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<\/p>\nNancy Pelosi is retiring after representing the city in Washington for nearly 40 years, and now Scott Wiener and Connie Chan, both Democrats, are facing off to replace her.<\/p>\n
Oct 2, 2026<\/p>\n
Updated 9:32 am PT<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From left: State Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan debate at KQED in San Francisco on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. The two Democrats are running for California\u2019s 11th District, a seat Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is leaving. The debate was co-hosted by KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle.\u00a0(Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle\/Pool)<\/p>\n
As warnings of an artificial intelligence-driven doomsday loom, candidates looking to represent the home of the AI boom in Congress are pitching San Francisco voters on their plan to prevent disaster.<\/p>\n
Ideas like data center moratoriums and AI kill-switches have shifted from niche topics to key questions for voters, a fact made clear at a congressional debate Thursday night<\/a> moderated by KQED\u2019s Marisa Lagos and Scott Schafer, along with Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nancy Pelosi is retiring after representing the city in Congress for nearly 40 years, and the hotly contested race has come down to two Democrats: state Senator Scott Wiener<\/a> and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan<\/a>.<\/p>\n While both support regulating AI<\/a> in some fashion, Chan and Wiener had diverging approaches when it came to the best way to move forward as the technology advances quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAI is arguably the most powerful technology in the history of the world\u2026 and self regulation does not work,\u201d Wiener said, touting his record authoring the country\u2019s first AI safety bill for the state of California.<\/p>\n Wiener\u2019s first attempt at an AI safety bill included an AI \u201ckill-switch\u201d and other safeguards, however that bill was vetoed<\/a> by Gov. Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n Wiener has said that it should be up to individual communities whether or not to ban data centers. Chan, meanwhile, argued for a moratorium on data centers to \u201chave a moment to regulate artificial intelligence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She called out her opponent for counting several major tech leaders among his supporters. \u201cCan we trust politicians who are bankrolled by the AI industry? The answer is no, we cannot. We have to make sure that workers and unions are actually at the table to regulate this AI technology,\u201d Chan said.<\/p>\n Wiener fired back that plenty of tech industry leaders tried to stop his AI bill and he pushed it through nonetheless.<\/p>\n \u201cI do battle with some of the biggest and wealthiest corporations in the history of the planet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Another tense moment around AI came when when the candidates were asked about a recent sexual assault allegation in local San Francisco politics. Prominent local business owner Manny Yekutiel dropped his bid<\/a> to become the next District 8 supervisor just hours before the debate after being accused by multiple people of sexual assault.<\/p>\n Both Chan and Wiener urged Yekutiel to exit the race and said more work needs to be done to listen to and support survivors of assault and harassment.<\/p>\n Chan pointed out that she herself had to fight against racism and sexism in the political arena recently when Wiener\u2019s team released an AI chatbot mimicking Chan, \u201cmocking me, putting words in my mouth and impersonating me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She also underscored that she is a working mom and has garnered wide support from unions.<\/p>\n Wiener, who is openly gay and previously served as a San Francisco supervisor, has backing from the state and local Democratic Party, as well as some well-heeled tech leaders.<\/p>\n He\u2019s so far outraised his opponent, but Chan has built up her war chest with the help of Pelosi\u2019s fundraising machine and support from Saikait Chakrabarti, a wealthy former tech engineer whom she defeated in the June primary.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both candidates were given the opportunity to ask each other a question at Thursday\u2019s debate, with Wiener honing in on Chan\u2019s reputation for blocking housing, like a proposed 495-unit building at 469 Stevenson St., and that she voted against Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s rezoning plan<\/a> at a time when San Francisco is facing a housing crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chan said those decisions were made based on listening to constituents in the surrounding areas, and that in Congress she would push for more public housing and assistance for renters.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can build homes because we need to build homes but we also need to protect our tenants and small businesses,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about serving the community and\u2026 sometimes that\u2019s not a winner-takes-all approach.\u201d<\/p>\n Wiener\u2019s cultivated a reputation in Sacramento for passing legislation to spur more housing development. But Chan took swings at his support from tech- and real estate-aligned groups, implying that she is the candidate who will stand up to billionaires.<\/p>\n Wiener recently opposed two wealth taxes, Proposition D in San Francisco<\/a>, which he said would disincentivize business at a time when the city\u2019s economy is still recovering, and Proposition 40 in California<\/a>, saying that the one-time tax on the November ballot doesn\u2019t offer a sustainable solution to funding healthcare.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, Wiener said he supports Sen. Elizabeth Warren\u2019s ultramillionaire tax. \u201cI do work for the people and that\u2019s why I\u2019m endorsed by the Sierra Club and Dolores Huerta,\u201d Wiener said. \u201cI support reversing the tax cuts by (Donald) Trump and (George) Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n On foreign policy, both candidates said they would support sending defensive arms to Ukraine as well as Taiwan, if China were to invade the island. They also both stressed that diplomacy and humanitarian aid should be the priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want U.S. troops to be in a war with China,\u201d Wiener said.\u00a0<\/p>\n On China, Wiener also stressed that it\u2019s in both the U.S and China\u2019s best interest to create guardrails around AI technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not need some mega arms race where we\u2019re like, who\u2019s going to be the first to potentially melt down the world,\u201d Wiener said. He slammed Trump for eroding the relationship between the U.S. and longtime allies and stressed that in the age of AI, members of Congress need to work together to pass regulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe need leadership in this country that will actually work with other countries,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chan said the U.S. should not frame AI regulation around a race with China over who can develop the technology faster but around protecting humanity. While Wiener intimated that she had never worked on AI regulation, she fired back that she\u2019s worked on local laws to stop landlords from using AI to increase rents.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica can be a leader of innovation without sacrificing safety and without sacrificing our workforce,\u201d Chan said. \u201cWe need to demand human oversight, not just when something catastrophic happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nancy Pelosi is retiring after representing the city in Washington for nearly 40 years, and now Scott Wiener…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-482951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482951","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=482951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/kqed-debate-1-copy-2-scaled-e1790958307792.jpg\")
State Sen. Scott Wiener during a debate with San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan at KQED in San Francisco on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. The two Democrats are running for California\u2019s 11th District, a seat Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is leaving. The debate was co-hosted by KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle.\u00a0(Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle\/Pool)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/kqed-debate-3-scaled-e1790958264709.jpg\")
San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan during her debate with State Sen. Scott Wiener at KQED in San Francisco on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. The two Democrats are running for California\u2019s 11th District, a seat Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is leaving. The debate was co-hosted by KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle.\u00a0(Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle\/Pool)<\/p>\n