They turnout numbers in San Francisco are creeping up, slowly: As of May 31, about 18 percent of eligible voters have turned in a ballot. That’s still very low—although turnout by people who requested a Chinese Language ballot is still higher than citywide turnout.
Then this very weird story about Connie Chan and Israel dropped. The headline: “Big backers of Connie Chan for Congress tied to pro-Israel PACs.”
Saikat Chakrabarti and his allies have made a huge deal of this on social media, trying to suggest that Chan is somehow a secret supporter of Israel. Quite the opposite: She supported the Gaza ceasefire resolution (that state Sen. Scott Wiener opposed). She supports an embargo on all arms sales to Israel. She has called what Israel is doing in Gaza a genocide. If AIPAC somehow thinks they are getting an ally by giving money to a PAC that gives money to a PAC that gives money to a PAC that supports Chan, they got the wrong woman.
Unlike Chakrabarti, Chan has an actual voting record in San Francisco, and you can check it out. She’s never, ever been with AIPAC on anything.
The problem here, of course, is that none of the candidates can control who gives money to IEs, and these super PACS are legal, and can do all sorts of nefarious things.
The strings that tie this particular PAC funding to AIPAC are vague, at best. If you actually read the stories on this, it’s not clear that a single penny of AIPAC money wound up in a PAC that is independently buying ads for Chan. From Mission Local (forgive the headline):
It is unclear whether the Pro-Choice Majority Action PAC, which is the group taking out ads for Chan, received money from the affiliated EDW Action Fund, however; no disclosure yet exists.
Elect Democratic Women, the group whose PAC directly received AIPAC funding, has supported dozens of female candidates this election cycle, including Rep. Lateefah Simon, D-Oakland (who was given “top scores” on Palestinian rights by the pro-Palestine Institute for Middle East Understanding) and Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Portland (who compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Holocaust before apologizing).
The Pro-Choice Majority Action PAC is also not solely linked to EDW Action Fund, the group that took AIPAC funds — it is also “associated” with a handful of other PACs, including one generally spending on battleground races. It is also unclear how much, if any, of AIPAC’s money went from EDW Action Fund into the particular affiliate funding the pro-Chan ads.
So a group that funds women who are entirely against everything AIPAC stands for is helping Connie Chan for Congress, and way back in the paper trail, there might (or might not) be AIPAC money, that nobody at AIPAC would ever approve going to Chan, still makes for a big headline and a social media storm?
Even Ryan Grim, a Chakrabarti ally who broke the story on Dropsite News, is backing off a bit:
Chakrabarti has, as recently as 2024, invested money in numerous tech companies that do business with Israel’s military, including Microsoft and Blackstone. He now says he’s sold all of those stocks, and I believe him. Lots of decent people have worked for and owned stock in Microsoft, and many of them are not allies of the current Israeli government.
I’m not making a big deal of Chakrabarti’s investments; I have a lot of problems with the way he has spent money in San Francisco politics, but I don’t think his old investments mean he has some sort of secret pro-Netanyahu agenda.
Neither does Connie Chan. And she has a voting record to prove it.
From Chan’s campaign:
The notion that Connie Chan—whose support of the Block the Bombs Act and the end of military aid to Israel, condemnation of the Gaza genocide and advocacy for Palestinians are public record—would somehow be carrying water for AIPAC is absurd and laughable. Connie has been clear from day one that she would not accept a dime from AIPAC and she has stayed true to this throughout. PACs act independently of our campaign and we urge any organization supporting Connie to respect her values.
This is clearly a desperate attempt from our opponent to undermine our campaign because we have momentum to win on June 2.
This stinks to me like a last-minute dirty trick. And it’s strange: The candidate most likely to get AIPAC support is Wiener, who has been very pro-Israel. Wiener doesn’t want to run against Chakrabarti, because he fears the money.
So Wiener’s pro-Israel folks are not going to go after Chan. That leaves one other player, who told me months ago that he would never attack Chan, and would endorse her if she finishes second. He’s not responsible for everything his folks are doing, but they are doing what he told me he wouldn’t. And all it does is help the real pro-Israeli-military candidate in the race, Scott Wiener.
If you, like many California voters, are still not sure who you support for governor, let me throw a twist into that race.
Xavier Becerra is leading in a lot of the polls, and I’m not sure why. But I do know this: If Becerra is the only surviving Democrat, and he’s running against Trump’s candidate, Steve Hilton, Democrats might have a bit of a problem.
Nobody, including me, has any evidence that Becerra had any knowledge or involvement in the scandal involving the diversion of $225,000 in campaign money from a Becerra account to his former chief of staff and a Sacramento lobbyist.
But Trump’s FBI has the files.
You think there might be a late-hit drop of some possibly true or possibly false information about a Democratic candidate for governor based on FBI files controlled entirely by a corrupt Trump administration?
I’d say, count on it.
Full disclosure: My independent, adult daughter works on the Connie Chan for Congress campaign.
