Saikat Chakrabarti is running to represent San Francisco in Congress on one message: he's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's guy. There's just one problem. She won't say his name.
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"Ocasio-Cortez has taken pains to avoid speaking about Chakrabarti. Asked by a reporter last month about the lack of endorsement for her former chief staff, she gave a winding 90-second answer in which she said she was 'trying to think about the role I'm trying to play more broadly in these things' without ever mentioning his name.
'I have pretty much stated I'm kind of refraining from commenting on the race at this point. Thank you,' she told the Chronicle days later, laughing at a question about whether something had happened between them.
'I appreciate the, you know, the questioning. But again, I'm just refraining from commenting at this moment. Thank you,' she said. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.'"
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"When a Chronicle reporter canvassed voters with him in March, he introduced himself to voters: 'Hey, I'm Saikat and I used to work with AOC.'"
Source: SF Chronicle, May 4, 2026AOC has endorsed candidates across the country but she has refused to endorse Saikat, who managed her first campaign and ran her congressional office. She won't even say his name on the record. Voters in San Francisco deserve to ask why.
For seven years, Saikat has insisted his 2019 exit from AOC's office was a "planned departure." Drew Hammill, who was Speaker Nancy Pelosi's deputy chief of staff at the time, tells a different story.
"If other members don't want to work with your chief of staff, that's a problem… it was made very clear to AOC a number of different ways that there is behavior here that is not in your interest and not in your constituents' interest."
"In my view, he was fired," Hammill said. "I think she very clearly understood that she had to turn the page."
— Drew Hammill, former deputy chief of staff to Speaker Nancy Pelosi Source: SF Chronicle, May 4, 2026
Hammill said Saikat repeatedly antagonized the Democratic Caucus and made it impossible for AOC's colleagues to work with her office. He says it was made clear to AOC that this behavior was hurting her constituents.
In the summer of 2019, Saikat publicly attacked moderate House Democrats — the very colleagues San Francisco's next member of Congress will need to legislate alongside — by comparing them to old Southern Democrats from the 1940s.
"They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s."
— Saikat Chakrabarti, on Twitter, summer 2019 Source: SF Chronicle, May 4, 2026
The post inflamed tensions across the Democratic Caucus and is widely cited as one of the moments that made his position untenable. He has not retracted it.
San Francisco voters are being asked to send Saikat to Congress to fill Nancy Pelosi's seat. Years before announcing this campaign, Saikat publicly mocked Pelosi online when she resisted progressive calls to impeach President Trump.
"What is this legislative mastermind doing?"
— Saikat Chakrabarti, on Pelosi, summer 2019 Source: SF Chronicle, May 4, 2026
When asked recently whether she had pushed for Saikat's removal from AOC's office, Nancy Pelosi answered:
"I don't know anything about him."— Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, April 2026 Source: SF Chronicle, May 4, 2026
Saikat presents himself as a coalition-builder who can deliver for San Francisco. The receipt: not a single sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives has endorsed his campaign.
San Francisco can't afford a freshman with no allies — especially after decades of leadership from Nancy Pelosi. Our next member of Congress will be negotiating with the same colleagues Saikat spent years publicly attacking.
Source: SF Chronicle, May 4, 2026
There's only one candidate in this race with the experience and vision to lead San Francisco into the future — that's Scott Wiener. Scott has passed more than 100 bills in California to tackle the housing crisis, save public transit, and stand up to Trump's secret police. Now he's running for Congress to take those fights to Washington.