Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi bypassed the candidate her own state party endorsed, and the man widely considered the front-runner, to back San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan for the congressional seat Pelosi has held since 1987. The endorsement, which the San Francisco Chronicle reported landed on Monday, sets up an open intra-party clash in one of the bluest districts in America and raises pointed questions about what, exactly, state Sen. Scott Wiener did to earn the cold shoulder from San Francisco's most powerful Democrat.
Pelosi called Chan "the leader best prepared to carry forward the fight for San Francisco in the Congress of the United States." She declined to comment further for the Chronicle's story. But in a recent remark to the paper, Pelosi offered a curt explanation for passing over Wiener: "He hasn't asked for my endorsement. She has."
That one sentence tells you most of what you need to know about how Pelosi operates, and about the political dynamics swirling around her succession. The California Democratic Party had already backed Wiener. He opened an exploratory committee in 2023, held fundraisers, lavished praise on Pelosi at public events, and formally announced his candidacy in October 2025. None of it was enough.
Wiener and Pelosi were not always at odds. Wiener told the Chronicle that Pelosi endorsed him in his first run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and that the two worked together on state net neutrality legislation in 2017. He described himself as "eternally grateful" for her support over the years.
The chill set in publicly after Wiener opened his exploratory committee in 2023. At a "Women for Scott" fundraiser in San Francisco that June, tickets ranged from $250 to $3,300, Wiener praised Pelosi as "a transformational force" and said San Francisco was "deeply lucky" to have her in Congress. He even batted away questions about whether Pelosi might run again, telling supporters that two more years of Pelosi would be a gift to the country.
The warmth, by all appearances, was not returned. Pelosi filed paperwork in November 2024 declaring her intention to run for reelection, a move that kept the field frozen. When she eventually stepped aside and the race opened, she chose Chan.
Rudy Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, told the Chronicle he did not know of a public feud between Pelosi and Wiener but added something more revealing: "I don't know if they have a relationship to speak of." He added, "And that says something to me unto itself."
As we previously noted, Pelosi had signaled support for Chan before making the endorsement official, a pattern that suggests the decision was not impulsive but calculated well in advance.
One friction point between Pelosi and Wiener surfaced in 2024, when Pelosi publicly opposed an AI safety bill Wiener authored. Critics speculated that Pelosi's opposition was politically motivated, perhaps connected to the upcoming congressional race or even to a desire to clear the path for her daughter to eventually seek the seat.
Pelosi pushed back hard on that theory in an interview with KQED. "They don't know what they're talking about," she said. "I find it insulting that they would equate politics with policy for the AI bill." She added: "It has nothing to do with elections. And my daughter and I haven't even spoken about [the AI bill], because we want to get through this [national] election now."
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a close Pelosi ally who now supports Chan, said he did not know of any rift between Pelosi and Wiener. But Brown offered his own theory about the underlying tension: "I suspect, though, that the daughter may have wanted to run in one of those times that an opportunity presented itself, and he instead became the candidate."
Whether or not that speculation has merit, it points to a broader pattern. Pelosi has never been shy about using endorsements as instruments of power. In 2024, she backed Adam Schiff for the U.S. Senate in California over then-Reps. Barbara Lee and Katie Porter. That choice, too, was read as strategic rather than sentimental.
The race for Pelosi's seat is not a two-person affair. Saikat Chakrabarti, the wealthy former software engineer who served as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's top aide and masterminded her 2018 upset of Rep. Joe Crowley, a former Pelosi House lieutenant, announced in February 2025 that he was running in what the Chronicle described as a direct challenge to Pelosi.
Chakrabarti has spent more than $6 million of his own money on the race so far. His candidacy carries a particular sting for Pelosi. Crowley's defeat in 2018 was one of the most humiliating losses the Democratic establishment suffered in a generation, and Chakrabarti was the architect. Now he wants the seat Pelosi herself is vacating.
As we reported earlier, even Ocasio-Cortez has declined to endorse her own former chief of staff in this race, a sign that the progressive lane is crowded and the loyalties are tangled.
Pelosi has said nothing publicly about Chakrabarti. Her endorsement of Chan reads, in part, as a move to consolidate the establishment-labor lane before Chakrabarti's self-funded campaign can reshape the field.
The endorsement also reflects the organized labor alliances that define San Francisco Democratic politics. Chan's campaign regularly touts backing from the California Labor Federation, National Nurses United, and the California Teachers Association. The San Francisco Labor Council endorsed her as well. Pelosi and Chan share tight ties with organized labor, particularly building trades unions.
Wiener has union support of his own, LiUNA, the Northern California Carpenters, and the United Food and Commercial Workers have backed him. But the building trades, a traditional Pelosi power base, appear to have landed in Chan's camp.
Pelosi's formal endorsement of Chan contradicts the California Democratic Party's endorsement of Wiener, setting up an unusual split in which the state party and the district's most influential figure are on opposite sides.
Wiener, for his part, kept his public reaction restrained. He declined Tuesday to discuss his private conversations with Pelosi but acknowledged the endorsement plainly:
"I think it's been crystal clear that I would be honored to have her endorsement, and I respect that she has made a choice, and that is entirely her choice to make, and that she's made a choice."
He added: "I'm a pro. Speaker Emerita Pelosi is a pro. We both want the San Francisco representative to help save our democracy and to get the country back on track. And I have every confidence that we'll be able to work well together."
That is the language of a candidate who knows he just took a significant hit but cannot afford to look rattled. Wiener's challenge now is to prove the state party endorsement and his front-runner status matter more than Pelosi's personal imprimatur in a district where her name has been on the ballot for nearly four decades.
Meanwhile, Pelosi continues to shape Democratic strategy on multiple fronts. She has pushed aggressive midterm messaging aimed at Republicans, and the Chronicle noted that California voters would be asked to approve Proposition 50, a map that could potentially give Democrats five more congressional seats, a measure the paper described as "gerrymandered."
Pelosi's decision to back Chan over Wiener is not, on its face, ideological. Both candidates are San Francisco Democrats operating well to the left of the national median. The race will not produce a conservative. What it will produce is a window into how Democratic power actually works, not through open debate or voter-driven primaries, but through endorsements wielded like instruments, alliances built on loyalty rather than policy, and a political class that treats congressional seats as inheritances to be managed.
Wiener did everything a front-runner is supposed to do. He raised money, won the state party endorsement, praised Pelosi publicly, and waited patiently while she kept the field frozen with her reelection paperwork. His reward was a one-line dismissal: "He hasn't asked for my endorsement."
Pelosi has never been reluctant to exercise power when it serves her interests. This endorsement is no exception. Whether it is driven by labor alliances, personal loyalty, family considerations, or a desire to block Chakrabarti, the effect is the same: Pelosi is picking her successor, and the state party's opinion is beside the point.
When one person can hold a seat for 38 years, file reelection paperwork to freeze the field, then hand-pick the replacement, and the party apparatus simply adjusts, voters might reasonably ask who the seat actually belongs to.
