Former San Francisco Mayor London Breed Considers Run for Pelosi Seat

San Francisco’s former mayor, London Breed, is considering putting her hat in the ring for the congressional seat that will soon be vacant when Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who announced her retirement on Thursday, leaves office after nearly four decades.

Breed has been quiet in the months since she was ousted from City Hall, working as an adviser at the nonprofit Aspen Policy Academy, a Bay Area branch of the Washington, D.C.-based Aspen Institute.

But she told KQED on Friday that she has received several calls encouraging her to run for California’s 11th Congressional District, the San Francisco-based seat Pelosi currently holds.

“I was taken aback and really humbled by the kinds of people who reached out to me and surprised me,” Breed said. “I asked them a lot of questions about why, and why me, and I’ve had those conversations nonstop since yesterday.”

Moderate Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener and progressive Saikat Chakrabarti, a wealthy former tech worker who served on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign in 2018, have already announced they will run. San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, a progressive Democrat, has also been rumored to have interest in running.

As of Friday, a total of six Democratic candidates and two Republicans have registered for the June 2026 primary, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Breed did not attend Wiener’s campaign kickoff party, although the two have long been allies, and she said she’s refrained from coming out in support of any candidate too soon out of respect for Pelosi, now 85 and one of the most powerful lawmakers in recent memory.

“We need to pause and really reflect on Nancy Pelosi and her legacy and what she did for San Francisco and for our democracy,” Breed said. “She has been an extraordinary fighter, and she’s been courageous in these battles and very aggressive in trying to combat some of the most challenging times we have faced. And in addition to that, she would always make sure San Francisco is taken care of.”

Mayor Daniel Lurie unseated Breed in last November’s election, after the former mayor steered the city through a tumultuous pandemic marked by high office and retail vacancy rates that hollowed out parts of downtown.

Born in San Francisco and raised in public housing, Breed was elected after an interim mayoral appointment following former mayor Ed Lee’s death. She served as the city’s first Black woman mayor for nearly seven years.

Breed didn’t say for sure whether she will pull papers to run. She said she plans to have many more conversations in the coming days and weeks to get a sense of how San Francisco voters feel. But she said working in public service is something she still feels pulled toward. Her stint at the Aspen Institute will run until the end of the year.

“Policy has to be about people, and it’s one of the reasons why I love being in the arena for public service,” Breed said. “There is nothing in the world like it.”