Vote Alix

In June, I endorsed Scott Wiener for Congress. San Francisco voters mostly agreed: Wiener finished first in the June 2 primary, about 11 points ahead of Supervisor Connie Chan, and the two of them are now headed to a Democrat-on-Democrat runoff on November 3. The choice is a lot simpler than the mailers would have you believe.

Nancy Pelosi held this seat for 37 years, 20 of them in leadership. Let that sink in. This district has a tradition of sending leaders to Washington, not warm bodies. The question on your ballot is whether we keep that tradition or blow it.

My answer hasn’t changed. Vote for Scott Wiener.

Scott Wiener: 97 laws and counting

Scott Wiener is, by most objective measures, one of the most effective legislators in California. The nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked him first in the State Senate for 2023 to 2024, and he has ranked in the Senate’s top five every session since he took office in 2017.

The numbers back that up. Since 2017, Wiener has authored 186 bills in the State Senate, more than any other senator over that span, and 97 of them have been signed into law, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis. His own office puts the total at more than 100. Either way, that’s roughly 19 bills passed per legislative session, year after year.

Before that, he spent six years on the Board of Supervisors (2011 to 2016), where he passed a string of first-in-the-nation laws: fully paid parental leave for both parents, mandatory water recycling in new developments, micro-apartments and student housing, and Prop B, which tied Muni funding to population growth.

In Sacramento, his record reads like a list of fights everyone else ducked:

• Housing: SB 35 (streamlined approvals in cities that miss their housing goals), SB 9 and SB 10 (more units per lot), and SB 79 (apartments near transit), signed in 2025 after years of failed attempts.
• Health: pharmacist access to PrEP and PEP for HIV prevention, plus reproductive healthcare protections.
• Tech: SB 822, California’s net neutrality law, and SB 53, signed in 2025, the nation’s first law requiring the biggest AI companies to publish their safety plans and report serious safety incidents. It came a year after his first attempt, SB 1047, was vetoed.
• Civil liberties: SB 627, the No Secret Police Act, signed in 2025, which bars most officers from wearing masks during operations.

These are not easy wins. They’re messy, politically risky fights that most elected officials avoid. Wiener runs toward them, absorbs the setbacks, and keeps coming back until he gets to yes. SB 79 is the perfect example: it took him three tries and seven years.

He’s not perfect. Critics say he’s too developer-friendly and too willing to steamroll local control. Fair point to raise, though I think you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet. His words on Israel and Gaza have sometimes fallen short. But he engages, and he takes responsibility when he gets it wrong. That’s more than most.

You may also have heard that Wiener is in the pocket of AI companies. The record says otherwise. Meta, Google and OpenAI lobbied against both of his AI safety bills, and Andreessen Horowitz warned that SB 53’s “biggest danger” was letting states lead on AI regulation. And guess who else came out against SB 1047? Nancy Pelosi, who called it “ill-informed.” The money his critics point to comes from an Anthropic-linked AI safety group that is spending to counter the industry’s anti-regulation PACs. You can debate whether his bills went far enough. You can’t seriously argue the AI industry got what it wanted.

Connie Chan’s record

Connie Chan has real roots in San Francisco and strong labor relationships, and those things matter in this city. She was elected District 1 Supervisor in 2020, reelected in 2024 with 51.9 percent in the final ranked-choice round, and has chaired the Board’s Budget Committee since 2023. Before that, she was a legislative aide at City Hall. Her platform is affordability, immigrant protections, and working families. All good things.

But let’s be honest about the comparison. Chan’s entire elected career is a little under six years on an eleven-member city board. She has never written a law that reaches past the city limits, never moved a bill through a 40-member Senate, never had to round up votes from Fresno and Orange County, and never negotiated with a governor’s office. Look for her record on the issue San Franciscans rank first, housing, and what you find is a record of voting “no” (she ranks second only to Aaron Peskin in opposing housing deregulation).

Then there’s the legislative record itself. Chan’s own campaign website lists 21 pieces of legislation from nearly six years on the Board. And read the fine print, because Chan’s list gets thinner: five are things she merely “supported,” one was written by a different supervisor, and one lost at the ballot.

