Momentum Builds in CA's 11th District Race to Replace Pelosi

Why It Matters

The race to succeed Nancy Pelosi in California's 11th Congressional District has produced one of the starkest financial asymmetries in any congressional contest this cycle.

State Sen. Scott Wiener entered the June 2 primary with roughly $4 million raised, dwarfing the approximately $457,000 collected by SF Supervisor Connie Chan. Wiener finished first with about 41 percent of the vote.

Chan, backed by Pelosi herself, came in second at roughly 29 percent, eliminating progressive challenger Saikat Chakrabarti and setting up a Democrat-versus-Democrat general election in November in a district where Republicans haven't mounted a credible challenge in decades.

The seat is safe. The question is what kind of money, and what kind of interests, will help put someone in it.

The Candidates and Their Backers

Scott Wiener is a Harvard Law-educated attorney and California state senator who has represented San Francisco in Sacramento since 2016. He chairs the Senate Budget and Housing Committees, and has built a national profile through landmark pro-housing legislation and LGBTQ+ rights protections. His campaign's financial profile reflects his political coalition of individual donors who maxed out at the $7,000 federal limit, many of them drawn from Silicon Valley's tech and crypto executive class.

The most visible outside money supporting Wiener flows through a super PAC called Abundant Future, funded in significant part by Ripple CEO and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen ($100,000-plus) and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, and Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman and San Francisco philanthropist Dede Wilsey contributed directly to the campaign. Abundant Future also received approximately $250,000 from Smart Justice California Action Fund and $500,000 from an outside group called Public First Action, spending much of it to attack Chakrabarti in the primary.

The tech money has become a liability as well as an asset. Critics, including Chan's campaign, pointed out that several of Wiener's crypto backers have also donated to Trump-aligned causes. That's a politically toxic association in a district that voted roughly 81 percent for Pelosi in 2024. The Intercept reported in May that Wiener opposes a California billionaire tax that his major backers have also worked to defeat, a convergence of interests that progressive opponents have hammered throughout the campaign.

Connie Chan is a Chinese immigrant who has served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing the Richmond District since 2021. Her campaign's financial base is rooted in small individual donors and labor unions, with the California Federation of Labor, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California, the San Francisco Labor Council, the California Teachers Association, and National Nurses United all endorsing her. Despite those endorsements, Mission Local reported that labor PAC money was slow to materialize, leaving Chan's campaign financially outgunned heading into the primary.

Chan also carries a significant outside-money complication. A super PAC called EDW Action which supports female Democratic candidates spent heavily in her favor. But Dropsite News reported that EDW Action received $287,750 from organizations tied to the pro-Israel lobbying network, including Democratic Majority for Israel and the United Democracy Project, an AIPAC affiliate, and Chan had publicly stated she would not accept AIPAC money. Her campaign's response was that those donations went to EDW Action, not to Chan's campaign committee. J. Weekly reported Chan's spokesperson saying, "We have not received any contributions from AIPAC or DMFI." The distinction between a candidate's committee and a PAC supporting that candidate is legally precise but politically awkward, particularly in a district with a vocal, politically active Arab-American and progressive Muslim community.

11th District Campaign Donations

The big fundraising gap between Wiener and Chan, roughly 8-to-1, is a defining financial fact of this election. Wiener ended the first quarter of 2026 with approximately $2.6 million in cash on hand. Chan had roughly $157,000. The Hill reported that just in the first quarter of 2026 Wiener raised $734,000, while Chan's total cycle fundraising had barely exceeded that figure in total.

That gap matters because California's top-two general election system is a full-district contest. Chan's primary strength was concentrated in the Richmond District and Chinese-American communities citywide. Expanding that coalition to win a majority of votes across all of San Francisco requires money for mailers, digital advertising, field operations, and voter contact in neighborhoods where she has less natural support.

For Chan to close the money gap, labor PACs will need to write large checks in the coming months. SEIU, the building trades, and other unions that endorsed her have the capacity to spend significantly, but that spending had not materialized at scale during the primary.

What's at Stake in This Race

Pelosi announced her retirement on November 6, 2025, ending a congressional career that began with a 1987 special election and included four terms as Speaker. The stakes in this race extend well beyond San Francisco. Safe Democratic seats like CA-11 are expected to hold, but the ideological character of the winner will make a difference. A Wiener victory consolidates a pragmatic, tech-aligned, pro-housing wing of the party in a high-profile seat; a Chan victory would send a labor-backed, community-organizing Democrat with deep ties to San Francisco's immigrant communities.

Organized Interests Seeking Support

Pelosi's position offers a window into what the district's representative has historically meant to organized interests. Her public communications, spanning more than 5,000 items, show healthcare as her dominant legislative focus. The Affordable Care Act alone accounts for 439 tagged mentions, followed by pharmaceuticals (325), Medicare (302), and health insurance (257).

Wiener's tech and crypto backers are investing in a candidate who has demonstrated willingness to push back on regulatory frameworks they find burdensome. Chan's labor backers are investing in a candidate who has consistently prioritized worker protections and immigrant rights over business-friendly policy.

Congressional Candidate Fundraising

KQED reported that "big money pours into San Francisco race to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi," a headline that captures the national attention this contest has drawn. The SF Chronicle found that more than a third of Chan's individual donors had Chinese last names, compared to roughly 4 percent of Wiener's, a demographic snapshot of two very different coalition-building strategies.

The district itself is roughly 31 percent Asian, 40 to 44 percent white, 12 percent Latino, and 6 percent Black. Its LGBTQ+ population is among the highest concentrations in the country. Wiener, who is openly gay and has championed transgender rights legislation in Sacramento, holds an advantage with that community, while Chan is popular with Asian-American voters, the district's second-largest demographic group.

Polling heading into the primary showed Wiener with 97 percent name recognition and a favorability advantage across the district. The Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco's LGBTQ newspaper, endorsed Wiener for Congress. The general election will test whether Chan can convert Pelosi's endorsement, and the labor money that has yet to fully arrive, into a competitive challenge against a candidate with an 8-to-1 financial advantage and a 12-point primary margin.