The polls are tighter than ever. Insiders are flummoxed. Last-minute money is pouring in. 

The only thing most agree on is this: no one knows who will come in second in the congressional primary to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress. 

Polling shows State Sen. Scott Wiener, a moderate Democrat by local standards, is the presumptive front-runner in today’s primary election. But the race’s two progressives, former AOC staffer Saikat Chakrabarti and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, are neck-and-neck, most polls have shown. 

The race for number two is a total toss-up. 

Tonight, ballot counts may finally begin to tease who will enter the general election — though depending on the margins, a final count may remain elusive for days. 

Much is at stake for San Francisco. Pelosi’s nearly four decades in Congress have made her one of the nation’s most powerful Democrats, frequently catapulting the city into the national conversation. The speaker emerita’s outsize influence has helped bring home the bacon, too, securing federal grants for projects like the Salesforce Transit Center and Muni’s Central Subway. 

Pelosi endorsed Chan just two weeks from election day, breathing new life into her campaign. 

For her part, Chan claims that her time as Board of Supervisors budget chair has prepared her for navigating the tumultuous politics of a fractured Congress. She also argues that growing up as an immigrant from Hong Kong to San Francisco gives her a needed perspective at a time when President Donald Trump has targeted newcomers to the United States. Chan supports Medicare for All, believes the federal government should invest more heavily in public housing, and has pledged to strengthen workers’ rights to unionize. 

Chakrabarti argues that his time as chief of staff at the start of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s career on the hill has prepared him for Congress. He said working to elect progressive leaders across the country will help revolutionize the Democratic Party and strengthen its ability to mobilize against Trump. Chakrabarti has leaned heavily into his intent to regulate the AI industry: he wants the government to create a national lab for AI development, and said the U.S. government should purchase AI companies. Chakrabarti also wants to tax AI companies to create a federal jobs program to retrain displaced workers.

Chakrabarti’s endorsements may not feature many local progressive officials or groups, but does feature nationally prominent progressives — Twitch streamer and influencer Hasan Piker, and members of “The Squad” Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. 

Conspicuously absent from that endorsement list has been Ocasio-Cortez, who has refrained from even mentioning polite pleasantries about Chakrabarti’s time in her office.

Chakrabarti remains leagues beyond Chan in funding. The former Stripe engineer is a centimillionaire, and largely bankrolled his campaign’s $10 million warchest (opens in new tab). Chan has vowed not to take corporate money, and lags behind with $649,000 raised. Wiener raised $3.9 million for his campaign war chest, but enjoys the support of several PACs that have spent hundreds of thousands to support him and drag Chakrabarti.

Over the last month, Chan and Chakrabarti have trained their political cannons on one another. For much of the campaign, however, Chan seemed an afterthought to the two men vying for office as she trailed both in the polls.

Wiener has amplified accusations that Chakrabarti listed Maryland as his primary residence, not San Francisco, and that Chakrabarti had few local ties to San Francisco. Politico revealed Chakrabarti had not voted in a decade’s worth of San Francisco elections (opens in new tab) during the years he said he lived here.

Meanwhile, Chakrabarti has critiqued Wiener’s initial hesitance to call the war in Gaza a genocide, with Wiener taking heat from former allies after he embraced that word to describe the war. Chakrabarti also hit Wiener for accepting money from corporate tech donors, alleging the senator is beholden to his financial backers.  

Throughout the barrage, both men seemed to hold their fire when it came to Chan — until several successive polls (opens in new tab) in April showed Chan catching up to Chakrabarti.