Can Nancy Pelosi Be Defeated? Saikat Chakrabarti Thinks the Time Is Ripe

Saikat Chakrabarti believes he can take on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and win, aiming to tap into Democratic voters’ dissatisfaction with their longtime party leaders in the wake of President Donald Trump’s and Republicans’ resounding victory in November.

Chakrabarti told Newsweek he sees the present as a “huge moment of change” for his party and the country.

“Democrats need to be presenting an actual plan for how we reverse this long-term decline that’s been happening for much of the country,” he said.

Pelosi, 84, is serving her 20th term representing her San Francisco district in Congress and is seen by many as one of the most astute and impressive American political leaders in modern times. At the same, she has long faced criticism from progressives and younger Democrats who believe she should have passed the torch to a new generation of leaders sooner.

While Pelosi, known for her political savvy and fundraising prowess, may be a formidable opponent, Chakrabarti, 39, is no stranger to taking on a powerful incumbent and winning. As the co-founder of the progressive organization Justice Democrats, Chakrabarti was instrumental to Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset primary victory in New York—defeating powerful former Representative Joe Crowley, who was then serving as the chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Chakrabarti went on to work as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, helping to manage her rise on the political stage and in Congress. While the New York Democrat was initially seen as a thorn in the side of her party, as she promoted a progressive agenda and embraced the Democratic socialist label, she’s now regularly floated as a potential Senate candidate, or even a 2028 presidential contender.

“I do think people like AOC are really leading the charge right now,” Chakrabarti said.

After leaving Ocasio-Cortez’s staff in 2019, he focused his efforts on working with New Consensus, an organization dedicated to the Green New Deal. Chakrabarti was key to moving the policy idea forward as part of Ocasio-Cortez’s team. Then in early February he announced his intention to challenge one of the most powerful Democrats in office.

Newsweek spoke with Chakrabarti in a Zoom interview Friday to discuss how he thinks he can defeat Pelosi, and how he believes Democrats should be approaching the present political moment. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Newsweek: As you’ve said in previous interviews and on your website, Pelosi has won this seat 20 times. So why do you think this is the time that she can actually be defeated?

Chakrabarti: I think what we’re experiencing right now in the country and in the Democratic Party and in San Francisco is this huge moment of change. I think people are really pretty pissed off with their Democratic leadership. I think, last I checked, Democrats were underwater by nine points amongst their own base. People really just can’t believe the Democrats let this guy, Donald Trump, win yet again. It’s just a huge failure. Then after letting him win, there hasn’t been a real examination of what the Democrats are fundamentally doing wrong.

I’ve noticed that people are actually realizing it’s not going to be just anti-Trump backlash that is going to be enough. People are actually looking for some sort of plan or program or some vision that comes after. And I don’t think the Democrats are providing that right now.

In San Francisco specifically, we keep voting out incumbents here. People are really looking for change right now. I just think there’s this overwhelming tide and moment right now that wasn’t there even—has been building—but wasn’t there in this way even two or four years ago.

You have a track record of helping to defeat an incumbent Democrat. Are you going to use similar strategies in this campaign? What does your strategy look like?

I wish there was a playbook that works every single time. I’m going to use some of the learnings and strategies I used from that campaign, but a lot of what I’m going to do on this campaign is going to be different.

I’m going to be trying new stuff. Right now, I’m doing these Zoom calls with voters every day. And as far as I know, no one’s ever done that, but it is letting me talk to way more voters every day than I’ve ever been able to do on a campaign before, because I’m making it convenient. People are getting to meet me from where they are.

I think there’s sort of two rules to these sort of insurgent campaigns. One is you can’t just do what everybody else does, because then you’ll lose. You can’t play on the establishment’s turf. And the second rule is you’ve got to figure out how to get to voters that go around the political gatekeepers.

I’m not gonna win if the battle becomes about who gets the most endorsements against Nancy Pelosi. The only way I can win the race is if I’m getting in front of voters and talking to voters and presenting that I’m a serious candidate. I’m running for real to win this thing, and I’ve got an actual message. I’ve got an actual vision of what I think change should look like.

What are some of the concerns that people bring up in these calls?

I’d say it’s a mix right now. A lot of people are really concerned with what’s going on with Donald Trump and really concerned with what Elon [Musk]’s doing. I’ve had several federal workers on the calls who’ve been laid off from their jobs.

They’re concerned about two things. How do we actually stop this and make sure we have fair and free elections in two to four years? Because that’s not a guaranteed thing right now. We have a Republican Party that has been in the practice of denying elections that they lose. So, people are very concerned about that. Then people are really wondering what does the economic vision for the Democratic Party look like going forward?

It’s not gonna be enough for us to just rely on the pendulum to swing back and forth. The next time it swings back, it might go harder, right? And in a much worse direction. So, what does it look like to not just present some sort of vision, but to convince people that that sort of change is possible? How can we actually change the Democratic Party to be for the working class and the middle class?

