{"id":10709,"date":"2025-10-18T01:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T01:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/10709\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T01:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T01:44:07","slug":"leather-wearing-democratic-state-lawmaker-scott-wiener-to-challenge-nancy-pelosi-for-california-house-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/10709\/","title":{"rendered":"Leather-wearing Democratic state lawmaker Scott Wiener to challenge Nancy Pelosi for California House seat\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)<\/a> will face a primary challenge in 2026 from Scott Wiener, a leather-wearing state lawmaker who is a \u201cdrag queen advocate\u201d and has already raised $1 million for his campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wiener<\/a>, who has represented San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area in the California Senate since 2016, had previously said he would wait until Pelosi, 85, retired to run for her long-held congressional seat, but multiple<\/a> outlets<\/a> reported on Friday that the state lawmaker will announce his candidacy for Congress next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 55-year-old California state senator will run for Pelosi\u2019s seat in 2026. Senator Scott Wiener, \/X<\/p>\n

\u201cScott Wiener for Congress,\u201d the state senator\u2019s congressional campaign committee, was set up in 2023 and reported over $1 million in contributions at the end of the last month. Meanwhile, Pelosi reported about $2 million in contributions to her principal campaign committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pelosi, who underwent hip surgery<\/a> late last year after a fall in Europe and has been seen using her security detail\u2019s assistance<\/a> to get around Capitol Hill as recently as earlier this week, has not announced any plans to retire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeaker Pelosi is fully focused on her mission to win the Yes on 50 special election in California on November 4th,\u201d Ian Krager, a spokesperson for the congresswoman, said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe urges all Californians to join in that mission on the path to taking back the House for the Democrats,\u201d Krager added, not addressing the question from The Post about Wiener\u2019s primary challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wiener<\/a>, 55, is described as \u201cone of the strongest LGBTQ civil rights champions in the nation,\u201d on his state Senate profile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s backed legislation promoting so-called gender-affirming care for minors; allowing non-binary designations on government IDs; and ending the mandatory inclusion of adults who have oral and anal intercourse with minors on sex offender registries, arguing that the law \u201cdisproportionately targets LGBT young people.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wiener has represented San Francisco in the California state Senate since 2016. Senator Scott Wiener, \/X<\/p>\n

Wiener, who is openly gay and regularly attends San Francisco\u2019s annual Folsom Street Fair kink festival in a leather vest<\/a> and leather tie<\/a>, is also a self-described \u201cdrag queen advocate.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In response to a 2022 Texas legislative effort to ban drag shows when minors are present, Wiener floated schools \u201coffering Drag Queen 101 as part of the K-12 curriculum.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAttending Drag Queen Story Time will satisfy the requirement,\u201d he tweeted<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pelosi, 85, has yet to announce whether she will seek re-election in 2026. Andrew Schwartz\/SIPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

An outspoken critic of President Trump, Wiener has blasted the National Guard as \u201cTrump\u2019s private army\u201d<\/a> and recently warned the commander in chief to \u201cstay the hell out of San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has also described Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as \u201ca paramilitary police force\u201d and a \u201cmodern-day gestapo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cICE needs to get the hell out,\u201d Wiener tweeted<\/a> this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wiener\u2019s office did not respond to The Post\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will face a primary challenge in 2026 from Scott Wiener, a leather-wearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,1752,10102,10103,8669,13,101,10104,3586],"class_list":["post-10709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-congress","tag-drag-queens","tag-lgbtqia","tag-nancy-pelosi","tag-politics","tag-san-francisco","tag-us-house-of-representatives","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}