California
Commentary: Is Pelosi getting ‘Bidened’? High drama in the scramble for her congressional seat
State Sen. Scott Wiener is a strategic and effective legislator who rarely lets emotion make his decisions — much like Nancy Pelosi, whose congressional seat he would like to take.
It has been a wide-open secret for years that Wiener wanted to make a run for federal office when or if Pelosi retired, but he’s also been deferential to the elder stateswoman of California politics and has made it equally clear that he would wait his turn in the brutal and parochial machine of San Francisco politics.
Until now.
The San Francisco Standard broke the news Thursday that Wiener is running on the 2026 ballot, though he has yet to formally announce.
It is news that shocked even those deep in the dog-eat-dog world of S.F. politics and ignited the inevitable news cycle about whether Pelosi (who was instrumental in removing President Biden from the 2024 race for age-related issues) is being Bidened herself. It also ensures a contentious race that will be nationally watched by both MAGA and the progressive left, both of which take issue with Wiener.
Oh, the drama.
Take it for what you will, but a few months after having hip replacement surgery, Pelosi is (literally) back in her stiletto heels and raising beaucoup dollars for Proposition 50, the ballot initiative meant to gerrymander California voting maps to counteract a GOP cheat-fest in Texas.
Yes, she’s 85, but she’s no Joe. She is also, however, no spring chicken. So the national debate on whether Democrats need not just fresh but younger candidates has officially landed in the City by the Bay, though Wiener remains both practical and polite enough to not frame it that way.
He’ll leave that to the journalists, who have hounded Pelosi for months to announce whether she will seek another term, a question she has declined to directly answer. Instead, her team has focused on the looming election for Proposition 50 and said any announcement on her future has to wait after the ballots are counted.
To be fair to Pelosi, she’s gone all-in to both fundraise and campaign for the redistricting effort, and its passage is essential to Democrats having even a shot at winning back any power in the midterms.
If Prop. 50 fails, there is no non-miracle path, except perhaps an unexpected blue wave, through which Democrats can retake a chamber. So Nov. 4 isn’t an arbitrary date. It will determine if there is any possibility of checking Trump’s power grab, and preserving democracy. Personally, I don’t fault Pelosi for being engaged in that fight.
To also be fair to Wiener, his decision to announce now was probably driven more by money and political momentum than by Pelosi’s age.
That’s because Pelosi already has a challenger — the ultra-wealthy progressive Saikat Chakrabarti, a startup millionaire who served as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager during her first upset win for Congress in 2018. Chakrabarti has long been an antagonist to Pelosi, and recently announced his candidacy, positioning himself as a disrupter.
In 2019, before the House impeached Trump over his questionable actions involving Ukraine, Chakrabarti tweeted, “Pelosi claims we can’t focus on impeachment because it’s a distraction from kitchen table issues. But I’d challenge you to find voters that can name a single thing House Democrats have done for their kitchen table this year. What is this legislative mastermind doing?”
Chakrabarti, who was born the year before Pelosi was first elected to Congress in 1987, has self-funded his campaign with $700,000 and has the financial ability to spend much more. Wiener, in his on-the-down-low shadow campaign, has raised a bit over $1 million, not nearly enough. The primary will be in June and it will be expensive.
Though we have yet to reach Halloween, a stroll down the aisles of any big box store can tell you that Christmas is neigh, a season when fundraising becomes harder — putting pressure on Wiener to raise money as quickly as possible before the winter freeze.
Add to that pressure the fact that Chakrabarti has political skills and growing popularity. He was the tech architect behind a successful push to activate volunteers for both AOC and Bernie Sanders.
An internal poll released a few months ago (and any internal poll must be viewed skeptically) showed Chakrabarti drawing 34% of voters to Pelosi’s 47%. His numbers increased as voters learned more about him — a few have even compared him to New York’s socialist wonder-kid Zohran Mamdani, currently running for mayor against Andrew Cuomo.
The problem with that is that Wiener is not Cuomo. He’s a progressive himself, and one with an established track record of getting stuff done, often progressive stuff.
I’ve watched him for years push ambitious agendas through the statehouse, including bills where I would have bet against him.
Most recently, he wrote the state’s ban on cops, including ICE, wearing masks. Although the feds have said they will ignore the new law, recently signed by Newsom, and it will almost certainly end up in court, it is a worthy message to send about secret police in America.
