years in the Castro, one of the nation’s most prominent gay neighborhoods. He started as a lawyer and then made his way from LGBTQ political activist to the Board of Supervisors (San Francisco’s equivalent of a city council) to representing a state Senate district that overlaps almost entirely with Pelosi’s House district.
Wiener’s years of preparations to follow Pelosi were about as subtle as Chonkers, the oversize sea lion that’s been showing up at Fisherman’s Wharf. That came to annoy Pelosi. Weiner acknowledged that a relationship that started out strong has become “a little bit strained” as he made it clear that he was going to run for her seat this year before her announced retirement, and that he wouldn’t step aside for her daughter Christine, now running for Wiener’s state Senate seat.
“That is what it is,” he said.
Wiener is the kind of local politician constantly popping up at events back and forth between his district and Sacramento. Newsom, who is staying neutral, calls him “a bit of a legend up here in terms of his ability to carry bills.” Onetime rival and now endorser Rafael Mandelman called him a “transit superhero” last week for his work to stop Muni fare dodgers. But as Mandelman noted in an interview after, there are times when what some see as Wiener’s relentlessness comes off as stridency.
Wiener gave a practiced response to CNN about critics calling him too close to developers, saying, “developers are the people who build housing,” which he says is a pragmatic approach to fighting one of the city’s core crises. He says being called “establishment” means that he has been in office for years, but says he has been challenging convention all that time.
That experience would be especially important in Pelosi’s wake, Wiener says, including by fighting for infrastructure money and bringing to Washington the kind of leading role he has had on the state’s AI regulations with a Bay Area mentality.
“People may not know all the details, but they generally understand that Nancy has delivered in a huge way for San Francisco,” he said. “And San Franciscans don’t want someone who’s just going to like be all hot air with lots of hot takes and just having opinions.”
The “someone” Wiener has in mind is not Chan or long-shot Marie Hurabiell, but a first-time candidate running on ties to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has had her own tense moments with Pelosi.
Saikat Chakrabarti moved to the city in his 20s and then returned several years ago before launching what also started as a challenge to the former House speaker.
Chakrabarti makes a point of saying that he doesn’t take money from corporate, real estate or AI interests. But that’s largely due to his self-financing from the millions he made during his first stint in tech as founding engineer of the financial services company Stripe.
His campaign has developed a custom of offering full-time, living-wage jobs to anyone who has offered to be a committed volunteer, giving him a sprawling office in a former bank filled with a payroll of upward of 200 field organizers, door knockers and phone bankers. He has lent his campaign $4.8 million so far, according to campaign finance records.
Chakrabarti has spent more per district voter than billionaire Tom Steyer is spending per voter statewide in his governor’s race.
Chakrabarti has pegged much of his campaign to his connection to a politician from the other side of the country: Ocasio-Cortez. He was her campaign manager and first chief of staff, and claims credit for a sizable chunk of her early success including, he says, authoring the Green New Deal. At one forum, he referenced a time “when I was in Congress.”
Chakrabarti said he’s also inspired by how US Rep. Ro Khanna of California whipped up media attention on Jeffrey Epstein to help get a nearly unanimous vote for the bill calling for the release of the Justice Department files on the convicted sex offender.
“You pick those fights and by picking those fights, you build power outside DC,” Chakrabarti told CNN. “And then you use that lever of power outside as leverage on the inside to get stuff done. And that’s sort of what I saw AOC do in her first term.”
What Chakrabarti tends to leave out is why he stopped working for Ocasio-Cortez after only about seven months, in what has become a minor obsession in San Francisco political circles and inspired a car that follows him to some events with a sign reading “AOC FIRED SAIKAT.” Chakrabarti became infamous for tweeting attacks on Ocasio-Cortez’s new House colleagues, including scoffing at those who called Pelosi a “legislative mastermind.”
One person familiar with what happened said the freshman congresswoman struggled with whether to fire him but accepted his resignation when he offered. Chakrabarti told CNN it was “a planned transition out” from before the tweets because he had a daughter on the way, but did not dispute that she accepted his resignation.
Chakrabarti is conspicuously lacking an endorsement from his former boss. The same person familiar with what happened said Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t pleased to find out from media reports that Chakrabarti was running instead of from him directly.
