When you have your own Wikipedia page dedicated to your electoral history — and you have to scroll and scroll to get to the bottom of it — you've probably been in office far too long. But we don't need Wikipedia to tell us that about Nancy Pelosi. The 84-year-old — 85 in March — has been a member of the United States House of Representatives since 1987. And the last time I saw her, she was hobbling around Jimmy Carter's casket with a walker after suffering a broken hip.
Pelosi has faced several primary challengers throughout her career, but these campaigns have largely been a waste of time and effort. Even in 2024, Pelosi won her primary with 138,285 votes or 73.3% of the vote, and her closest challenger, Marjorie Mikels, only received 9,363 or 5% of the vote. As best I can tell, none of her primary challengers have ever received more than 11-12% of the vote.
Could 2026 be the year that changes? It's possible. At least, one man thinks so. Saikat Chakrabarti, who served as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC's, campaign manager in 2018, when she seemingly came out of nowhere and won her seat in the House, has thrown his hat into the ring.
On Wednesday, he made a rather lengthy post on X about it, stating that "we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago" and emphasizing the need for fresher, younger voices in Congress. He seems to think he can do what he did for AOC for himself:
I’ve got some news: I’ve decided to run against Nancy Pelosi to represent San Francisco in Congress. I know some of you might be surprised that Speaker Emeritus Pelosi is running again, but she is — for her 21st term!
— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) February 5, 2025
Watching Trump and Elon freely unleash chaos in their illegal…
Chakrabarti, who is a Harvard grad and software engineer, also served as AOC's chief of staff for a bit. According to his LinkedIn profile, he is the co-founder of Justice Democrats, a progressive political action committee, and he is currently the president of New Consensus, "an economic and social policy think tank that champions the return of public leadership in economic development" that promotes the Green New Deal.
He's also a huge Bernie Bro who thinks Bernie Sanders's form of socialism is the left's answer to Trump and MAGA. And he might be onto something for Democrats. If you'll recall, AOC's district took a pretty huge swing toward Donald Trump in November, and when the congresswoman took to social media to ask her supporters why many of them voted for Trump, she received answers like "Voted Trump, but I like you & Bernie. I don’t trust either party establishment politicians" and "It’s really simple… Trump and you care for the working class."
Related: What Happened in AOC's District Will Shock You
Whether that translates to San Francisco, who knows? What I do know is that it's people like Chakrabarti who Republicans need to keep an eye on because he seems to have a better understanding of what happened in 2024 than most Democrats currently in office. It's why we can't just sit around and soak up all the "winning" we've experienced lately. We can't become complacent.
That said, even Chakrabarti admits "it's almost impossible to defeat incumbents in our system," and I have a feeling we'll have to pry that seat out of Pelosi's cold dead hands.
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