Wiener also this term passed a controversial housing bill that will increase density around transit hubs, and spearheaded a bill to regulate artificial intelligence.
In past terms, he has successfully forced insurance companies to cover mental health the same way they cover physical health; pushed large companies to disclose their climate impact; and been one of the major proponents of “YIMBY” policies that make it easier to build housing.
He has also passed numerous laws protecting immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights, which has made him a favorite target of the far right. He has received death threats on a regular basis for years, including one from an anti-vaxxer who was convicted on seven counts in 2022 after threatening Wiener and being found in possession of weapons. Wiener doesn’t have Pelosi’s charisma, but he has receipts for getting the job done and handling the vicious vitriol of modern politics.
Unlike Chakrabarti, Wiener has also been a part of San Francisco’s insular community for decades, and has his own base of support — though he is considered a moderate to Chakrabarti’s progressiveness. This is where San Francisco gets wonderfully weird. In nearly any other place, Wiener would be solidly left. But some of his constituents view him as too developer-friendly for his housing policies and have criticized his past policies around expanding conservatorships for mentally ill people.
But still, a recent poll done by EMC research but not released publicly found that 61% of likely primary voters have a favorable opinion of Wiener. That vastly outpaces the 21% that said the same about Chakrabarti or even the 21% who liked Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, who has also been mentioned as a possible successor.
Which is all to say that Wiener is in a now-or-never moment. He has popularity but needs momentum and cash. The Democratic Party is in a mess, and the old rules are out the window, even in San Francisco.
So waiting for Pelosi had become a little bit like waiting for Godot, a self-imposed limbo that was more likely to lead to frustration than victory.
California
GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of California says he will retire, months after declaring he’s “not quitting” amid redistricting
Just three months after declaring “I’m not quitting,” Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California announced Friday he is retiring instead of facing a difficult reelection campaign in a redrawn district.
“It’s the right time for a new chapter and new challenges,” Issa said in a statement. “…Serving in Congress has been the honor of my life.”
Issa, a car alarm magnate considered one of the wealthiest members of Congress, had been a chief antagonist for then-President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while he served as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, from 2011 to early 2015.
Issa’s abrupt reversal injects more uncertainty in the race for Southern California’s 48th District, which was drastically reshaped in November after voters approved a new U.S. House map for California to favor Democrats.
With an incumbent out of the running, it may be harder for Republicans to hold the seat and, by extension, the party’s fragile majority in the House.
After redistricting, Issa flirted with the idea of leaving California to run for Congress in Texas. But at the time he decided to stay put in his home state.
“I can hold this seat. I’m not quitting on California and neither should anyone else,” Issa, who represents a district anchored in San Diego County, said in a statement at the time.
California’s new congressional map, which was spearheaded by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, is intended to tip as many as five Republican-held seats to Democrats this year to offset President Trump’s push in Texas to gain five seats for his party there.
A national battle to redraw U.S. House districts for partisan advantage is still raging in some states ahead of the November midterm elections.
Voters in Texas and North Carolina already have cast ballots in primary elections for U.S. House districts redrawn at Trump’s urging. But the final boundaries for voting districts remain uncertain in Missouri, even though candidates already are filing for office. They also are unclear in Virginia, where new congressional districts could hinge both on a voter referendum and court rulings.
In a video posted to social media Thursday, Obama called on Virginia voters to support the redistricting effort. Virginia currently has six Democrats and five Republicans in the House. Plans offered by elected Democratic leaders this year would try and shift those lines in a way that could result in sending 10 Democrats back to the House and just one Republican.
In his statement, Issa said he was endorsing San Diego County Supervisor James Desmond to succeed him.
California
California tech leaders challenge progressive policies as billionaires, businesses flee: report
Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., criticized California’s ‘devastating’ proposed wealth tax and how it will affect the state’s residents on ‘The Evening Edit.’
A group of tech industry leaders and self-described “radical centrists” are vowing to push back on left-leaning policies in California that are causing an exodus among wealthy entrepreneurs and businesses from the Golden State.
The New York Post reported that the group held an event attended by about 350 people in Mountain View, California, that featured elected officials, including San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, tech industry leaders and hundreds of attendees who want to challenge the progressive tilt of the state’s policies.
