San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi has finally weighed in on potential heirs to her nearly 40-year reign in Congress — giving a nod to a left-wing pol who’s trailing badly in polls.
The longtime San Francisco rep and former House speaker lavished praise on Connie Chan, a member of the Board of Supervisors representing west side neighborhoods — though she stopped short of making an official endorsement.
“She’d be a great member of Congress,” Pelosi said in a rare interview Thursday, per the San Francisco Standard.
The powerful Den said it’d be “very exciting” to send an Asian American congressional rep to Congress for the first time in the city’s history. (San Francisco is roughly one-third Asian American.)
Polls show Chan — a union favorite who’s endorsed by Sen. Adam Schiff, SEIU California and the San Francisco Labor Council — competing for second place with tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, who’s spent some $5 million of his own money on the race.
Chan has rallied in favor of Prop. D, a so-called “Overpaid CEO tax” that would increase business taxes on companies with large gaps between the earnings of the top executive and a median San Francisco worker. Critics have slammed the measure as a job-killer in the economically fragile city.
State Sen. Scott Wiener is backed by just under half of San Francisco voters, according to recent surveys.
Pelosi attended a fundraiser for Chan in Washington, DC, saying she did “very well.”
“I thought, for a while, I’d just wait, watch, and see how the public reacted to the candidates for this seat,” Pelosi said of her lack of a formal endorsement.
Chan was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2020. She immigrated with her family from Taiwan to San Francisco when she was 13, settling in Chinatown.
She chairs the Board of Supervisors’ budget committee and is linked with San Francisco’s progressive faction — which is often at odds with big business, police and and housing developers.
David Latterman, a political analyst in San Francisco, pointed to Chan’s weak fundraising numbers and suggested Pelosi doesn’t want to formally back a loser.
“If Pelosi endorses Chan now, and she comes in a distant third, then where is she? She is marginalized on this,” Latterman told The Post in an interview last week.
Pelosi was upset with Wiener’s decision to launch an exploratory committee for her seat three years ago, effectively starting the clock on her retirement.
“Clearly, Pelosi is not happy about how any of this has turned out,” Latterman said.
Wiener held a commanding lead in one poll released Friday — showing him with 40% support compared with Chakrabarti and Chan with 18% and 17%, respectively.
Chakrabarti, former campaign manager to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was brutally spurned after his former boss declined to endorse him and recently held an expletive-laced campaign rally with far-left streamer Hasan PIker.