{"id":41049,"date":"2025-05-02T12:51:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T19:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=41049"},"modified":"2025-05-02T21:23:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T04:23:33","slug":"ex-aoc-chief-of-staff-going-after-the-most-powerful-woman-in-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/02\/ex-aoc-chief-of-staff-going-after-the-most-powerful-woman-in-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-AOC chief of staff going after the most powerful woman in Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Saikat Chakrabarti hopes his tech experience and work with iconic progressives can vault him over Pelosi and into Washington, D.C<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Saikat Chakrabarti hosts a Zoom call with potential voters and supporters from his campaign office in San Francisco on April 21, 2025.Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Anabel Sosa<\/a>, Senior California politics reporter <\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 1, 2025 (SFGate.com)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All at once, Saikat Chakrabarti is a nobody, a Silicon Valley millionaire and a humble job applicant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not choosing to challenge the most powerful woman in Congress. I am just choosing to challenge my congressional representative in San Francisco,\u201d he said last month at Manny\u2019s, the famous political venue in San Francisco\u2019s Mission District. He was speaking to roughly 120 people during his first public event since announcing he would challenge Rep. Nancy Pelosi<\/a>, the speaker emerita who has represented San Francisco in Congress since 1987, in a primary election next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the first time the 39-year-old, who spent the last decade helping recruit and elect progressives to Congress, is running on his own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we can\u2019t just have this anti-Trump movement,\u201d he said at the panel. \u201cRight now, the Democrats are going to have a choice: They continue standing for slow, iterative change and the status quo \u2026 or are we going to present an actual vision for rebuilding society?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During an hourlong panel hosted at the iconic community cafe, Chakrabarti argued that a change is needed. He said repeatedly, with conviction, that there is a \u201creal coup going on in D.C.\u201d and that Democrats aren\u2019t doing enough to stop it. He believes established Democrats like Pelosi are ignoring the bigger problems facing Americans, which have led to the \u201cauthoritarian\u201d rise of President Donald Trump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the bulk of Chakrabarti\u2019s pitch to voters as he works to establish himself as a viable challenger to Pelosi, over a year before Californians will cast their ballots. Pelosi has filed paperwork<\/a> to run in 2026 but has not publicly shared her plans. Regardless, Chakrabarti is positioning himself as a fresh-faced candidate who is in a rush for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Dupree, a 35-year-old San Francisco resident, came away from the Manny\u2019s event with a sense that Chakrabarti understands the grievances of San Franciscans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe made a great point that people are feeling economic pain. The cost of living is going up. Even in San Francisco, people are struggling,\u201d he said. \u201cMy question is, how are you going to build a coalition of liberals?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A progressive, I guess”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti\u2019s story is one of humble beginnings: He was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, by immigrants from India. His father came to the U.S. with \u201c20 bucks in his pocket,\u201d Chakrabarti often says, yet he was able to build a middle class life off a single income. That principle is the centerpiece of his campaign: that a hard worker should be able to make a good life. But stories like his father\u2019s have been replaced by a modern world where \u201ca few people\u201d make \u201can ungodly amount of money\u201d while \u201cmost people can barely make rent,\u201d he told the crowd at Manny\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti admits he was one of those \u201cungodly amount of money\u201d people. He attended Harvard University, worked briefly<\/a> on Wall Street, then moved to San Francisco in 2009. A few years later, as a precocious computer programmer, he struck gold as the second engineer ever to join Stripe Inc., the multibillion dollar payment services platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really hate the inequality of it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m proud of what I built, but I didn\u2019t work harder than a teacher or a nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Eventually, he left Stripe to work under two of the biggest progressive names in politics: Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a>. But Charkabarti doesn\u2019t want to fit into a box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI mean, I identify as a progressive, I guess,\u201d Chakrabarti told SFGATE a few days later during a lunchtime interview at his home\/campaign headquarters in Duboce Triangle, the quaint and colorful San Francisco neighborhood where he lives with his wife and kids. \u201cBut it\u2019s really hard to know what that word means these days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is wearing a flannel and jeans, and his campaign manager and longtime colleague, Zack Exley, is sitting next to him. Chakrabarti is slightly hunched forward, finishing a salad from a nearby cafe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really do sort of dislike having all the labels,\u201d Chakrabarti continued. \u201cJust because I want to campaign on the actual stuff I want to do, the actual solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those ideas, he says, include universal health care and child care, as well as scrapping dirty money in politics \u2014 all standard progressive ambitions upheld by his former bosses.\u201cI guess wanting to get rid of money in politics makes me a progressive,\u201d he laughed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He adds, \u201cThere\u2019s some new stuff I\u2019m also trying to run on,\u201d which he says involves focusing on how \u201cthe government actually executes, and makes stuff happen, and builds stuff.\u201d \u201cI am not sure what bucket that really falls in. I think it\u2019s just kind of practical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

