Former AOC chief of staff announces run to unseat Pelosi

The former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., announced Wednesday his intention to run against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calling the Democratic Party “paralyzed and unprepared” for President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

In a lengthy message on X, Saikat Chakrabarti said he decided to run against the former House speaker, who is seeking a 21st term, after “watching Trump and Elon (Musk) freely unleash chaos in their illegal seizure of government.”

“It’s become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership,” he wrote. “I don’t understand how DC’s Democratic leaders are so paralyzed and unprepared for this moment after living through President Trump’s first term — and after Trump and Elon warned us exactly what they planned to do.”

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While Chakrabarti said he respects the Democratic leader, the country has dramatically changed since her early days in Washington. He noted that Pelosi intervened to block Ocasio-Cortez from becoming chair of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

“When Nancy Pelosi was first elected to Congress, you could buy a home on a single income. A summer job could pay for college,” he wrote. “Republicans believed in climate change and respected election results. Now, the things that defined the American Dream — being able to afford health care, education, a home, and raise a family — are impossible for most people.”

He added that the Republican Party is “overtly conspiratorial and anti-democracy.”

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“The Democratic Party needs to stop acting like it’s competing against a normal political party that plays by the rules, and it needs a bold vision for how to raise living standards, quality of life and security for all Americans,” he said. “America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face.”

In his campaign, Chakrabarti said he plans to talk about problems that need solving for San Francisco, the U.S. and the Democratic Party.

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Chakrabarti, who helped manage Ocasio-Cortez’s upstart 2018 campaign, left his chief of staff position in 2019 after drawing the ire of Democrats when he publicly criticized party moderates during policy spats between progressive members and party leadership.

That year, he tweeted that Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, one of the first two Native American women to serve in Congress, enabled a racist system after she voted in favor of a Senate border bill not backed by progressives. A month later, Chakrabarti described centrist Democrats who blocked a liberal-backed emergency border bill as the “new Southern Democrats.”