Pelosi’s Seat Is Settled — And Her Candidate Lost It

The longest career in modern congressional history now has its final page dated. Nancy Pelosi announced on November 6, 2025 — a year ago — that she would not seek re-election: “I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” she said in a video address to the city she has represented since 1987. “With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative. My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power. We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way.” What remained open was who would follow her in California’s 11th District. On Wednesday night, that was settled too — and not the way she had hoped. State Senator Scott Wiener will be San Francisco’s next member of Congress, after Supervisor Connie Chan, the candidate Pelosi endorsed, conceded the race.

Wiener finished first in the June primary and never gave the lead back. Chan conceded on Wednesday evening after the day’s results release, with about 57 percent of ballots counted and the Associated Press tally showing Wiener at 97,876 votes, about 55 percent, to her 78,594, about 44 percent — a margin of roughly 19,000 votes that late ballots were narrowing but could not erase. (The AP still lists the race as too early to call; it was Chan’s concession, not a projection, that settled it. Wiener had declared victory on election night.) “After reviewing the results and the ballots remaining to be counted, while we expect the margin to narrow significantly, we do not have a clear path to victory,” Chan said. “I congratulate Scott Wiener on his election and wish him success in serving San Francisco.” Wiener, who raised about $4.6 million to Chan’s $2.2 million, said on election night: “Tonight San Francisco voted for results,” and called Pelosi “the greatest speaker in modern American history.” Pelosi, who had backed Chan in May alongside Senator Adam Schiff, responded to the result with praise for her candidate — “a working mom, a public servant, and an immigrant” who “gave voice to families whose struggles she knows firsthand” — and a sentence for the winner: “I wish him success in service for the people of our City.” Her office, she said, stands ready to assist with the transition.

Pelosi, 86, will serve out her final weeks until the new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027: 20 terms, nearly 40 years, the first woman to hold the Speaker’s gavel (2007-2011 and 2019-2023), the architect of the Affordable Care Act, the overseer of two impeachments of Donald Trump, and by the Associated Press’s accounting a fundraiser of more than $1 billion across her career, re-elected for the last time in 2024 with 81 percent of the vote. She held her retirement announcement until after California’s Proposition 50 redistricting vote in November 2025, which she backed and helped finance and which passed — the map whose effects were felt across Tuesday’s House results. Her last public statement of this election week was not about herself. On Wednesday, as the new House took shape, she marked the milestone she said filled her “with particular joy and pride”: “the election of more than 100 Democratic women to the House of Representatives… Electing Democratic women has been my passion since I first came to Congress in 1987, when there were only twelve of us.” Twelve then; more than a hundred now; and in her own seat, for the first time since 1987, somebody else.

Sources: The Associated Press (2025 announcement coverage and 2026 results), USA Today, KTVU and the New York Post, November 4-5, 2026; Representative Pelosi’s statements via her office.