Then I’d say the third thing that’s coming up, just from an issue standpoint, is people do feel crushed by the cost-of-living all over the country, but especially in San Francisco. Things like the cost of housing, the drug crisis, the cost of groceries. We have all that stuff worse than the rest of the country. It’s everywhere. So, it’s not just a San Francisco problem, but it’s very acute here. That’s partly why I think San Francisco is actually such an important seat for trying to tackle these problems.

Do you anticipate people like AOC, Bernie Sanders and some of the other progressives already in Congress may end up endorsing your primary campaign? Is that something you’re seeking from them?

I have no idea what they’re going to do, but no, I’m not trying to actively go around running for endorsements right now. My goal is just to make this as competitive of a race as possible. The way I view this is if you run a competitive race, then you go and see who will be willing to endorse or not. But I’m not even thinking about it.

If you did get elected to Congress, would you see yourself as a member of the so-called Squad?

I’ve been trying to call for people to run all across the country, right? I have no illusions that if it’s just me as one person in Congress, or even as just a member of the Squad, that we’ll be able to suddenly get guaranteed health care. Or we’ll actually suddenly be able to do the kind of transformative economic change that I’m calling for.

What I’m calling for, just to be clear here, is for the Democrats to do what, say, FDR [former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] did after the Great Depression, and increased wages so dramatically. He created the middle class. He created the industrial base. It was such a dramatic increase in people’s quality of lives that it laid to rest this idea that you need an authoritarian right to deliver material good for people. It destroyed the far right for decades. For decades, we had no movement like this, even though the far right was quite powerful after the Great Depression in America.

That kind of thing doesn’t happen with just me or even just a few members in Congress. For that to happen we need dozens, if not hundreds of people, running all across the country who are committed to actually doing something for the American people, along with someone running for president on this kind of a vision.

I don’t think it’s just a question of whether I can be part of the Squad or not, I think we’ve got to dream a little bigger than that.

I don’t know how much you follow progressive left commentators on podcasts and X, formerly Twitter, but there’s been a lot of anger at the Squad and at the Progressive Caucus for not pushing the envelope in the way that a lot of leftists would like them to. I’m just curious about your thoughts on that criticism?

I think we’re sort of seeing right now, actually, that the rubber is hitting the road, I do think people like AOC are really leading the charge right now. Right now, I’m talking about this fight in the Senate that’s going on where there’s a continuing resolution on the Senate floor that’s going to do a funding of the government for six months, but it’s handing unprecedented power to Trump.

[Editor’s note: The funding passed the Senate on Friday with some Democratic support after this interview and was signed by Trump on Saturday.]

It’s really a tough thing for a member of the House to actively go out and call out other their colleagues. And AOC has sort of led the charge on calling on [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer, calling on the Senate Democrats to do the right thing here. I think that’s great. I think that is what people are looking for right now. I don’t actually think it’s just about policy. I think there’s this bit that’s just about action.

It’s about having a wing of the Democratic Party that wants to do stuff, that wants to go further, that wants to be bolder, and just stop being so cautious, stop being so afraid. Especially when you’re being confronted with the kind of coup that we’re being confronted with right now.

There are a lot of centrist or moderate Democrats who have blamed progressives for so-called “woke” ideas, and they say this is what propelled the party’s loss in 2024. What is your perspective on that viewpoint?

I think it’s all a red herring and they’re focusing on the wrong stuff. And here’s why. Donald Trump was completely disliked, right? Most people in America thought Donald Trump wants to do a national abortion ban, which was incredibly unpopular, a way more salient issue than say, trans rights, and yet Donald Trump won.

Why is that? The reason he won, in my opinion, is people were just desperate for change and are desperate for economic change. They’re voting this way every time. For most Americans, their wages have been flat or barely creeping up for decades, while the big things in life—housing, health care, childcare, education—the cost of that stuff has been skyrocketing. People are feeling squeezed. People are feeling like their kids are going to do worse than they’re doing.

The result of that is they vote for change when it’s [former President Barack] Obama in 2008, they vote for change with Donald Trump in 2016, and again in 2024. I think it’s the economy. Everyone is saying the number one issue was the economy. Democrats need to focus on that. They need to have an economic vision and there needs to be a better one than what the right is presenting.

I think if we spend the next four years just arguing about, I don’t know, whatever, culture issue within the Democratic Party, we’re going to lose again. We got to figure out an actual economic vision.

One of those culture war issues came up last week when California’s Governor Gavin Newsom said on his podcast that he doesn’t think it’s fair for trans women to be competing in sports. That got some anger from LGBTQ+ groups and some progressives. At the same time, if you look at polling, his view actually seems to be in line with the American public as well as a majority of Democrats. On that issue, how do you think Democrats should be messaging? What’s your perspective on how it should be addressed?

