Pelosi retirement, election results fuel momentum for progressive takeover of Democratic Party

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s retirement announcement on Thursday paved the way for a primary that will likely see the Bay Area send a substantially more progressive figure to Washington, building on the far-left’s momentum within the party.

Pelosi — at times an almost legendary whip — has represented the San Francisco area since 1987. But despite the area’s historic status as a left-wing hotbed, Pelosi herself represented a relatively moderate wing of the party and frequently struggled to keep the “Squad” under her grip.” Her retirement announcement, however, seemed to nod to the district’s power to shape the party in the future.

Potential replacements more openly and aggressively progressive

“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power. We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way,” she said. “And now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”

With Pelosi out of the picture, two prominent far-left figures are set to duke it out for her seat in a crowded primary. Though at least six candidates have declared their candidacy so far, two rank well above the others in terms of prominence: Saikat Chakrabarti and State Sen. Scott Wiener.

Chakrabarti served as the chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., when she first arrived in Washington and was a pivotal figure in organizing her upset victory over then-Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., in 2018. He is widely seen as one of the leading architects of the socialist insurgency in the Democratic Party.

“This moment demands leaders who won’t just manage a broken system but who are ready to rebuild it,” Chakrabarti said after Pelosi’s announcement.

Wiener, meanwhile, is a known figure on a national level due to his sponsorship of hallmark LGBT-related legislation in California.

Both candidates have pointed to the rising costs of housing and affordability in general as key issues for the campaigns, echoing talking points of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

“The housing crisis is squeezing young people & pushing working families out of San Francisco,” Wiener said in a recent campaign video. “I’ve dedicated my life to solving our housing crisis, and in Congress I’ll fight to build millions of homes, especially affordable homes, so that San Franciscans can afford to live here.”

No real polling data yet

Pelosi’s announcement is recent enough that polling data without her listed as a candidate does not yet exist, though in San Francisco, winning the Democratic nomination is tantamount to winning the race and the nominee is likely to be either Wiener or Chakrabarti.

Both candidates are, notably, decades younger than Pelosi and the push for more progressive leaders comes as younger voters have demonstrably soured on Republicans after breaking for President Donald Trump in 2024.

Rasmussen Reports pollster Mark Mitchell on Friday published polling data showing Trump’s net approval among men aged 18-29 falling 35% from March to November. Among women of the same age bracket, his approval fell 36%.

“This is stunning. Yes, young women like Trump least. But the story here is that he's completely lost the youth,” he said. “They were happiest when the system was being dismantled. Republicans - change or fade (further) into irrelevance.”

Isolated wins based on anti-Trump, anti-Israel narratives

In the leadup to the Virginia off-year elections that saw the GOP routed in all the statewide races, Mitchell, along with Big Data Poll’s Richard Baris, warned extensively that the youth had become disillusioned with the Trump brand due to a perception that he was focused too much on foreign affairs. His data showed 52% of respondents expressing the opinion that Trump was "too focused" on foreign affairs, with 30% saying he had properly balanced those issues with domestic priorities, and 18.3% saying he was too focused on domestic issues.

Virginia elected a white, affluent woman, Abigail Spanberger, over Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a Black Republican woman who pitched her candidacy as a continuation of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's administration — despite her role in day-to-day policymaking being unclear.

“It’s simple: Israel has become a proxy for the widespread outrage over our leaders working for interests other than the people who elected them,” historian and podcaster Darryl Cooper wrote. “The GOP is currently in power because Trump stated openly what everyone knew: Their government was not working for them, but for other interests. America First was the beginning and end of the appeal.”