June 3, 2026

Barak Gila, twitter @barakgila

SAN FRANCISCO — Saikat Chakrabarti may have boasted about getting 500 volunteers to tag 20,000 doors with campaign literature yesterday morning, but those supporters weren't actually out campaigning in the community. In the run-up to the election, this reporter noted a more prominent ground game from both Scott Wiener’s supporters, who were visible along Market in the Castro all Tuesday morning, and Connie Chan’s, several of whom were out in the Panhandle on Monday. During his eight-month campaign, Saikat Chakrabarti mostly reached voters online, via Instagram ads and push poll text messages, and via interminable mailers displaying everything from his photogenic face to rubble in the Gaza Strip.

D8 Supervisor candidate Manny Yekutiel and Anthony campaign for Wiener at 8am on election day

Connie Chan supporters on Fell St, Monday June 1 morning

With about half the votes still to be counted, Chakrabarti is in a distant third place: Wiener at 41%, Chan at 29%, and Chakrabarti at 15%. Historically, the same-day votes that have not yet been counted skew more left-leaning, so this gap may narrow, but it is big enough that the SF Chronicle, and Kalshi, a prediction market, have already called it, although Chakrabarti himself has not conceded the race.

Zooming out to other San Francisco races, Daniel Lurie, Scott Wiener, GrowSF, and pro-growth pro-housing “moderates” trounced both NIMBY, reactionary conservatives and socialist, anti-capitalist leftists. (Discussing politics in the city is confusing because the local media establishment characterizes that losing NIMBY-leftist alliance as “progressive,” even though the focus of their politics is to avoid change.) Candidates who support Lurie’s cautiously-pro-growth Family Zoning Plan, Alan Wong in D4 (Sunset) and Stephen Sherrill in D2 (Marina), exceeded expectations with 70% in ranked-choice support (again, these margins are likely to narrow). The business tax increase that Lurie opposed, Prop D, is too close to call but is currently losing at 44% support.

The Congressional race to replace Nancy Pelosi, who is retiring after 40 years in the House, at times felt surreal, with Saikat Chakrabarti spending more than $9 million of his own money to rail against the corrupt, wealthy elite of the Democratic party. His haul was about double that of the rest of the field, combined: Wiener raised $4 million and Chan and Hurabiell both raised about $650,000 each (Ballotpedia). That comes out to more than $250 per vote, assuming his eventual vote count increases to 35,000. Chakrabarti directed national attention to the city, bringing controversial and unpopular leftist Hasan Piker to rally his base in early May. He attacked incumbent State Senator Scott Wiener for raising money from corporate PACs, for being insufficiently hostile to Israel, and for generally being an establishment figure.

Saikat advertising his rally to Change the Party, featuring Hasan Piker. Instagram

Critical to the Congressional race were endorsements, and their conspicuous absence. Chakrabarti wasn’t expecting Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement—he ran an ad attacking Connie Chan for failing to criticize the popular Speaker Emerita of the House—but it’s possible he was hoping for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s. Those two influential Democrats were likely pivotal to the outcome. Prediction markets flipped to favoring Chan to advance over Chakrabarti on May 18, the day Nancy Pelosi endorsed Chan. And AOC’s failure to endorse her former Chief of Staff, who emphasized his connection to her during his campaign, was influential at least among the political insiders in San Francisco, even though most voters don’t follow the race that closely.

The Kalshi market for the Congressional race. Eagle-eyed observers will note your correspondent does not have a policy prohibiting trading on events they cover.

As the Congressional race heats up and the San Francisco and California propositions are finalized, I’ll be covering local politics on Twitter @barakgila, as well as on my other social channels and Substack. Follow me to get wonky, fact-based news analysis about San Francisco you won’t find anywhere else! (For everything else, there’s the SF Standard).