No matter who wins November’s election to succeed Nancy Pelosi in Congress, it seems that the Congressional Progressive Caucus will be gaining a new member.
At Monday night’s Q&A at the Mission’s Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Americas, State Sen. Scott Wiener, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, and former Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez staffer and tech multi-millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti all worked to establish their progressive bona fides.
In addition to making it clear they would be most excited to join the Progressive Caucus if elected, the three candidates all called for accountability for fossil fuel companies, abolishing ICE and Medicare for All.
The progressive bent was perhaps unsurprising, given that the three were speaking to members of the Working Families Party, a group critical not just of Republicans but also of corporate Democrats. The event, open to the public, drew about 100 people, with many more joining online. Organizers chose some questions in advance, and others from audience submissions.
They honed in on the areas where candidates’ progressive credentials were in question.
Chakrabarti defends donations to moderates, and explains local record
For Chakrabarti, that meant asking about his election donations in 2024. That included $500, the maximum donation, to the unsuccessful campaign of Michael Lai in District 11 and $500 for Bilal Mahmood, who unseated the city’s lone socialist supervisor, Dean Preston, in District 5. Chakrabarti also voted for Daniel Lurie for mayor.
Lai, Mahmood, and Lurie are all moderates and ran against local progressives.
Chakrabarti tried to explain. “When it comes to Michael, that was an oversight on my part,” Chakrabarti said — a “former” friend from the Bernie Sanders campaign worked on Lai’s campaign, and recommended that Chakrabarti donate.
As for Mahmood, “he’s, I believe, progressive,” Chakrabarti said (one person in the crowd let out an incredulous laugh). Chakrabarti listed some of the progressive policies Mahmood has supported, including the labor-backed CEO tax on June’s ballot.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was excited to see the first South Asian supervisor in the city and first Muslim supervisor in the city,” he added.
Saikat Chakrabarti at a Working Families Party forum on Feb. 9, 2026. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman
As for Lurie, “I’ll be honest, I was not a fan of any of the people running for mayor,” Chakrabarti said to chuckles from the crowd. He also noted that Aaron Peskin, the consensus progressive candidate in that race, was his second choice.
You’ve been in San Francisco for years, a member asked, so “why didn’t you start engaging in San Francisco progressive communities years ago?” Voting records show Chakrabarti resided here from 2010-11 and from 2020 to the present.
Chakrabarti said he’d been more focused on federal politics in his work with Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, and with his policy think tank New Consensus.
“That’s why I’m running for Congress,” he said. “If I wanted to run for supervisor or something else in the city, I’d start by volunteering and working on campaigns here and working my way up, the way I’ve done in national politics.”
Scott Wiener talks Gaza ‘genocide,’ taxes, and legislative chops
Wiener, who is not on the progressive “team” in San Francisco because of his stances on issues like housing and taxes, also received a grilling from the Working Families Party.
They pointed out that the last time the group interviewed Wiener, he declined to say whether Israel’s attack on Gaza amounted to genocide, much like he did at the first congressional debate in a clip that went viral. A few days later, though, Wiener posted a video saying that he did think Israel’s actions constituted genocide.
“Can you walk us through your thought process for what the turning point was for you?” organizers asked.
Wiener said that he had always considered what Israel was doing in Gaza an atrocity but had just “chose to use different words that were, in my view, quite equivalent to genocide.” This included, “cratering an entire population,” “absolute destruction,” “a moral stain,” and the Yiddish word “shanda,” which means disgrace.
Scott Wiener addresses attendees of the Working Families Party forum from Zoom on Feb. 9, 2026. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman.
“The word ‘genocide’ is a very sensitive one, and the community is very divided on it, and for a lot of people it is very raw,” he said. “But ultimately I chose to use the word genocide and I stand by that.”
Organizers also asked Wiener about his opposition to Prop. 33, a failed November 2024 statewide initiative that would have allowed cities to expand rent control.
“I did not oppose it. So that is not accurate,” Wiener said, explaining that for many years he has supported reforming California’s rent control laws, which in San Francisco only apply to buildings built before 1979.
Wiener also fielded a question about his work on a tax measure that will go before Bay Area voters in November to fund public transit.
Without the funds, BART and Muni service will be decimated. But why is his tax a sales tax that, like all sales taxes, is regressive and disproportionately affects the poor, rather than a progressive gross receipts tax which hits larger businesses, they asked.
A gross receipts tax, Wiener responded, would not have passed the legislature. “We could have fought that fight for a gross receipts tax and then had no bill and then had no ballot measure and have BART, Muni, AC Transit, Caltrain crater or have massive service cuts.”
Near the end, Wiener, who has far more legislative experience than the other candidates, made a pitch for taking his years into account.
“It’s not good enough to have progressive ideas,” he said. “You have to have the ability to turn those progressive ideas into progressive laws.”
Chan on housing and the Great Highway
Chan’s politics and strong union support tend to place her solidly into San Francisco’s progressive camp, but she was still questioned about her stances on urbanist issues including upzoning to allow taller buildings and closing the Great Highway to cars.
Though building taller, denser housing and pedestrianizing roads tend to be progressive issues in a national context, San Francisco’s progressive establishment often opposes urbanist changes. Many of the city’s unions and progressive supervisors opposed this year’s upzoning legislation and last year’s Proposition K, which closed the Great Highway.
Connie Chan at the Working Families Party forum on Feb. 9, 2026. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman.
Chan said that lack of protections for small businesses and rent-controlled tenants motivated her opposition to upzoning, which increased the maximum height of buildings on many of San Francisco’s commercial corridors from four stories to six or eight stories.
“That is the reason why I was really hoping that I could get support to amend the zoning plan,” she said, “to fight against real estate, speculative investments and displacement.”
Chan proposed amendments to the upzoning plan that lowered allowable heights on commercial corridors in her district and removed all existing housing — not just rent-controlled housing — from the plan. These amendments were ultimately not incorporated into the plan because they likely would have put the city out of compliance with state housing law.
As for the Great Highway, Chan said that until there is a better public transit system and people “want to ditch their cars,” the question she will be asking is, “Are there access and routes for people who have to drive their cars?”
An endorsement from the Working Families Party is forthcoming.
The top two vote getters in the June 2 “jungle primary,” regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the Nov. 3 general election.