Connie Chan, a left-wing San Francisco supervisor running for the House seat held by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the retiring former speaker, recently secured a key endorsement: Ms. Pelosi herself.
Saikat Chakrabarti, Ms. Chan’s progressive rival, boasts a different powerhouse affiliation: He served as chief of staff for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, in 2019. But a roving billboard that follows him to campaign stops with the message “A.O.C. FIRED SAIKAT” — referring to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez by her initials — makes clear that the relationship is, well, complicated.
Mr. Chakrabarti has made his time with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez central to his anti-establishment campaign. He has repeatedly invoked the connection in speeches, promoted advertisements with a photo featuring the two of them and introduced himself to voters as someone who “used to work with A.O.C.”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, has backed multiple left-wing House candidates in recent weeks, campaigning with one in Philadelphia and planning a trip to western Montana to support another.
But she won’t even mention her former chief of staff’s name.
That silence has dogged Mr. Chakrabarti in the race’s closing weeks. Two candidates will advance from the primary on June 2, and Mr. Chakrabarti appears to be in a tight race for second place as he and Ms. Chan trail State Senator Scott Wiener, another Democrat, in polls.
Mr. Chakrabarti is a wealthy former software engineer who worked on Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. He then co-founded Justice Democrats, a progressive group that recruited Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to run for Congress, and went with her to Washington after she ousted a Democratic incumbent in 2018.
Mr. Chakrabarti was right there with her during her tumultuous opening months on Capitol Hill, when she clashed with Democratic leaders, including Ms. Pelosi. That pugnacious start gave way to a more measured, diplomatic approach — and to an ultimately fruitful relationship with Ms. Pelosi that blossomed only after Mr. Chakrabarti left his job.
But he insists he wasn’t fired and says he does not know why his old boss isn’t supporting his campaign. Mr. Chakrabarti said in an interview that he has maintained a “good relationship” with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and has texted with her, though he would not say how recently. He said he was “still hoping to earn her endorsement.”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has avoided engaging in the race. Asked by a reporter for Drop Site News last month about her former chief of staff’s candidacy, she said only that she was trying to be mindful about her endorsements and how she budgeted her time. She’s had a busy month since then, criticizing billionaires in Chicago, addressing the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and speaking at a voting rights rally in Montgomery, Ala.
Days later, the same reporter asked Ms. Ocasio-Cortez if she would address rumors about bad blood between her and Mr. Chakrabarti.
“I’m just not commenting on the race,” she replied. She also told The San Francisco Chronicle that she was “refraining from commenting on the race at this point.”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment for this article. Her silence has only fueled the chatter that Mr. Chakrabarti left her office in 2019 on bad terms.
Meanwhile, Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, fellow progessives often aligned with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, have both endorsed Mr. Chakrabarti.
He was a particularly divisive instigator when she first arrived in Washington. That July, he compared moderate Democrats who sank a border aid package to segregationists, writing on social media that they “certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.” The comment enraged Democratic leaders, including Ms. Pelosi, and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez distanced herself from it.
Weeks later, Mr. Chakrabarti and another top aide to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez — Corbin Trent, her communications director — announced they were leaving her team, in what was seen at the time as a peace offering to Ms. Pelosi from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Mr. Chakrabarti has said he resigned because he was about to become a father, and because he believed his skills at growing the progressive movement would be more effective elsewhere.
“It was a planned transition out,” he said, adding that the firestorm over his tweet just “ended up happening around the same time that I left.” (The congresswoman also said at the time that they had begun discussing his transition before the tweet.)
Mr. Trent, who is supporting Mr. Chakrabarti’s campaign, said he was considering deploying his super PAC to back him in the primary race’s final weeks. Mr. Trent said he left Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s office “in a huff,” but Mr. Chakrabarti did not.
“I know for a fact that he wasn’t fired, because I was in the room when she offered to let him stay,” he said in an interview. “I heard her say, ‘Stay. You don’t have to go.’”
Such accounts haven’t stopped campaign rivals from seizing on the awkwardness.
A mail advertisement from a committee backing Ms. Chan asked voters this question: If Ms. Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t endorsed Mr. Chakrabarti, “why would you?” Another by a pro-Wiener group promoted a Chronicle story in which a former top Pelosi aide said of Mr. Chakrabarti: “In my view, he was fired.” And an anti-Chakrabarti van that follows the candidate to events and calls itself the “Saikat Mystery Machine” displays a large black-and-white sign saying “A.O.C. FIRED SAIKAT.”
Two recent polls have shown Mr. Chakrabarti deadlocked with Ms. Chan for second in the top-two primary, even before Ms. Chan secured Ms. Pelosi’s endorsement. Mr. Wiener’s campaign said it believed the endorsement controversy coincided with a recent dip in Mr. Chakrabarti’s momentum.
Mr. Wiener has also fanned the flames.
“Constantly invoking A.O.C. in campaign ads and social media posts without even having her support is shady and disrespectful,” he said in a video.
Mr. Chakrabarti said the attacks reflected an effort to distract from Mr. Wiener’s vulnerabilities “and from the fact that he’s currently taking millions of dollars from corporate donors” connected to the artificial intelligence industry.
Mr. Chakrabarti said he would bring “strategic confrontation” to Washington if elected. His insurgent campaign, into which he has pumped about $10 million of his own money, has resonated with many of the city’s liberal voters.
His left-wing appeal was evident at a packed campaign rally in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood this month that featured a slate of liberal candidates from around the country, as well as Hasan Piker, the prominent progressive livestreamer. There, Mr. Chakrabarti ran through his biography.
“I ended up running A.O.C.’s first campaign, and then I went to D.C. ——” Mr. Chakrabarti said, pausing as attendees started cheering at the mention of his former boss.
“You can cheer for A.O.C.,” he replied with a small smile. “You can cheer for her!”
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
The post He Name-Drops Ocasio-Cortez in His Bid for Congress. She Doesn’t Talk About Him at All. appeared first on New York Times.
