California State Senator Eyes Pelosi’s House Seat

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2025 – California State Senator Scott Wiener, author of the state’s 2018 net neutrality law, formally launched his campaign Wednesday for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Wiener is running to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker and longtime San Francisco Democratic incumbent, who has not yet announced whether she will seek a 19th term.

Wiener's candidacy could elevate to Congress a policymaker engaged in regulating emerging technologies, including broadband, artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure.

This session, Wiener authored a successful AI regulatory package that created whistleblower protections for employees at artificial intelligence companies, required developers of powerful AI systems to disclose how they manage safety risks, and established a reporting process for catastrophic incidents.

The bill, SB 53, which also established a publicly funded cloud infrastructure, CalCompute, to support academic and nonprofit research on advanced AI models, was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom (D) in September.

“With a technology as transformative as AI, we have a responsibility to support that innovation while putting in place commonsense guardrails to understand and reduce risk,” Wiener said when the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act became law.

That bill followed Wiener’s earlier proposal, SB 1047, introduced in the 2024 session, which would have imposed formal testing and compliance requirements on developers of powerful AI systems.

While the bill passed the state legislature, Newsom ultimately vetoed it in favor of launching a state working group to explore regulatory recommendations.

Wiener’s position on AI regulation puts him on a likely collision course with the Trump administration, which has already rescinded Biden-era executive orders on AI oversight and tried to preempt state regulation of AI.

While the five-term state senator spent the majority of his launch video promising to defend against President Donald Trump’s agenda, he also pointed to his work on domestic policy. 

Wiener highlighted efforts to expand access to affordable housing, hold insurance companies accountable, as well as his authorship of a California law that bans federal immigration agents from concealing their identities during enforcement operations.

Wiener joins a race that also includes progressive Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff to New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a Democrat. Chakrabarti has been vocal in urging Pelosi to step aside.

Pelosi has said she will announce her plans for 2026 after the statewide special election on Nov. 4, which will ask California voters whether to approve a proposition that would adopt new congressional district maps for the next three election cycles.