Congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti spent $10 million of his own money in hopes of winning the No. 2 spot in the June primary and moving onto the November general election.
It didn’t happen the way he’d hoped, but Chakrabarti vowed in the aftermath to use his resources, namely his capital and large network of outreach staff, to back Connie Chan’s campaign. To do so, he transitioned his campaign committee, Saikat for Congress, into the SF Solidarity PAC to fund canvassing and phone banking activities.
Chakrabarti has put another $1.4 million into the congressional race since June, according to federal election filings.
This level of spending by one former candidate to support a competitor represents a novel tactic in modern San Francisco politics, made possible by Chakrabarti’s deep coffers and his theory of grassroots (and well-funded) political change.
The PAC has spent roughly $680,000 this summer to support Chan’s candidacy, according to Chakrabarti. That money has helped pay for an army of canvassers, and Chakrabarti tells Gazetteer SF that they have knocked on about 70,000 doors in the city since June.
“From that, we’ve identified almost 20,000 supporters for Connie. We started by targeting people who voted for me in the primary, since that’s easiest. We continue to see close to an 80 percent conversion rate for those people,” Chakrabarti claimed.
Another priority is reaching undecided voters, and Chakrabarti suggested that his team is seeing “close to a 70 percent persuasion rate” on those interactions, meaning that the voters tell canvassers they’re leaning toward a candidate.
Chakrabarti isn’t done spending: He will contribute “basically whatever we need to keep the current operations going through the election,” he said. He estimates that could cost up to another $200,000 from his pockets.
Chan’s campaign has collected $1.1 million and spent just over $732,000, which pales in comparison to the campaign of state Sen. Scott Wiener, which racked up $4.56 million in contributions and spent $3.3 million. There’s a monetary gap in support from PACs, too: Committees in support of Chan’s candidacy have spent $967,000, while PACs in favor of Wiener have spent $1.25 million. (These figures do not include the additional spending by the SF Solidarity PAC because its third-quarter financial report has not been released by the FEC.)
The SF Solidarity PAC isn’t just spending in the 11th District congressional race. Chakrabarti is using its resources to support progressive candidates around the country, which he has done for years as the co-founder of Justice Democrats. The PAC has phone-banked for congressional candidates such as Melat Kiros of Colorado, Patrick Roath of Massachusetts, and Eric Jones in California.
Chakrabarti said he would “love” to further extend support to other candidates, including Californians like Angela Gonzales-Torres of Los Angeles and Randy Villegas of the Central Valley. Chakrabarti said the PAC has spent about $150,000 on candidates outside of San Francisco.
Chakrabarti’s aim is more than just funding key candidates in the 2026 election. When asked what he sees as the biggest achievement of his campaign and PAC, Chakrabarti gave credit to his field team: “The people we trained up through the campaign have become incredibly good political organizers.”
“They’re able to have a cold conversation with anyone on the street at any time and persuade them to vote for a person or a cause, which is a very hard thing to do well,” Chakrabarti said. “We have hundreds of people like that now in the city, and the really cool thing is to see how many are staying in politics.”
