California state senator says campaign not a reflection on Nancy Pelosi, for whom he has ‘enormous respect’
California state Sen. Scott Wiener said there is no time like the present to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. “Speaker Emerita , for whom I have enormous respect, has not said whether she’s running, and the filing deadline is a few months away, so I decided that it is time for me to announce,” Wiener, 55, told The Examiner in an interview about formally launching his campaign to succeed Pelosi in California congressional district 11, which encompasses most of San Francisco.
Vying to be The City’s first openly gay representative in Congress, Wiener is a former San Francisco supervisor who has been elected to his current position in state Senate district 11 — which covers San Francisco and part of San Mateo County — three times, last year with almost 79% of votes counted. The Castro resident was rated California’s most effective Democratic state senator for 2023-24 — the most recent period available — by the Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. Wiener’s ranking was based largely on the quantity and substance of laws he has helped pass. Since being first sworn in to his seat in December 2016, such legislation has concerned streamlining of housing reviews and encouraging construction; requiring commercial health plans and insurers to provide full coverage for the treatment of all mental health conditions and substance-use disorders; and authorizing cities to create “entertainment zones” such as those proliferating of late in San Francisco where open containers of alcoholic beverages may be consumed on designated streets and sidewalks during permitted events. Over the last two months alone, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Wiener legislation that, among other things, will allow midrise residential developments within a half-mile of major transit stops; enact safety-plan requirements for advanced artificial-intelligence models and provide protections for whistleblowers at AI labs; and prohibit local and federal law enforcement from concealing their faces with ski masks and similar “extreme masking.” Newsom this month also signed a bill Wiener co-authored authorizing a November 2026 sales-tax ballot measure to raise money for public transit in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Wiener has been a leader of efforts to fund transit in the Bay Area, including the ongoing push to get a $750 million state loan for regional agencies. Wiener is currently up against wealthy progressive Saikat Chakrabarti, a Democrat who was formerly chief of staff to New York congressional Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Pelosi has said she will announce whether she will run for reelection after the Nov. 4 election on Proposition 50, a statewide congressional-redistricting measure. The Examiner spoke with Wiener about his decision to run, a range of policy issues and what he makes of San Francisco in this current moment. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You said previously you would wait for Nancy Pelosi to retire. What changed, and why run now? We’re in a different world today. We have rising authoritarianism. The Democratic Party needs to pivot to both fight Trump, defend democracy, and to focus like a laser on making people’s lives better with lower housing costs, lower health-care costs, more clean energy and so forth. In addition, the race has started. There’s a congressional race happening in San Francisco. Speaker Emerita , for whom I have enormous respect, has not said whether she’s running, and the filing deadline is a few months away, so I decided that it is time for me to announce. What would you bring to the position that Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t? It’s not about Nancy Pelosi or what she would or wouldn’t bring. Nancy Pelosi has moved mountains for San Francisco — for San Francisco and for the country — and I respect her tremendously. I’m running because I believe that I can represent San Francisco well, that I can deliver for The City, as I’ve done for a very long time, and that I can help move the dial on critical issues like housing, health care and climate. Ex // Top Stories Supe: Benioff controversy 'last straw' for CEO, ride-hailing tax measure Supervisor Connie Chan says Salesforce CEO’s comments spurred submission of proposed ballot measure to raise, impose certain business taxes October’s end brings 18 eerie-sistible events to San Francisco Trick-or-treat, attend a craft fair or sing your heart out in The City this week Have a sip and a snip at this Bernal Heights barbershop Resident Sheena Lister is set to open The Barb Shop’s first brick-and-mortar location, bringing an e-commerce hair brand into the neighborhood “near and dear to her” What are your top accomplishments from your time in Sacramento? I’ve authored over 100 bills that have been signed into law, including some laws that have really changed the conversation and moved the dial. I’m proud of our work around housing, including some very significant laws that are expediting permits, including for thousands of homes in San Francisco. done very aggressive work to expand access to health care, including forcing insurance companies to cover more types of treatment, particularly around mental health and addiction treatment. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done around cracking down on corporate polluters and requiring large corporations to disclose their carbon emissions. ... as well as the work we’ve done to expand investment in clean energy. What would be your top priorities upon taking office? Fighting for democracy and against authoritarianism; getting the federal government back involved in housing, which it used to be and then it stopped; taking our work to expand access to health care national — we’ve done really good work in California to force insurance companies to cover more care; passing strong federal civil-rights protections that will protect people, LGBTQ people, everywhere. Also, Congress has not done enough around tech policy. There’s no federal data-privacy law, there’s no federal net-neutrality law, there’s no federal social-media law, no federal deepfakes law. I’ve done a lot of work at the state level around AI safety. I authored California’s neutrality law. Would you pursue housing policies in Congress similar to the ones that you have championed here in California? It’s a little different. At the federal level, there’s also a lot more work to be done around funding and helping facilitate the creation of social housing, which we used to call public housing, which the federal government used to fund and facilitate and then stopped. We need to get back into that business. The federal government should play more of a role to help the construction industry modernize so we can produce housing more quickly and more efficiently. How do you envision approaching the job depending on whether Democrats have a majority after 2026? If we have a majority, then we can certainly challenge this authoritarian president more aggressively and more effectively, and then we need to win the presidency in 2028. If we don’t take back Congress, then Democrats need to be very resourceful. When you’re not in power, you have to look for every leverage point that you have, which is Democrats have done now around the government shutdown. No one likes to shut down, but I think Democrats had no choice. What approach do you think Democrats should take with messaging heading into the next year? Democrats need to convince voters that we are the party that will make their lives better. Trump campaigned on that he’s going to lower their cost of living. He hasn’t — he’s increasing the cost of living. Trump is proactively working to make people’s lives worse, and the lapdog Congress, run by the Republicans, are just going along with it, with the tariffs, with the mass deportations — which is cratering the workforce — with the cuts to science, scientific research, making it hard to get vaccines. They’re going out of their way to make people’s lives harder and worse. What from your time as a city representative would be particularly valuable in Congress? I started out as a community organizer helping build a LGBT community center. I co-founded a grassroots public-safety organization in the Castro. I was president of my neighborhood association, and then served in local government, working very hard in partnership with the local community at the neighborhood level, and now serving in the state Senate. And so I have that breadth of experience. People can agree or disagree with me on different issues, but people understand that I work incredibly hard for The City. The City is in my heart and always will be. What is your sense of the state of The City at the moment? The City is moving in a really positive direction. I mean, we have challenges for sure, but the crime is down. Tent encampments are down. The vibe on the street is really good. The neighborhoods are doing well. The downtown is starting to come back. It’s a long journey, but it’s starting.
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