He confirmed to CNN that he hadn’t told her in advance, explaining that he initially entered the race to challenge Pelosi before she announced her retirement and that “I didn’t want her to be in a weird spot where she’s asked about, you know, someone stepping up against Nancy Pelosi.”
A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to several requests for comment about the circumstances of Chakrabarti’s departure or why she isn’t backing him. Asked last month by a reporter from Drop Site News why she wasn’t backing him, she spoke about the role she’s trying to play more broadly in primaries and never mentioned his name.
Beyond Ocasio-Cortez directly, Chakrabarti says he’s channeling the spirit of the work he did with the group Justice Democrats, a supporter in her first race, to create his own network of like-minded House candidates around the country.
Just last week, he had half a dozen of those candidates fly in from around the country to join his rally headlined by Hasan Piker, the streamer who has become a focal point in Democratic fights over his criticism of Israel. Piker has been criticized for saying the US “deserved” the September 11 attacks, a comment he has since said he regretted making, and saying Hamas was “1,000 times better” than Israel.
While Chakrabarti says he’s often trying to localize the national issues on his mind — for example, saying the high cost of living in the city could be tackled by getting universal healthcare or money being spent on the war in Iran should be redirected to fixing the highways and public transit — several prominent San Francisco politicians told CNN that he remains so unknown that they were unsure how to pronounce his name.
“Tell them that my name is pronounced ‘Shway-kat’ and they should learn that. They can ask me. I’m very friendly about it,” he said.
Chan is not running so much to change the party as to recenter on its roots. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Taiwan, she talks about so-called sanctuary city protections and other work for immigrants, and she refers constantly to the union support she has racked up.
“This is a moment for us to decide: Is it going to someone like me, who’s been a first-generation immigrant and Chinese American woman, and has been endorsed by the working people, the labor movement, or are they going to go with a corporate Democrat that have been bankrolled by a billionaire, or a tech bro that’s been helicoptered into San Francisco?” Chan told CNN on Wednesday after one of the candidates’ community forums, in the woody hills at the Randall Museum.
Chan said on stage that “San Francisco will always be the conscience of the nation and the conscience of Washington, DC.”
To her, that means beating back the money supporting Wiener and the money Chakrabarti is spending on his own campaign.
“We have the most saturation of billionaires residing in this city,” she said. “And so can we actually fight and beat the billionaires and their PACs in this very city and send the representative for the working people from here to Washington, DC?”
But for Chan, the bigger factor in the race may lie in a joke she made at the candidate forum: “The biggest challenge I face if I’m elected is I am not Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.”
According to an ally who spoke anonymously to share her thinking, Pelosi is hyper-aware that San Francisco has lost a number of prominent female representatives in recent years, including going from both senators being women from the Bay Area to having both senators be men from Los Angeles. Wiener and Chakrabarti also both announced their campaigns against Pelosi before her retirement announcement.
Plus, Pelosi likes Chan and sees a kindred political player in the kind of coalitions she’s building. It’s no accident, according to the ally who spoke to CNN, that Pelosi has been showing up at the same events as Chan, including popping by a DC fundraiser for her last month, with plans to do more. And Chan already has the endorsement of Sen. Adam Schiff, a close Pelosi ally.
Asked what she thinks is going on with Pelosi, Chan smiled and said, “How about this: I would say that I am confident that I’m the only candidate in the position to earn her endorsement.”
One of those events was Thursday night, for the Asian Pacific Council in town. According to the San Francisco Standard’s “Power Play” newsletter, Pelosi spoke more than she has publicly to date, saying that for Chan to be the city’s first Asian American member of Congress would be “very exciting,” and lauding her performance at the Washington fundraiser.
“She’d be a great member of Congress,” Pelosi said.
The top two vote-getters will keep this race going all the way to November — and Pelosi is much more likely to endorse then. If Chakrabarti is one of the candidates, that could make it more likely she endorses the other.
In a sign of where San Francisco politics is now, that might please both Chan’s supporters and Chakrabarti’s.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/01/science/video/chonkers-sea-lion-vrtc-digvid
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/08/politics/video/inside-politics-hasan-piker