Connie Chan, a progressive lawmaker who serves on the San Francisco board of supervisors, has entered the race to succeed the former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi next year.
In a Thursday announcement, Chan, 47, said the race was about “local neighborhoods versus outside money” and highlighted her work trying to make San Francisco more affordable for working families.
“San Francisco belongs to everyone, not just the wealthy few – not just the powerful,” Chan says in her two-minute launch video shared on social media. “I’m running for Congress for all the people who are being shut out by the system.”
Her entry into the race comes two weeks after Pelosi announced her decision to retire, opening up the San Francisco House seat she has held for nearly 40 years. Pelosi had already drawn two challengers, state senator Scott Wiener, known for his work on housing and LGBTQ+ rights, and Saikat Chakrabarti, a former Silicon Valley engineer and chief of staff to representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Pelosi has not endorsed a candidate in the race to succeed her, and has indicated that she has no immediate plans to do so.
In her announcement video, Chan pays homage to Pelosi. “I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me and fought for the same values,” Chan narrates as a photo of her and Pelosi appears on the screen.
Chan, a progressive fixture of San Francisco politics and strong ally of labor unions, won a seat on the board of supervisors in 2020, narrowly defeating a former senior adviser to the then-mayor, London Breed. She was re-elected in 2024, with Pelosi’s endorsement.
Chan was born in Hong Kong and immigrated at the age of 13 with her mother and younger brother to San Francisco, where her family lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood. If elected, she would be the first Asian American to represent San Francisco in Congress.
The video hints at some of the ways Chan might distinguish herself from her Democratic opponents in the race, touting her support for efforts to build “real affordable housing – not the Sacramento version that destroys our neighborhoods”. She also seems to nod to Chakrabarti’s tech fortune, which will allow him to largely self-fund. Earlier this week, Breed announced that she would not run for Pelosi’s seat.
“I’m not a corporate Democrat. I didn’t make money in tech,” Chan says in the video. “I’m a working mom. I made lunch for my kid.”
