There is a scenario in which someone other than state Sen. Scott Wiener represents San Francisco in Congress. Wiener will come in first in Tuesday’s primary, but he won’t get a majority; more than half the voters will choose someone else.
If all those voters were to unite behind either Connie Chan or Saikat Chakrabarti, Wiener would have a close race and could even lose.
But that’s going to be a much tougher task now, and Chakrabarti’s supposed allies can take credit for it.
The story that several outside PACs that may or may not have used AIPAC money in support of candidates like Rep. Lateefa Simon and Chan, both of whom have clear records of opposing everything AIPAC stands for, wouldn’t be much more than a blip if Chakrabarti’s folks didn’t blow it up on social media, with nasty comments and attacks.
Now there’s a text campaign saying “Connie Chan is backed by AIPAC,” which is a lie, sponsored by a PAC run by Corbin Trent, who left AOC’s office at the same time as Chakrabarti.
A lot of Chan folks are saying that if their candidate doesn’t make the November runoff, they won’t support Chakrabarti. In other words, this scorched earth style of campaigning is only going to split the progressive movement and help Wiener, who must be celebrating early.
Chakrabarti told me he still plans to endorse Chan if she comes in second, and he (of course) can’t control Trent. But he can call this out in public if he wants to, and say that Chan is not a pro-Israel candidate and that they agree on almost everything related to US policy in the Middle East.
Instead, people like Trent who claim to support him have made it highly unlikely that he can beat Wiener in the fall. Their messaging isn’t just unethical; it’s stupid.
Chakrabarti would have had trouble with labor anyway, since he’s given money and support to anti-labor candidates and voted for Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is about to get in a huge battle with city employee unions.
Now? No chance. If Chakrabarti comes in second, the progressive groups who endorsed Chan will likely sit it out, and Wiener will win, which is exactly what AIPAC wants.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of big PAC operators, and it seems like a stretch to say that AIPAC intentionally tried to hurt Chan, but stranger things have happened. Giant PACs like these also make mistakes and fund other PACs that give money to candidates who the original PAC wouldn’t have supported.
Either way, it’s not the story about the PAC money that matters. It’s the reaction, and the relentless attacks, from the Chakrabarti allies. Connie Chan has not changed her position on Isreal, Palestine, Gaza, and genocide. The Arab Research Organizing Committee’s political action arm put out this statement today:
This is a clear signal that AIPAC and its allies are trying to covertly influence the election at the 11th hour to split progressive votes, and underscores the need for all of us to take this election seriously and get out the vote by Tuesday, June 2nd.
When we show up to vote for the strongest voices on Palestine, we can and will beat pro-Israel, pro-war, racist forces that have no place in San Francisco politics and no place in our progressive coalitions. It’s vital that our leaders and community firmly reject AIPAC and AIPAC-backed groups.
We reached out to Supervisor Connie Chan about the news that even though she has rejected AIPAC dollars, they found a way to spend in her race independently.
Connie has always encouraged a relationship of accountability to uphold our progressive values. In that spirit, we asked her to publicly clarify that she would stick with her positions on Palestine. We were glad to hear her recommit to not accepting a dime from AIPAC, to supporting an end to the genocide, and an end to military aid to Israel in Congress.
An IE supporting Wiener is hitting Chakrabarti with messaging that doesn’t seem to me is very effective. Nobody cares that he bought his parents a house in Maryland and signed the wrong line on the deed. An IE supporting Chan is saying that AOC did not endorse Chakrabarti, and that most local progressive groups haven’t endorsed him either, which is factually true.
We see these things in campaigns.
But the AIPAC stuff is at another level, and if Chakrabarti’s supporters think hitting Chan with false accusations about Israel on the last days of the campaign will help him get elected to Congress, they’re wrong. They just hurt his chances, and made it far more likely that if he comes in second, Wiener will be our next Congressional representative.
Voting is still very slow; one day before the final deadline, we are at 18 percent turnout. In the last similar primary, in June 2022, 46 percent of people voted, and all but a very small number voted by mail.
So unless a ton of voters put their ballot in the mailbox or drop it off at a polling place tomorrow, these critical elections will be decided by a small number of people.
Full disclosure: My independent adult daughter works on the Connie Chan for Congress campaign.
