{"id":192380,"date":"2026-02-25T03:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/192380\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T03:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:04:16","slug":"chinatown-daughter-billionaire-taxer-chan-runs-for-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/192380\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinatown daughter, billionaire-taxer: Chan runs for Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a frenzied three days for congressional candidate Connie Chan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Portsmouth Square, she addressed a crowd of more than 200 people and proclaimed herself a daughter of Chinatown. In the Mission, she stood before 100 supporters and vowed to tax billionaires. At the Sunset Recreation Center, she spoke to another 100 attendees, promising to fight for working families.<\/p>\n

Chan, the current District 1 supervisor, wore a lot of hats and leaned into different facets of her progressive bona fides during three campaign kickoff events over the weekend. She tested out messaging on her Chinese roots, her immigrant background, and her affinity for taxing the billionaires \u201call the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have fought billionaires and billionaires\u2019 PAC, as candidates but also at the ballot box with different ballot measures that we make sure that we are for the working people in San Francisco,\u201d Chan said at In Chan Kaajal Park.<\/p>\n

With the primary vote looming in June, the race to succeed<\/a> Rep. Nancy Pelosi is off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A lot happened in just the past week. On Sunday, Chan\u2019s opponent, Sen. Scott Wiener, secured the endorsement of the California Democratic Party. <\/p>\n

Chan countered with a steady rollout of endorsements of her own: Unions representing nurses and firefighters, the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, AFT 2121, former mayors Willie Brown and Art Agnos, retired judge Quentin Kopp, former San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, and the Working Families Party.<\/p>\n

In the same week, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club endorsed Chan, while the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club backed Wiener.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s Chinatown kickoff centered on electing the first Chinese American from Northern California to Congress. Two other major Chinese enclaves, New York City and the Los Angeles area, have already elected Chinese congresspeople. <\/p>\n

Rep. Judy Chu, a Chinese American who represents communities including Pasadena, has endorsed Chan.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at our history. We\u2019ve been told we can only stay in Chinatown and we cannot go outside,\u201d said Chan, dressed in red, to a crowd of more than 200 participants at Portsmouth Square. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut look at who we are today in 2026. We are not only in Chinatown. We are actually in the Richmond. We\u2019re in the Sunset. We\u2019re in Bayview. We\u2019re in the entire Bay Area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinese votes are central to Chan\u2019s path to victory. California\u2019s 11th congressional district has fewer Chinese voters than San Francisco writ large, but it still includes more than 73,000 of them<\/a>, accounting for roughly 16 percent of its 470,000 voters.<\/p>\n

Supervisor Chyanne Chen, acting as emcee at the Feb. 20 event at Portsmouth Square, joked that she and Chan were \u201cthe double Chen\u201d on the board, pronouncing the two last names the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chan urged a community known for low voter turnout<\/a> to cast ballots in June and November. \u201cMany people want to divide us, saying Chinese voters don\u2019t need representation. They don\u2019t understand our pain,\u201d she said in her mother tongue, Cantonese.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chan said that though she was raised to be quiet, the strong \u201ctiger mom\u201d in her would come out for this campaign. \u201cChinese Americans know how to fight!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019ll translate it for those white folks,\u201d Chan said, finishing her speech in Cantonese and turning to English: \u201cThe Chinese American community, they should know I prioritize them because I\u2019m a daughter of Chinatown.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Peskin, who was in attendance and represented Chinatown for the better part of 20 years as District 3 supervisor, introduced his former legislative aide as \u201ca daughter of North Beach, a daughter of San Francisco.\u201d <\/p>\n

He contrasted her with Wiener, a Harvard Law School graduate, saying Chan would not play the \u201cI went to Harvard, I\u2019m smarter than all of you\u201d game, but would instead \u201cunify people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ADistrict 1 supervisor Connie Chan at her Congressional campaign kickoff at Portsmouth Square on Feb. 20, 2026. Photo by Yujie Zhou.<\/p>\n

In Chan\u2019s kickoff in the Mission District at In Chan Kaajal Park at 17th and Folsom streets, masked Chinese seniors were replaced by union members chanting \u201cHard work!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chan, who had centered the previous day on her Chinese American identity, broadened her message to immigrants and workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cChinese American immigrants in San Francisco, I think that is the same for Latino immigrants and Filipino immigrants and all the immigrants in San Francisco,\u201d said Chan, outfitted in a black sweatshirt printed with the word \u201cmakibaka,\u201d Tagalog for \u201cfight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the longest time, you don\u2019t get to go out, you don\u2019t get to buy a home, you don\u2019t actually get to be here,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t get to own a business.\u201d<\/p>\n

She repeated her personal story as an immigrant daughter and English learner who came to the United States with a single mother and a younger brother. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnly in San Francisco and in a sanctuary city, someone like me \u2026 gets to run for office and win,\u201d Chan told the roughly 100 attendees. Now, she said, she wants to continue that story in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Chan was joined by drag artist Kiki Krunch, union leaders, former supervisor Dean Preston, and supervisors Shamann Walton and Jackie Fielder.<\/p>\n

Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, said Chan is the only candidate who does \u201ckitchen-table economics\u201d and understands the struggles of putting food on the table, childcare and keeping a roof over one\u2019s head in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, listed Chan as a working-family fighter alongside New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not interested in finding a good billionaire big brother to fight against the bad billionaires,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cI\u2019m interested in finding working-families fighters \u2026 to challenge the billionaire class.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGuess what?\u201d Chan replied. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna tax them all the way!\u201d<\/p>\n

But to fight moneyed interests, one needs money, and Chan, who joined the race in November, is lagging behind in fundraising: She had amassed just over $174,000 by the end of 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both her main opponents, Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti, finished 2025 with well over $1 million raised each. Wiener formed a committee as early as 2023 to explore the possibility of a congressional race. Chakrabarti, who made a fortune in tech, gave $1.47 million to his own campaign.<\/p>\n

\"ThreeDistrict 1 supervisor Connie Chan at her Congressional campaign kickoff at the Sunset Recreation Center on Feb. 22, 2026. Photo by Yujie Zhou.<\/p>\n

Chan closed her three-day kickoff Sunday at the Sunset Recreation Center with more union leaders, an even hoarser voice after a packed weekend participating in the California Democratic Party convention, and no mention of the neighborhood\u2019s most heated topic: the Great Highway<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Emcee Rudy Gonzalez of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council said that introducing Chan, who he called \u201cour future Congresswoman from San Francisco,\u201d was like introducing Pelosi back in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chan invited District 4 candidate and Walton chief of staff Natalie Gee as one of the speakers. Selena Chu, activist in the recall campaign against Joel Engardio, was also in the audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chan, who was described by Gonzalez as \u201ca working mom with an immigrant story,\u201d specifically acknowledged the struggles, the silence, and \u201cespecially woman warriors\u201d of the Filipino American community, and pledged to represent all the different voices of the Sunset.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that we have different politics and a whole spectrum of it,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re sending our voice collectively to Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a frenzied three days for congressional candidate Connie Chan.\u00a0 At Portsmouth Square, she addressed a crowd…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[35072,13,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-192380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-election-2026","9":"tag-politics","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192380","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=192380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}