I want to put it in perspective first. This is an issue that we’re talking about that affects—in the NCAA, for example, there’s fewer than 10 trans athletes out of over 500,000 athletes, right? We’re talking about fewer than 10 people. You’re telling me we can’t figure that out on a case-by-case basis for these fewer than 10 people? Do we really need a law? You know a law that has to determine exactly how this works in every single case? I just think it’s more complicated than that.

And also let’s look at how do you actually enforce these laws? There’s a law in Kansas where the Republicans went on the record saying, “Sometimes we’ll have to check the genitals of the people that are participating in sports.” I think there are some unintended consequences here to doing this huge overarching law to try to determine what happens when it’s such a small case.

Let’s be real. If people were serious about women’s rights or cared about kids, they’d be talking about issues that affect way more kids. They’d be talking about the juvenile justice system, for example. But the reason people talk about this is it gets clicks and, no shade on you guys, but I know it’s hard out there in media. You guys got to get some viewers.

I just think we have to call it out for what it is. This is not coming out of a place of real concern for anything. I think it’s just coming out of a place of trying to make an issue out of something that we should be figuring out with care and compassion and fairness for the individuals at an individual level.

Democrats have been struggling in their messaging as you’ve touched on post the 2024 defeat. What do you think are the two or three core issues, or core messages, that Democrats should be promoting right now if they want to win again?

I think number one, Democrats need to be presenting an actual plan for how we reverse this long term decline that’s been happening for much of the country. People are looking at their shuttered downtowns all over the country. People are looking at the factories that have been going away. They’ve been looking at this massive concentration, this distribution of wealth from the working class to the richest in the country, who are now controlling levers of government.

People don’t see anything big enough out there to get us out of that rut. I think we need a big economic mobilization, similar to what we did in World War II, that will actually build those high wage jobs.

I think the second part of it is we’ve got to get costs under control for things like health care, childcare, education—the things that have just been skyrocketing in costs. The way to show that this change is going to work is it can’t just be some tinkering around the edges. Just trying to make it a little bit more affordable isn’t working. We need to be moving towards a universal guaranteed health care system like every other developed nation in the world and many developing nations in the world.

I think the third big message should be anti-corruption. I think what we’re seeing right now is an unprecedented, astronomical level of corruption from the Trump administration. And the Democrats are not as corrupt as that, but we’ve got some corrupt elements in our party. I’m worried that the Democrats are looking at Donald Trump and they’re thinking, “You know what, we need our own devil in the fight. We need Andrew Cuomo in there. We need Rahm Emanuel in there. We need our own ruthless, corrupt players.” And I think that’s a loser. That’s going to lose the election.

I think people are going to be so upset and pissed off with what Donald Trump is doing right now, they’re going to be looking for something different. And for the Democrats to make the case that we’re the anti-corruption party, they need to be believable on that. They need people with integrity and people who are willing to say, we’re going to ban insider stock trading. We’re going to get rid of the influence of money in politics, which by the way, was the number one issue that people in America cared about in the last poll that came out, when they polled people about what issues they care about.

I think it would be silly for the Democrats not to just get this layup. People are caring about money in politics at a moment where the establishment government is the most corrupt that we’ve ever seen. This is how parties have come into sweeping majorities all across the world—running on anti-corruption in these sorts of moments.

With changes the Trump administration is making, do you feel the Green New Deal and its goals still have the potential to move forward given this immense pushback?

I think whether America is a part of it or not, there is this massive hundred trillion dollar global transition going on to clean energy and clean technology. Right now, we’re saying China should do all of it. First of all, I don’t think China even can do all of it. There’s so much building, so much industry that needs to happen to do it. I’m not sure China can. I think it’s absolutely foolish for us to say we’re not going to be a part of that transition.

The greatest economic opportunity of our generation, we’re not going to be a part of it. We’re going to stick to whale oil while everyone else is moving on to fossil fuels. That’s sort of what this transition is like. This is the way to build up a massive amount of high wage industries, the mobilization to get to a clean economy and provide the rest of the world with those clean technologies and clean industries and clean goods. That dwarfs the World War II mobilization in scale.

If we’re talking about doing the kind of upgrade that we did to get to middle class back then, this is the way to do it. If someone shows me another industry as a way to do it, we should do that too. But right now I’m having a hard time coming up with one. So it’s not really about what I think. It’s just whether we want to actually go for it or not.

Is there anything else that you think is really important to highlight before we sign off?

I think I just want to get this point across, that more than anything, people right now, and it’s not just Democrats, I think people just want to see a government that fights for them, and that’s taking big, bold action. If there’s anyone who reads this interview or is watching this, who believes in that and who wants to fight for a bigger vision, please go to my website and sign up, click on run with me. I really want to recruit people all across the country to do this with me.