Who the F*ck is Saikat?

When the Nancy Pelosi news drops on Thursday morning, I blearily check my phone. Didn’t she already announce this earlier in the week? It’s a known fact that she’s not seeking reelection. Moments later, a press release arrives from Saikat Chakrabarti’s team. 

We’ve rescheduled our interview several times by now, so I’m not at all surprised when another email arrives minutes later – our 10 o’clock is officially canceled. “I'm really sorry to reschedule, but we were not expecting Pelosi's announcement this morning,” it says. I text el jefe, Stu, that I’m starting to think I’ll never get a chance to talk to Saikat. Not for little old BrokeAssStuart.com, and especially not now that the most influential politician to ever represent San Francisco has just announced her retirement.

Stu’s response? “Hopefully you can do tomorrow.” What? I reread the cancellation from Saikat’s team. There’s an offer to reschedule!

When I pitched this piece to Stuart several weeks ago, it was under the headline, “Who the fuck is Saikat?” It’s a question I’ve heard throughout leftist spaces ever since he announced his run for San Francisco’s US congressional seat in February. I’m finally about to get the answer to that question.

Side note: When I pitched it, Stuart reminded me that it’s very important this piece doesn’t come off as an endorsement because BAS now has a fiscal sponsor (he explains it here). Hold me to that.

It’s my first question, although I phrase it without the f-bomb. “What’s your background? Why are you running? Like, who are you?” the transcript reads. 

The candidate describes his immigrant parents fleeing India as religious refugees, his upbringing in Texas, his dreams of moving to “the city that really represented the future,” and his move out here shortly after college. “I moved out here… as fast as I could.” He was the second employee of a company called Stripe and made a lot of money “because I happened to be in the right place at the right time… and that was a really profoundly radicalizing experience.” 

He wrote a list of what he wanted to work on. “I wrote down poverty, inequality, climate change. I was not political at all growing up. I was interested in basketball, math, and hip hop.”

His backstory takes about ten minutes to unfold. He worked on Bernie 2016, Justice Democrats, AOC’s first run, and then about a year with her office in DC. “I planned with AOC… I told her I would help her launch Green New Deal, set up her office, and then I was going to go because I had a kid on the way. So I left her office in 2019 and came right back home to San Francisco, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.” 

Chakrabarti started a think tank called New Consensus. He describes it as “our version of Project 2025.” He explains that it’s a plan on how to hit the ground running. 

“Cool, that’s a really impressive background,” I say. He quietly says, “I kind of consider it a big failure, to be honest.” His goal in Justice Democrats was to change the Democratic Party so we wouldn’t get a fascist back in power. “If we can’t actually build an economy that works for people, then yeah we’ll win in 2020, but we’ll probably get a fascist back in power in 2024. I didn’t think it would be Trump himself.”

I take a sip of water. “I’m just gonna throw out some pretty big questions. They deserve a lot more time, but maybe condense it down to 1 or 2 sentences. What do you think about Palestine?”

Here is his transcribed answer: “We should not be sending any military funding to Israel because what they have been doing is committing a genocide in Gaza. I've been very clear about that. Not my opinion. That's the opinion of the UN and every genocide scholar around the world. I think we got to be using, we've got to treat Israel like a normal comp- country. We got to be using every bit of leverage we have to get them to a point where they stop this genocide. I know we got a technically a ceasefire right now, but it's already been broken. And if I go to Congress, I'll be fighting to stop what I think are gross human rights violations rights now, which are also illegal, according to our own laws.”

My next question to Chakrabarti is who he’s running against. “As far as I know, the only person I’m really running against right now is Scott Wiener.”

He suggests that I should “probably ask [Scott] about himself.” I attempted to reach out to State Senator Wiener’s office but was unable to reach his media contact team for this campaign. 

Chakrabarti continues: “There’s three big differences between me and Scott.” The first is what they’ll actually do in Congress. “Scott’s been sort of a technocrat working in a largely Democratic Sacramento… The entire time I’ve been in San Francisco, he’s been in government focused on housing, and in that time, housing costs have only really gotten up dramatically.” The candidate describes his priorities, like calling for primaries all across the country, passing single payer health care, getting a public bank to finance affordable housing. 

The second difference Chakrabarti names? “On that question of Israel, Palestine. Scott’s been a big opponent of Palestinian rights movements in the Bay for quite some time,” he says. “He’s been an architect of AB715, which is a censorship bill that equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism in our K12 public schools. It’s already had a chilling effect in San Francisco. The one textbook that we use to teach history just doesn’t teach about Israel, Palestine now because teachers don’t want to get in trouble saying the wrong thing.” 

