Saikat Chakrabarti will endorse Supervisor Connie Chan for Congress, he exclusively told The Standard — but he’s not stopping there.
The centimillionaire, who built his fortune as a founding engineer at Stripe, also plans to incorporate and fund a “Solidarity PAC” to support Chan.
Chakrabarti was a candidate for the District 11 seat in the June 2 primary. He finished in third place, behind Chan and state Sen. Scott Wiener.
“I’m very excited to be endorsing Connie Chan in the race for Congress,” Chakrabarti said. “This election is fundamentally about who our government serves, people or corporations. Connie is clear she’s going to D.C. to fight for working people.”
Chakrabarti is throwing his full weight behind Chan for the general election. In addition to the endorsement and self-funded PAC, he is organizing a 200-person field operation that would dwarf the candidates’ current campaigns, which each have under a dozen staffers.
While Wiener, a moderate Democrat, beat Chan and Chakrabarti in many precincts — even the Mission, a progressive Democratic stronghold — the combined electorate of the two progressive candidates would make Chan far more competitive. Notably, Chakrabarti’s campaign largely ignored Chan in the primary, focusing its guns on Wiener instead.
In a memo issued days after the election, Wiener’s campaign said it wanted to “debunk” the idea that Chakrabarti voters would swing to Chan. Wiener argued that a pro-Israel group’s funding of a PAC that supported Chan would turn off progressive voters, and that Chan has fought market-rate housing, while Chakrabarti has not.
“Voters who supported Chakrabarti may not share identical priorities, and turnout patterns often change significantly between primary and general elections,” Wiener’s campaign wrote.
Chakrabarti said his priorities align with Chan’s more than they differ.
“She takes no corporate money, she’s going to fight against our endless wars abroad, and she’s going to try to tax the rich,” Chakrabarti said.
Chakrabarti’s campaign staff expects to file paperwork to help launch the Solidarity PAC on Monday.
While it’s fairly common for candidates who lose primaries to back a former rival in a general election — like Tom Steyer’s endorsement of Xavier Becerra for governor — it’s more unusual for a failed candidate to offer financial backing to a onetime rival. It can also come with perils. When Michael Bloomberg lost the presidential primary and committed $100 million to back President Joe Biden in 2020, critics said he should’ve spent more.
It’s unclear how much Chakrabarti will deploy. He largely self-funded his campaign’s $10 million war chest.
“I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure she gets elected,” Chakrabarti said. “That includes converting over our field campaign, which is the largest San Francisco has ever seen, toward supporting that goal.”
Many of Chakrabarti’s staffers have agreed to join the Solidarity PAC to independently support Chan.
Mallory Christensen, 24, said she found an opportunity to volunteer with Chakrabarti’s campaign when she moved to San Francisco in 2025 from Utah and was searching for opportunities to connect with the city. An openly bisexual woman who backs the progressive movement’s championing of LGBTQ+ rights, she was also attracted to Chakrabarti’s campaign for its strident messaging against corporate spending in politics. She eventually was hired as a deputy field director.
On the Thursday after Election Day, Chakrabarti and his leadership team commiserated over a bonfire on Ocean Beach. Christensen said they talked about how proud they were to have built a progressive movement together.
They weren’t done, staffers said. Christensen told peers that meeting other San Franciscans and fighting for their causes had been life-changing.
“It’s shown me how important it is to keep people engaged,” Christensen said. “I can’t imagine not being a part of it now, honestly.”
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