The biggest race in San Francisco is for California's 11th Congressional District. It was held for 40 years by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who is retiring. Vying for her seat are two Democrats: State Senator Scott Wiener and City Supervisor Connie Chan, who has been endorsed by Pelosi.
We spoke to Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, a reporter with the San Francisco Standard, who's at the Chan watch party.
FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ: So the latest returns are showing Scott Wiener, the state senator, ahead of Connie Chan by 15 points. This is only 30% of ballots counted so far, so things could change, but it is a fairly wide lead. And people here at Connie Chan's party at Gray Area in the Mission are hopeful, but you know, a little sad.
KHALID, HOST: Do you expect Connie Chan to show up tonight at all to speak to her supporters?
FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ: Oh, I absolutely expect her out here. I was just out on the street with her near City Hall. She was across the street trying to get straggler voters, trying to get even the last person to the last second, five minutes before the polls close at 8:00 p.m, to go and cast their vote for her.
KHALID, HOST: Alright, now she had been endorsed by Nancy Pelosi. Is this a disappointment that she hasn't done better?
FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, you know, it's a tough thing for Pelosi. Pelosi's out of office soon. She's retiring, so, you know, a lot of people are gonna talk about her legacy. I think her legacy is probably large enough that it can survive an electoral loss or two, and I think she made that bet.
KHALID, HOST: What about after the election? Do you see that Connie Chan will support Wiener? Will they be able to break bread after this and work together?
FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ: All these guys in San Francisco are Democrats. At the end of the day, they all do get along on a lot of issues that are of national importance, and whoever goes to Congress is gonna be working on national issues and be representing San Francisco on a national stage.
And now we're gonna go to Mission Local's Io Yeh Gilman, who's following the election returns from Scott Wiener's watch party.
GILMAN: I am at the Scott Wiener party. He took to the stage around 9:15 and essentially declared victory. You know, he said, "I'm gonna be the first ever LGBTQ person to represent San Francisco in Congress," to which the crowd cheered deafeningly. And, you know, he thanked Supervisor Chan for her campaign and spoke about some of the things that he feels the Democrats must do now that they have control of the House. People were really excited about the blue wave.
TREFNY, HOST: Now, Scott Wiener has, pretty much everybody believes, been a very effective politician at the local level, at the state level. What do you anticipate at the federal level for him?
GILMAN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, he is hoping to make the same impact. At the end of his speech, he was talking about how when he was elected to the state senate, a lot of people said that it was hard to make a change at the state level, but that he found ways to. We saw, you know, there's many pieces of legislation he's passed that have really changed things in San Francisco, particularly around housing, but also on many other dimensions. And so, you know, I would expect for him to take what have been some of his priorities in the state legislature, so I would say housing, transportation, immigration, AI regulation, and, you know, focus on those in Congress. He's said all along that his top priority is affordability. That's been a winning combination all nation round.
