AOC's former campaign manager, Saikat Chakrabarti, launches challenge against Democrats' Nancy Pelosi

SAN FRANCISCO: Can a challenger defeat four-decade Washington veteran Nancy Pelosi in the 2026 House race? That's what Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive political advisor, is aiming for as he throws his hat in the ring for the next congressional race.

At a launch event in San Francisco Tuesday evening, on the heels of progressive upsets in mayoral races in New York and Minneapolis, hundreds gathered to meet Chakrabarti, former campaign manager for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thinks it’s time for another political shake-up.

"The appetite for change right now absolutely dwarfs what I saw in 2018. The first event we did for AOC, about 40 people showed up. This was 10 times that—and I'm no AOC," he told The New Arab, after taking questions from attendees.

"Campaigns are about 80 or 90 percent hitting the right moment with the right candidate with the right message. And I think the right message right now is not just running against Trump. It’s about what do we actually build after Trump. That’s what I’m trying to make the campaign about," he said.

Though Chakrabarti was largely surrounded by supporters, they weren't shy about asking critical questions about how he could make a difference in a political system where many feel disenfranchised.

Chakrabarti is entering a congressional race as a Democrat at a time when the party's popularity is at a 30-year historic low of 28 percent, according to a July CNN poll, a drop from 29 percent in March.

An audience member asked him why he is running as a Democrat, given the party's unpopularity, to which Chakrabarti first noted the difficulty in winning as a third-party candidate, and then said that people are what make a party.

"The Democratic Party is just the people that it is. We just saw Trump come in and basically remake the entire Republican Party as a single person. I don't think we should do that. I don't want a cult of personality in the Democratic Party," he told the audience. "But imagine if we had dozens or hundreds of people running for Congress, someone running for president who's committed to fixing these structural issues, doing things like Medicare for all, the party would be completely different."

"We do have a history of FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt], LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson], of the Great Society to call upon and try to bring that back," he added.

He also adamantly agreed with an attendee who suggested the US ban corporate stock buybacks and congressional stock trading.

One local resident, Johnny Khuu, told TNA that he came out to the campaign launch to be around other people who are committed to change.

"Saikat is obviously very progressive," he said. "He's someone who's very committed to doing things differently. That's something we need more of. It says a lot about him that he's staying around and talking to people."

Michael Nguyen, a local environmental consultant, told TNA, "I feel like Saikat is one of many people right now who's trying to undo a lot of the damage that's been done."

He added that he hopes some of the country's high military spending can be diverted to help with basic needs, such as healthcare and education.

For Chakrabarti and some of his top staff, launching a campaign in San Francisco is something of a homecoming. After finishing his studies, Chakrabarti worked at startups in Silicon Valley before working for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in 2015. In 2018, he managed the 2018 congressional campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in which she ousted 10-time incumbent Joe Crowley.

Oscar Arbulu, chief organising officer for Chakrabarti's campaign, who grew up in San Francisco, worked as Rashida Tlaib's campaign manager for US Congress, where he says his work in southeastern Michigan taught him the importance of personal connection.

"The thing I learned from being on Rashida's campaign is you need to have the human connection," Arbulu told TNA. "People who came in today wanted to have the human connection. They didn't want to do it over Zoom. They wanted to be with other people."

"She wanted to make sure that when you're knocking on doors, you're asking people what they need," he added. "It's important for us to get ahead of it, so that the day that we do win, we'll know these are the things people talked about."