The third difference is fundraising. “I don’t take any corporate lobbyist money and I have no superPACs on my side,” Chakrabarti says.

It brings up an awkward question around fundraising that I’ll ask him later.

We discuss Zohran Mamdani’s historic win. “I think it’s absolutely incredible,” he says. “Zohran had so much money thrown against him. There’s proof that if you actually stand for popular policies that are for the people, and you build a campaign that’s driven by people, it doesn’t matter. You can win.” Chakrabarti says he thinks, “The reason the Democratic Party can’t actually fully commit to fighting for working people is because they run campaigns that depend on corporate money to fund their campaigns, which means they’re always beholden to that.” 

I ask him then. “Zohran is part of the DSA. Do you have a history with the DSA? Or like, what’s your relationship with the DSA?”

He says he’s worked on many campaigns nationally with folks who are “in DSA or part of DSA or aligned with DSA. Personally I don’t, I’m not a member of DSA. I don’t generally subscribe to any label to myself.” He says that when it comes to values and a lot of the policies DSA supports, he tends to be aligned.

I reached out to Jen Snyder, a volunteer with Zohran’s campaign who is currently working with Assemblymember Emily Gallagher. Gallagher is a DSA member and sits next to Zohran in the Assembly where he currently works until he’s sworn in. Snyder also works in politics in San Francisco. Snyder says, “Over the past decade in SF, we've ran socialists for office, taxed the rich at the ballot box, won new renters rights, and passed one of the first ceasefire resolutions in the nation. Saikat did not join any of those efforts as a volunteer, donor, or supporter, so I don't know him. All I know is that he donated big to the conservative technocrat side who stood in the way of those things."

Snyder is referring to two donations Chakrabarti made in the local 2024 elections, one to now Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who ran against candidates such as Dean Preston and Scotty Jacobs; and one to Michael Lai, who ran against now Supervisor Chyanne Chen. Here’s his explanation of the first donation:

As for the other? In his explanation, Chakrabarti says: “Regarding Michael Lai — a former colleague of mine who worked with me on Bernie 2016 and who worked on Chesa Boudin’s first election introduced us and vouched for him. I met him a few times, felt he was earnest and wanted to do good things, so I made a donation. I donate to many political causes every cycle, and sometimes I miss.”

Michael Lai has been busy on Twitter, reposting memoriams about Charlie Kirk.

Supervisor Chen has meanwhile introduced tenant protection amendments to the Mayor’s upzoning plans. She’s also been vocal about protecting immigrant rights during her tenure, under enormous pressure to represent the diverse district she narrowly won over Lai. 

One thing Chakrabarti is sure he can make happen? A transition to public power, which he says, “will see us paying 40% less on utility bills… Beyond that, I do want to build a movement nationally that solves these big structural issues in our economy.” 

I ask about climate change. “I have noticed that it’s gone out of vogue,” I say. During last year’s election, I wrote for BAS about how it wasn’t even mentioned in most of the candidates’ campaigns.

“I think this is a typical thing of Democrats. [They] always just shy away from issues that the Republicans tell them are unpopular,” Chakrabarti explains. “They’re simply wrong.” He says the way to make it a salient issue is to focus on the economy. “The reality right now is there is a global green transition happening with or without us. It’s an opportunity to create a ton of wealth for working and middle class people in this country… It’s like the digital camera revolution is happening and we’re Kodak, sitting here twiddling our thumbs, doubling down on an old technology.” 

We’re nearing the end of our first conversation, and Chakrabarti is about to head into a voter call. I ask him, “Do you have anything that you would say to people who are skeptical of you?”

“Please join a voter call with me. I do them every single day at noon,” he explains. “I will never shy away from answering any and every question.” 

At the end, he says, “If you’re fleet footed, if you’re working every day, if you’re fighting, you can defend San Franciscans. And that’s going to be my main focus in 2026.” 

I compile the transcripts and quotes and screenshots. I write the piece. I circle back to the steering committee of the San Francisco chapter of the DSA for a comment; they reply that they’re meeting with Saikat on Monday.

The post is ready. I ask the DSA if they heard back. They say their meeting has been postponed, and they provide the following statement:

At least for myself, I think I have a better understanding of who the fuck Saikat is. Do you?