In a rare moment of unity, congressional candidates Connie Chan and Scott Wiener came together this week to release their stock trading activity and demand that their opponent Saikat Chakrabarti disclose his own records.
Now, Chakrabarti’s responded, and has his own challenge for Wiener to disclose a different kind of financial information.
The issue was raised on Sunday at a candidate forum hosted by the Lower Haight Merchants and Neighbors Association, when an audience member asked about the stocks owned by Wiener, Chakrabarti, and Chan.
Wiener, a state senator, told the crowd that he would release his own stock information for the past 10 years, which elicited a similar reaction from District 1 Supervisor Chan, who confirmed that she would “take on that challenge.”
Chakrabarti, a former software engineer, did not respond.
On Tuesday, Wiener posted a video to his Instagram to disclose, via a blank sheet of paper, that he has zero stock trades in the past decade. Chan also took to Instagram on Tuesday to confirm that she has “never” owned or traded stocks, and posted a state financial form showing her partner has a “small investment” in Apple with a fair market value between $2,000 and $10,000.
“Since I took office, I have consistently pushed for public integrity in city government, and as Budget Committee Chair, I pushed to cut wasteful spending, and hold city officials and contractors accountable,” Chan said in a statement to Gazetteer. “So I know what it takes to curb corruption — it starts with elected leaders that have transparent financial records and integrity.
“Saikat is all talk, and no record to show for it. And apparently no records he’s willing to show, either,” the statement concluded.
Joe Arellano, campaign spokesperson for Wiener, told Gazetteer that the state senator would push to ban congressional stock trading on “Day 1” if elected.
“He believes the voters deserve transparency from their elected officials. Supervisor Chan quickly took the pledge and followed suit,” Arellano said. “It’s been five days and Saikat hasn’t said a word. What is he hiding in his finances that he doesn’t want us to see?”
Chakrabarti’s campaign, however, is responding to his opponents’ questions for the first time in a statement to Gazetteer.
He “does not own any publicly tradable individual stocks,” campaign spokesperson Tiffaney Bradley told Gazetteer.
“The reason Saikat has been calling for a ban on congressional stock trading and has pledged to put his own assets in a blind trust when in Congress is because of the conflict of interest that arises from using insider knowledge to trade stocks,” Bradley said. “The real problem is people in public office enriching themselves off insider knowledge and selling their votes in exchange for campaign contributions.”
Chakrabarti’s campaign is now turning the tables on Wiener, and Bradley claimed that Wiener has accepted campaign contributions from “over 400 corporations and corporate PACs” during his time in office. (Wiener’s team did not respond to this specific claim by press time.)
“So, in the spirit of transparency, we call on him to release his last 10 years of call records with individuals and corporations who have donated to him, and to tell us what he promised in exchange for that money,” Bradley said.
In a response to Chakrabarti’s statement, Wiener’s spokesperson questioned the specific language around “publicly traded individual stocks” and pointed to Chakrabarti’s 2025 congressional financial disclosure report, which lists dozens of assets and investments, including more than $50 million in equity in his former employer, Stripe. (Chan and Wiener have far fewer reported assets.)
“He continues to dodge the question that was posed to him: will he release ten years of his stock trades?” Arellano said.
The congressional race is in full swing with only a month to go before the June 2 primary, in which the top two vote-earners will move onto the election on Nov. 3. A recent poll, commissioned by Chakrabarti, shows Wiener in the lead with Chakrabarti within five percentage points and Chan trailing by 20 percentage points.