Getting things through the Board of Supervisors is small potatoes compared to the legislature. Wiener has done both, and he did the Board job before he spent a decade proving himself at the next level. Chan hasn’t demonstrated policy leadership at the scale this role demands, and “she’ll grow into it” is not a reason to send someone to one of the most watched congressional seats in the country.

Chan isn’t just out of Wiener’s league. She isn’t even playing the same sport.

So why is Pelosi endorsing Chan?

People keep asking me this. I have the utmost respect for the Speaker Emerita, and I’m proud that the first woman Speaker of the House came from San Francisco. But I think the answer has less to do with Connie Chan than with Scott Wiener, and with timing.

Scott didn’t wake up one morning in October 2025 and decide to run. According to a deeply reported piece by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez in The San Francisco Standard (paywalled, but worth it), Wiener had been preparing for this seat since at least 2023. That year, someone very powerful in Pelosi’s orbit called to warn him off. “You shouldn’t do this,” the caller said. “Christine is going to succeed Nancy.” Christine Pelosi is the Speaker’s daughter.

Wiener kept preparing anyway, and he kept trying to talk to Pelosi directly. For two years, he called every few months and couldn’t get her on the phone. Meanwhile, the clock was running, and the pressure was building. Saikat Chakrabarti announced on February 5, 2025, more than eight months before Wiener did, and he started running hard, with millions in Stripe money and a national progressive network behind him. Running for Congress in one of the most expensive media markets in the country costs a fortune, and every month Wiener spent waiting out of decorum was a month Chakrabarti spent building a campaign. But it’s hard to relinquish power, and the moment Pelosi announced, her clout on Capitol Hill would start to evaporate. So she waited.

When Pelosi finally called him back in October 2025, Wiener told her he would announce within days. He had waited as long as he could.

He announced on October 22, 2025, and Pelosi announced her retirement 15 days later. On November 20, Chan entered the congressional race, after Pelosi told labor leaders she could “think of nobody better to represent the district.” CalMatters called Pelosi’s eventual endorsement of Chan “a public rebuke of Wiener,” a man who has called Pelosi his hero.

I know I’m taking a real risk by putting this out there. In San Francisco politics, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, speaks ill of Nancy Pelosi. She’s a living legend with a long memory, and most of the people reading this think very highly of her. But somebody has to say it.

I think this is about a bruised ego. Wiener nudged Pelosi toward the exit before she was ready to walk through it, and Chan is the price. That’s a very human reaction. It’s hard to walk away from such a long and illustrious career, and she wasn’t ready. But every day she delayed was a day that Scott couldn’t start campaigning in earnest.

Candidates for an open congressional seat typically start running a year or two before the primary, because that’s how long it takes to raise the money and build the organization a race like this demands. Scott waited until October 2025, a little over seven months before the June primary, while Chakrabarti enjoyed an eight-month head start. That’s not impatience. That’s a man who waited as long as he possibly could, and then some. If anything, Scott showed Nancy more deference than the situation called for. Her response was to back his opponent. The Speaker Emerita’s personal feelings are also not a reason for the rest of us to pick a less qualified representative. Wiener, for his part, has stayed gracious, saying whoever wins “will have giant stilettos to fill.” He’s right.

Vote Scott Wiener

This district doesn’t just need a representative. It needs someone who can step into Pelosi’s legacy of power and actually wield it. With the Trump administration testing every guardrail we have, San Francisco can’t afford a freshman who is still learning how to count votes.

Wiener has spent fifteen years proving, over and over, that he knows how to turn ideas into law. Chan has spent six years on the Board of Supervisors “supporting” other supervisors’ legislation. Endorsements are nice. Records are better.

He’s a doer. Vote Scott Wiener on November 3.

My full November voter guide is here: https://votealix.com/2026/10/19/alixs-voter-guide-california-november-2026/

If my voter guides save you a few hours of research, please consider throwing a few dollars in my tip jar. I don’t take money from campaigns or advertisers, so readers like you keep this strange hobby going. And please share it with your friends and frenemies. Now go vote.