Connie Chan’s shot at Congress got a game changing boost Monday when Nancy Pelosi announced her endorsement, closing the book on speculation about which candidate the legendary lawmaker would anoint as favored successor in her District 11 seat.
As if in response, Chan’s opponent Saikat Chakrabarti Tuesday announced his first endorsement from a sitting federal elected official: Michigan’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Chan and Chakrabarti are closer than ever in the race after months of Chan trailing big in local polls. Now, their latest endorsements serve as symbols of their distinct approaches in the battle against frontrunner Scott Wiener.
There is no one like Pelosi; then again, Tlaib is no Pelosi. That’s exactly the point.
With just two weeks to go before the primary deadline, Chan’s securing of the Pelosi nod is a masterclass in timing. Pelosi had already backed Chan in the 2024 supervisor race, when she won re-election over Marjan Philhour by exactly 1,301 votes in District 1. Yet Pelosi’s claim in November that she had no plans to endorse anyone in San Francisco, and her radio silence for most of 2026, raised questions of what Chan could expect.
Chan now gets to surf a swell of excitement from San Francisco liberals who still adore Pelosi. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to suggest some Wiener supporters may be reconsidering their choice this week.
Chan had spoken with Pelosi at a number of events this year, but did not ask about an endorsement, sources familiar with the process told me. Pelosi also appeared at a Chan fundraiser in April, giving the sense that if — a big if — Pelosi gave her endorsement, it would be for Chan. The supervisor’s campaign team got the call on Saturday, sources said.
“In the last 24 hours, I have heard from residents in every corner of San Francisco who are fired up and ready to win on June 2,” Chan told Gazetteer in an email. “I am grateful for the support of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and everyone who has joined our grassroots campaign — we know we have to fight hard and earn every vote.”
Tlaib, who represents Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, has never been sought for the power of her endorsement; Chakrabarti is the only non-Michigan candidate she is backing so far in 2026. She is, however, a name-brand progressive, a member of “The Squad,” and one of the stars of the Justice Democrats, the political action group co-founded by Chakrabarti to inject fresh leftist blood into Congress via grassroots campaigns.
DC insiders noted back in 2021 that Pelosi was not exactly thrilled with the more radical agenda of Squad members like Tlaib and New York’s Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who criticized establishment Democrats and made ambitious claims that Pelosi felt were unrealistic and could imperil the party’s slim majority in Congress.
In hindsight, the beef between Pelosi and the Squad was exaggerated for effect — Chakrabarti himself intimated this in a recent interview with me, describing the “so-called fight” between Pelosi and AOC as more media narrative than real political impasse — but it did shed light on how key ideology would be to the future of Democratic Party strategies.
For all the criticism of Pelosi (including from me), it’s clear that she has been willing to back people significantly to the left of her politically. She caused an uproar among San Francisco centrists in 2024 when she endorsed Dean Preston — a proud socialist with plenty to say about establishment Dems — for re-election as D5 supervisor over the more centrist Bilal Mahmood, who had spent time working for the Obama administration
Chan is also more progressive than Pelosi on a number of policies, including on Israel, which Chan has said is responsible for a genocide in Gaza and should not receive money or aid from the US. Pelosi in 2023 stated “it’s in my DNA to protect the State of Israel.” That Pelosi seemingly does not care about this is a testament to the way she has worked the political levers in DC, alternatingly compromising and brawling in her efforts to grow Democrat power by any means necessary.
Chakrabarti, on the other hand, sounds like he couldn’t care less about grasping for conventional Democratic Party tactics of back-channeling and compromising. Being an outsider, and organizing with outside movements to push Democrats left, is the opposite of Pelosi’s approach. Once again, that’s the point.
At a packed rally two weeks ago, I watched Chakrabarti yell his slogan, “change the party,” to a roaring crowd as he stood alongside a smiling Hasan Piker and a gassed-up Jamaal Bowman, the former representative from New York who had eviscerated the Democrat status quo in his own speech.
Speaking about Tlaib, Chakrabarti wrote to Gazetteer: “From day one, she has been a fearless voice of moral clarity, even when it came at a personal and political cost… She’s shown us how moral courage can create real change.”
Can Chan be “iron fist in a Gucci glove,” as Politico described Pelosi in 2021? Her experience wrangling with San Francisco’s budget and her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors suggests so. For his part, Chakrabarti is more iron fist in an iron gauntlet, and he just landed a left hook before the bell.
