For years, Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator, has eyed San Francisco’s main congressional seat after building significant clout on housing policy and L.G.B.T.Q. rights in California. But there was always a seemingly insurmountable roadblock, and her name was Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Wiener, 55, had long vowed not to run for the seat until Ms. Pelosi announced her retirement. It was partly deferential, as the party establishment has frowned upon challenging a sitting member of Congress. And it was partly practical, as Ms. Pelosi has been revered in San Francisco, especially after she rose to the speakership.
Ms. Pelosi, 85, has not yet said whether she will run for a 21st term next year. But Mr. Wiener told The New York Times that he was done waiting, old promises be damned. On Wednesday, he will enter the race.
It was the clearest sign yet that younger generations of Democrats were prepared to buck convention as their party struggles to reinvent itself after losing control of Congress and the White House last year.
“The world changes,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview at a cafe in the Castro District, the San Francisco gay neighborhood where he owns a small condo. “I made a decision that it makes sense for me to get into the race now because I’m passionate about San Francisco having the best possible representation.”
The talk in San Francisco has increased over the past year about whether Ms. Pelosi would retire after representing the city for nearly four decades.
She wields power, but quietly in the background more than before, as has been the case with California’s gerrymandering effort to counter Republicans this year. She remains healthy, but a fall last December on a marble staircase in Luxembourg forced her to get emergency hip replacement surgery. The longer she goes without announcing her 2026 plans, the more speculation rises.
Yet Ms. Pelosi remains a political icon in a city known for its powerhouse Democrats, from former Vice President Kamala Harris to Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Ian Krager, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said she had no comment about her future plans and that she was fully focused on passing Proposition 50, the November state ballot measure that would redraw California’s congressional districts. He said Ms. Pelosi also had no comment about Mr. Wiener’s decision to enter the race.
Mr. Wiener praised Ms. Pelosi and declined to answer most questions about her. He would not say whether she was too old to serve effectively or whether he had told her personally that he would enter the race.
But he did not hold back when it came to Saikat Chakrabarti, a wealthy, progressive firebrand who filed to run for the seat in February. And Mr. Wiener justified his entrance as a matter of ensuring that the upstart would not become Ms. Pelosi’s successor.
Mr. Chakrabarti, 39, may be best known for having helped Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leap from New York City bartender to congresswoman and serving as her first chief of staff. He has hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth after being the third employee at Stripe, a tech company that focuses on payment processing.
Mr. Wiener said it was clear that Mr. Chakrabarti had the campaign skills and money to be a threat. What he doesn’t have, Mr. Wiener said pointedly, is a deep understanding of San Francisco.
“He has so little connection to San Francisco and really never did anything in San Francisco before he started running for Congress,” Mr. Wiener said. “He is trying to buy the seat.”
Mr. Chakrabarti countered on Tuesday that he had lived in the city since 2009 and was running to save democracy. He said the best way to beat back President Trump’s “authoritarian coup” was to prove that Democrats could address the cost-of-living crisis and win back the support of working people.
“He’s right that, politically, I’ve done way more in Congress, but that is why I’m applying for a job in Congress,” Mr. Chakrabarti said.
Ms. Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, has long been considered a possible successor. On Tuesday, the younger Ms. Pelosi texted a photo of herself from the Democratic National Committee’s women’s leadership forum in Washington. She wore a cream-colored scarf with the Bill of Rights sewn onto it.
“I’m 100% devoted to passing Prop. 50,” she texted. “And being deluged with requests for my scarf.”
Eric Jaye, a longtime San Francisco political consultant, said Mr. Wiener’s decision made perfect sense.
He said that American voters were “very restive” and were interested in electing younger, more progressive candidates, such as Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner for New York City mayor. Mr. Chakrabarti could benefit from that tide, he said, so Mr. Wiener needed to jump into the race or risk losing his window forever.
“He deferred and demurred a long, long time, and I think it got to the point where that was no longer politically sustainable,” Mr. Jaye said.
Mr. Wiener grew up in New Jersey and attended Duke University and Harvard Law School before moving to San Francisco in 1997. He said he was drawn to the city by the promise of living freely as a gay man, though he was also devastated by the deaths from AIDS that he saw all around him and how the federal government had done little about it.
He said discrimination against gay men back then had parallels today in Mr. Trump’s attacks on transgender people, drag queens, immigrants and others.
“These are people who are just trying to live their lives and be who they are, and they’re being treated like human garbage,” he said. “We have a responsibility to stick up for them.”
After serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Mr. Wiener was elected to the State Legislature in 2016. He has played a pivotal role in the advancement of bills to accelerate housing construction in California, including legislation enacted this year to allow tall apartment buildings near transit stops over the objections of local officials.
If Mr. Wiener wins his race, he would become the first gay person to represent San Francisco in federal elected office.
Almost anywhere else, Mr. Wiener would be considered liberal. But in San Francisco, some progressives have dismissed him as a corporate-friendly Democrat because his laserlike focus on building more housing has benefited developers.
Nationally, he has been called by Breitbart News “California’s most radical legislator” for writing laws that include making California a sanctuary state for transgender people and banning Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from wearing masks. He said he had regularly received death threats.
He has not shied away from scrapping with Fox News reporters and conservatives such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia. He sometimes posts images of himself in skimpy clothing from the Folsom Street Fair, an annual San Francisco festival that celebrates the kink and leather communities. He said he would not stop living authentically if he were elected to Congress.
“I’m going to be me,” he said.
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
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