In his first public interview as a congressional candidate, Sen. Scott Wiener on Monday ran through his record of housing and healthcare bills in the State Senate while he inveighed against national Democrats for capitulating to Republicans, defined his limits of U.S. aid to Israel and presented himself as a prolific state lawmaker who could be even more effective on Capitol Hill.
During an interview with Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi to a sold-out room at Manny’s, Wiener said he’s eager to “show national leadership” for a city that’s unique culturally, economically, and politically. He denigrated critics who “beat up on us and write our obituary and are obsessed about the closing of a Nordstrom.”
His priorities would include healthcare access, building more housing, transitioning to clean energy, protecting immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, reproductive health, and all the critical goals “that this administration is tearing down,” said Wiener.
Following the retirement of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, 85, announced last week, Wiener is the front-running candidate for a seat that essentially represents all of San Francisco in D.C.
Also in the race is Saikat Chakrabarti, a centimillionaire with a tech background who’s best known as the former campaign manager and chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. During his campaign kickoff last month, Chakrabarti drew a young, progressive crowd that included many fans of New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani.
Pelosi’s daughter Christine, meanwhile, is now running for Wiener’s soon-to-be-vacant State Senate seat. Wiener said it was too early to say whether he would support the younger Pelosi’s candidacy.
Attitudes on Gaza have been one of the biggest differentiators between Wiener and Chakrabarti among San Francisco voters. The latter is a vocal critic of Israel who unambiguously accused it of genocide at his kick-off, stating, “If I am elected, I will vote to end all military funding to Israel.”
Wiener has long had a strong pro-Israel stance. Soon after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Wiener said in a statement that “Israel has every right to fight back” while calling on it to “protect as many innocent Gazan civilians as possible.” Two years later, nearly 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.
Last night, Wiener emphasized that his support for Israel had limits: “I will not support the U.S. selling offensive arms to Israel as long as Israel has a government that’s not committed to peace and democracy,” said Wiener.
He reiterated that he will not accept support from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. “I have just a lot of disagreements with AIPAC about this Israeli government, which I think is a disaster, about Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the mass killing and maiming, destruction of the health care and education system,” said Wiener.
In other matters, Wiener offered a strong rebuke to the Democratic senators who crossed the line on Sunday to support Trump’s budget proposal to reopen the government.
It was “terrible” and basically the senators “didn’t get anything for it,” said Wiener. Given that Republicans control all three branches of government, “when we have leverage and we have power, we need to use it,” he added.
Sen. Scott Wiener talks housing, Israel, and D.C. in first public talk as congressional candidate during an interview with Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi on Nov. 10, 2025. Photo by Yujie Zhou.
Wiener was 17 when Pelosi matriculated to congress in 1987. And he would have to serve into his 90s to duplicate Pelosi’s seniority in Congress, a seniority-based system.
But that system, Wiener said, “needs to be much more flexible” to have more wisdom for making public policy, he said.
In Wiener’s view, Chakrabarti, a passionate 39-year-old, has done “really smart things,” but is deficient in three aspects. First, Chakrabarti has a limited connection to San Francisco. “Before he was running for Congress, I’m unaware of any local involvement,” said Wiener.
Then there’s Chakrabarti’s lack of policymaking experience, said Wiener. Apart from leading the legislative effort of pushing the Green New Deal, Chakrabarti spent less than a year on Capitol Hill. The 55-year-old state senator, in contrast, has been widely considered as one of the most prolific lawmakers in Sacramento.
He emphasized the need for a coalition builder in D.C. Meanwhile, Chakrabarti is under attack from both the city’s progressives, who distrust him because he helped unseat democratic socialist Dean Preston, and tech moderates, many of whom have been longtime allies with Wiener.
Wiener also appeared ready to face other contenders.
Perhaps consciously echoing a favorite term of Pelosi, when asked about former mayor London Breed’s reported interest in running for Congress, Wiener answered “come on in, the water’s warm.” Wiener expects more challenges to materialize as “this is San Francisco.”
Supervisor Connie Chan, who was endorsed by Pelosi in past races and would enjoy a benefit as the only Chinese candidate in the race, is also weighing a run.
Wiener said he has not had the conversations he’d need to support Christine Pelosi, Nancy’s daughter, who just announced her intention to run for his state senate seat.
If Wiener wins his congressional race, Christine Pelosi will compete in a special state senate election in 2027. Otherwise the race will be in 2028 when Wiener is termed out.
When Eskenazi noted that San Francisco officials are now overtly using Wiener as a bogeyman to push the city’s upzoning plan on the westside, thereby rendering it awkward for Wiener to turn around and then court these voters in his run for Congress, Wiener countered that his policies are longstanding and unhidden.
“My housing politics have been remarkably consistent for a long time,” he said. He reminded the gathering that his prohousing stance hasn’t been an issue in the past as he ran on a pro-housing platform in his 2016 race, and won.
For the last 50 years, California has almost tripled in population, but the housing production has gone down by about two-thirds and people started to see “explosive housing costs,” said Wiener. “Sometimes the westside gets stereotyped … there are a lot of amazing housing advocates on the west side of San Francisco.”
He believes he can continue his housing advocacy in D.C. by persuading the federal government to partner with states and cities again to build social housing.
But “how does freshman Congressman Wiener, working as one of 538 representatives, some of whom believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, convince the federal government to get back into the social housing business?” Eskenazi asked.
Wiener emphasized that he’s playing the long game. Lots of huge bills took five or 10 years to pass, he said. Maybe longer: “But if you keep pounding your head against the wall long enough, eventually the wall breaks.”
And, Wiener notes, “I have a particularly hard head.”