The meeting comes as several prominent wealthy entrepreneurs have left California to avoid a proposed 5% one-time wealth tax on billionaires who were California residents at the start of this year, with the tax due next year. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel are among those who have moved assets or relocated from California.
Business leaders who are spearheading the group urged those in attendance not to give up on California by leaving and instead push back on left-leaning policies by electing more moderate politicians.
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Y Combinator CEO and founder Garry Tan launched “Garry’s List” to educate voters about California politics. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Some people have decided to leave our state as some kind of heroic thing. Like, ‘I’m going to Florida,’” Ripple Chairman Chris Larsen said at the event, according to the Post’s report. “That is not brave. That’s surrender. So, let’s get involved. Let’s take back our state.”
Larsen said the group needs to “fight on par with the unions when they’re proposing stupid job-killing ideas like the San Francisco CEO tax.”
He also called out Democratic politicians who are competing to become the party’s nominee for California governor, including former Democratic presidential primary candidate Tom Steyer, Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter for supporting the union-backed CEO tax.
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Policies such as the San Francisco CEO tax and a proposed wealth tax targeting billionaires have sparked pushback from California centrists. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
He said it’s “really disappointing,” and it reflects the pressure that labor unions have put on the state’s elected officials. Larsen added that while the group isn’t anti-union, it aims to balance labor’s ability to influence elected officials.
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan hosted the event after he launched “Garry’s List” last month to serve as a “citizen’s union” to support centrist candidates in California who are supportive of policies to improve the state’s schools and addressing issues related to housing and public safety.
Tan criticized Steyer, saying he’s attempting to “buy the governor’s mansion to raise your taxes,” and praised Mahan as the “next governor of California.”
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The hotly contested Democratic primary to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom will be a flashpoint for the brewing battle between centrists and progressives. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The Post’s report noted that Garry’s List is focusing on voter education efforts through a blog Tan writes with the assistance of AI. Tan launched the site criticizing anti-growth policies, wealth taxes and a strike by San Francisco teachers.
Garry’s List is one of several groups that have been formed in an effort to stem the leftward lurch of California’s politics.
A group called Grow California was created by Larsen and Tim Draper, which will spend about $40 million to support “pragmatic” candidates focused on addressing issues like the cost of living.
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Another group called Building a Better California was launched by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, venture capitalist Michael Moritz and other tech leaders. It has raised over $45 million to help advance initiatives to reform tax policy and spur development.
While we may lose an hour of sleep this coming weekend, one clock store in California is gearing up for one of its busiest times of the year: daylight savings.
It’s the House of Clocks, the largest clock company in Northern California, which was recently celebrating 55 years of business.
It’s a place frozen in time. Just visit the store’s 240-year-old grandfather clock. It’s got plenty of stories to tell, dating back to 1780.
“This is the oldest piece we have right now,” clocksmith Joey Hohn said.
The House of Clocks is on the outskirts of Downtown Lodi in San Joaquin County.
“We have new, we have vintage, we have antique,” co-owner Sandy Hohn shared. “Honestly, it feels like not a day goes by that we don’t get a phone call or an email of somebody wanting to sell something for 100 different reasons.”
The clock store has been with the Hohn family for three generations. It’s all thanks to one family heirloom.
“When the first war started, [my grandparents] left everything and had to move,” Joey Hohn explained. “After the Second World War, my grandpa was stationed in Germany. They went back to the house that had been abandoned and the neighbor who they left the property to said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, everything in the house is still yours.’ They went back and got this, so this is my great-great-grandparents’ clock.”
You can find just about anything in the House of Clocks, from old grandfather clocks to clocks that can fit in the palm of your hand.
What you can’t find anywhere else is the Hohns’ love for Lodi.
“We’ve made so many friends over the years out of customers,” Sandy Hohn said. “Friends that are just wonderful, that love collecting, and we keep them repaired for their families, which is awesome. They have sentimental value that’s passed down.”
That same love for the city and their community runs in the family.
“We had a customer that wanted to repaint their dial,” Joey Hohn explained. “We told them no because it was her father’s who had passed away. Every time he went to wind the clock, he placed his thumb in the same spot. When we told her that smudge there on the dial was her father, she said, ‘Back away, don’t you dare.’ It was just a good memory we have.”
While you can’t turn back time, what we can do is keep memories alive and treasure the present moment.
“There’s so many personalities,” Sandy Hohn said. “We just try to find a good home for them.”
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