He has a vision \u201cto build a whole movement\u201d and rebuild the economy, which he likens to Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s post-Great Depression programs under the New Deal. At Manny\u2019s, he referenced the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a 1932 government agency that helped restore public faith in the economy, as a guiding light for his own vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe way I imagine this going is, I\u2019m trying to pitch these big ideas as the way the Democratic Party should be operating,\u201d he says between bites. \u201cThe Democratic Party is so underwater right now … the only way voters are going to trust it again is … if a whole new movement takes over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has said he will largely self-fund his campaign and will not accept money from corporate political action committees. He said he is prepared to match Pelosi, who is a fundraising juggernaut, to make it \u201ca fair race.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Exley tells it, Chakrabarti got his foot in the progressive politics door almost accidentally when he joined Bernie Sanders\u2019 2016 presidential campaign as \u201ca lowly programmer.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one knew he was some Silicon Valley big shot,\u201d said Exley, who at the time was a senior Sanders adviser. He recruited Chakrabarti to work on software tools to help boost Sanders\u2019 campaign. That was, he said, before Stripe \u201ctotally took over the world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his stint on the Sanders campaign, Chakrabarti co-founded a political organization called Brand New Congress (later renamed Justice Democrats) with Exley. Their ambition was to recruit progressive candidates to Congress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, emerged as one of the only successful recruits. After Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s shock victory in 2018, in which she won a primary against Rep. Joe Crowley, who was the No. 4 Democrat in the caucus at the time and a possible successor to Pelosi as speaker, Chakrabarti went to work as Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s chief of staff. He started to make a splash on Capitol Hill, including butting heads with Pelosi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2019, Chakrabarti criticized moderate<\/a> Democrats for supporting border funding with harsh words on Twitter, saying they were \u201chell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s,\u201d Vox reported<\/a> at the time. Pelosi later scolded<\/a> Democrats and their staffers about keeping their opinions off Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA whole bunch of the caucus was upset, and I was really mad about it,\u201d Chakrabarti told SFGATE about why he spoke up about the funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some thought the dustup with the caucus leader prompted Chakrabarti\u2019s departure from Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s staff the next month, but Chakrabarti told<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

SFGATE that \u201cthe plan was always for me to leave\u201d after he helped the freshman congresswoman launch the Green New Deal. He added that his family was expecting a child, noting, \u201cIt so happened, Pelosi got mad at me about some tweets at the same time.\u201d He moved back to San Francisco in 2019 and has been working since for New Consensus, a think tank that has promoted the Green New Deal and other economic renewal projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, he says: \u201cTrying to make things change in Congress requires pushing a little bit, ruffling some feathers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An uphill climb<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To get his name out there, Chakrabarti has hosted small events around San Francisco, including the April panel at Manny\u2019s and the weekly town hall<\/a> meetings he holds with potential voters over Zoom from his Duboce Triangle home. He knows he has ground to make up against not only Pelosi, who has a nearly 40-year head start, but also any other challengers who may emerge if she chooses not to run. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That could include California state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco and a former city supervisor who is known widely in California but not far beyond state borders. He has said he won\u2019t run against Pelosi, but if the 85-year-old decides to retire, he\u2019ll likely to join<\/a> the race. Others question if Pelosi will tap her daughter<\/a> Christine for the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Becoming a household name will prove difficult for Chakrabarti, said Eric Kingsbury, a political consultant in the Bay Area. He notes she is \u201cuniquely qualified\u201d and has deep ties to her city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI struggle to see an appetite for someone to run against her,\u201d he told SFGATE. \u201cSan Francisco is a small town masquerading as a big city\u2026 I have heard great things, but I have not seen him around at all. I\u2019m not sure that he has the familiarity with these communities that other candidates might bring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His appearance at Manny\u2019s helped at least a few potential voters see his potential. Phillip Dupree, the twin brother of Andrew Dupree, said, \u201cIt\u2019s less crazy for Saikat to run than Wiener,\u201d arguing that an incumbent Democrat running against Pelosi would cause a bigger political rift within the party. With Chakrabarti, at least voters can hear an alternate message without it splintering the existing caucus, Philip Dupree said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back at Chakrabarti\u2019s makeshift campaign office \u2014 which is a one-bedroom apartment on the bottom floor of his multifamily home \u2014 the candidate is preparing to do more outreach. It\u2019s a stripped-down space with a couch, TV, bed, desk and computer monitor with a large LED light panel that is set up for Zoom calls with voters. (The second floor of the home is owned and inhabited by Chakrabarti\u2019s childhood best friend; he and his family live on the third floor.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti was running late for this particular session. He swiftly answered the rest of SFGATE\u2019s questions before hopping on his swivel chair and greeting potential voters on his screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One participant, a man who introduced himself as David, spoke bluntly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not just running against any congressperson, you may be running against the<\/em> congressperson,\u201d he said. \u201cHow will you defeat Madam Speaker?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re right. There are obviously a lot of people who voted for her for years. … I\u2019m not trying to run to be the next career politician and sit there for 40 years,\u201d he said, talking to the computer screen. \u201cI really want change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 1, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anabel Sosa<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SENIOR CALIFORNIA POLITICS REPORTER<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anabel Sosa is the senior California politics reporter at SFGATE. She is from New York and has a background covering the criminal justice system and policy. She has a masters degree in investigative journalism from UC Berkeley. You can reach her at anabel.sosa@sfgate.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saikat Chakrabarti hopes his tech experience and work with iconic progressives can vault him over Pelosi and into Washington, D.C Saikat Chakrabarti hosts a Zoom call with potential voters and supporters from his campaign office in San Francisco on April 21, 2025.Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE By\u00a0Anabel Sosa, Senior California politics reporter May… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41053,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41049\/revisions\/41053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}