With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set to depart Congress in January 2027, speculation is mounting over who will take her place.
As of Thursday morning, records from the Federal Election Commission reveal that six Democrats and two Republicans have filed to run in the June 2026 primary for California’s 11th congressional district. This San Francisco-based seat is currently held by Pelosi.
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Among the candidates, two Democrats stand out, both younger than Pelosi and potentially part of a broader generational shift within the party. This mirrors the situation in New York, where U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler’s upcoming retirement has paved the way for a new wave of younger candidates.
CA State Sen. Scott Wiener
California State Senator Scott Wiener declared his candidacy in October, ahead of Pelosi’s retirement announcement. Wiener had been waiting for Pelosi to make her future plans public before committing to the race.
“San Franciscans are looking for more than just a figurehead with progressive ideals; they want someone who will effectively advocate for them,” Wiener stated.
Wiener believes at a time when San Francisco is under attack from the Trump Administration, voters need a representative in Congress who will fight for the city’s values.
“This is going to be a huge, deep grassroots campaign that’s going to be about San Francisco and about our future,” he said.
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Wiener was first elected to the California state Senate in 2016 and previously worked in San Francisco city government and as a lawyer.
In his announcement video launching his congressional bid, he said he was running “to defend San Francisco, our values, our people, and the constitution of the United States with everything we have… Trump and his MAGA extremists don’t scare me.” According to federal campaign finance filings, his campaign had nearly $870,000 on hand as of the end of September.
Wiener, in a statement on Thursday, called Pelosi “an icon of American politics,” and praised her work on healthcare, the economy, climate policy, and “fighting for the marginalized… At the height of the AIDS crisis, when so many others wanted to push LGBTQ people under the rug, Nancy Pelosi fought proudly for us to be treated with dignity.”
Speaking about his own experience coming out as gay man around the time Pelosi came to Congress and said she was there to fight AIDs, Wiener added, “It was a terrifying time to come of age as a gay man, and Nancy Pelosi stepped up and used her voice and platform to fight for people like me. I will be eternally grateful to her.”
Saikat Chakrabarti
Separately, former Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur Saikat Chakrabarti, had well beforehand launched a primary campaign against Pelosi.
Chakrabarti was New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager during her 2018 primary upset against incumbent Joe Crowley, which kicked off Ocasio-Cortez’s meteoric rise. He got his start in politics working on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and is a founding engineer of the online payment platform Stripe.
Chakrabarti told ABC News in April that he felt he could beat Pelosi in the primary because he saw echoes of the 2018 “blue wave” in 2025: a post-Trump election environment marked by frustration among Democrats over their party’s defeat. “That moment of change, in my opinion, is dwarfed by the moment of change you see right now. The level of anger at the Democratic Party for failing is huge,” Chakrabarti said.
In a statement on Thursday, Chakrabarti thanked Pelosi “for your decades of service that defined a generation of politics and for doing something truly rare in Washington: making room for the next one. Our campaign is ready to build on that legacy by fighting to create a San Francisco and an America that works for everyone.”
The filing period for California’s congressional primary does not open until February 9, 2026 and closes on March 6, so there is still plenty of time for other challengers to enter the ring.
California uses a “top-two” primary system where the two candidates with the most votes, regardless of party, advance to the general election.
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