The poll reportedly puts Wiener comfortably in front, Chan in the runner-up slot, and tech entrepreneur Saikat Chakrabarti trailing despite pouring millions of his own money into the race. For Chan, the spin is obvious: "I'm the alternative to Wiener, rally behind me." But being down nearly 30 points to a guy who hasn't even broken a sweat yet isn't exactly a rallying cry.
The real story here might be Chakrabarti's flameout. The former AOC chief of staff moved to San Francisco, opened his wallet wide, and has apparently purchased himself a statistical tie with... Connie Chan. As one local put it, "It's hilarious to me that Chakrabarti has spent millions of dollars of his own money to be tied with Chan." Another SF resident was more blunt about the tech-money strategy: "Just makes me happy that tech bro spent millions to get fuck all."
Meanwhile, Wiener's dominance shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention. As one San Francisco voter noted with appropriate sarcasm, "I for one am shocked that the guy elected three times citywide by increasing margins is beating the candidate repping 1/11th of the city who barely survived reelection and the guy brand new to city politics."
Look, internal polls are campaign tools, not gospel. But even through the rosiest lens Chan's team could construct, the picture is clear: Wiener is the prohibitive frontrunner, and the fight for second place is between a progressive supervisor who nearly lost her own seat and a self-funding newcomer whose canvassers are apparently impersonating UPS drivers to get face time with voters.
The real question for fiscally-minded San Franciscans isn't who finishes second — it's whether any of these candidates will actually address the city's spiraling budget and accountability problems, or whether we're just picking between different flavors of spending more money we don't have. Wiener has at least shown some pragmatic instincts in Sacramento. Chan's track record on the Board of Supervisors suggests more of the same progressive fiscal fantasy that got us here.
November is a long way off. But if this is Chan's highlight reel, it's going to be a short movie.
