Progressive Activist Saikat Chakrabarti Challenges Nancy Pelosi to Represent San Francisco in U.S. Congress
- The 39-year-old Indian American, one of the principal architects of the Green New Deal, who was former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also worked on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016.
Indian American progressive political adviser Saikat Chakrabarti is challenging former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the San Francisco seat she’s held for more than two decades. “I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago,” said the 39-year-old former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
“America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face,” Chakrabarti said in a lengthy social media post. In his campaign, he will be talking about “the problems we need to solve for San Francisco, for America, and also about the future of the Democratic Party — and how it can provide an alternative vision of change from Trump and MAGA,” he said.
After working on the Ocasio-Cortez campaign, Chakrabarti, 39, returned to San Francisco where for five years he led New Consensus,. “I’m going to run a very different kind of campaign than most,” he said. In addition to daily conversations with district residents, he’ll also hold weekly Zoom calls “open to anyone to talk about national issues and the future of the Democratic Party,” he said.
Pelosi, who stepped down as speaker in 2022 after nearly 20 years in the position, easily won re-election last year. She has filed paperwork to run for re-election in 2026 but has “not said publicly whether she will see another term,” according to Politico. “State Sen. Scott Wiener has long been expected to run for the seat if she were to step down,” the Politico report said. There’s also speculation that Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, might run for her seat.
Chakrabarti criticized Pelosi’s support of Connolly as he called for change in the party. “Watching Trump and Elon freely unleash chaos in their illegal seizure of government, it’s become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership,” he said.
Noting that “it might seem it’s a little early to start running,” he talked about how “it’s almost impossible to defeat incumbents in our system —even at a time when both Congress and the Democratic Party stand at record-low approval ratings.” Therefore, “winning his campaign will require months of organizing — online and on the street — to connect with every single voter in San Francisco,” he said.
Whoever wins the primary “is likely to win the general election and hold the seat for a long time in a city that remains a Democratic stronghold,” Politico further noted.
After graduating from Harvard University in 2007, Chakrabarti moved to California where he co-founded a tech startup, Mockingbird, and later became a founding engineer for the payment processing company Stripe. One of the principal architects of the Green New Deal, he quit Silicon Valley and began working for Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016.
Donald Trump’s victory galvanized him into trying to overhaul the democratic process. He co-founded the political action group Brand New Congress (BNC), along with a few other members of the campaign, with the aim of recruiting congressional candidates into the Democratic Party who would fight elections with small, individual donors, the all-important goal being to curb the power of industrial lobbies. He was able to recruit 11, of whom only Ocasio Cortez went on to win. BNC later merged into Justice Democrats.