Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is shooing off talk of Democrat primary challengers for 2026, but the reality is she's likelier to retire in time to set up her daughter Christine Pelosi's potential candidacy.
"I think she's going to retire, and it's a moot point," longtime San Francisco consultant Eric Jaye, who worked on Pelosi's first campaign, told The New York Times. "I seriously doubt she would want her legacy, as stellar as it is, tarnished by having her last race needing to be a knockout, drag-out, negative fight with a representative of the next generation of leaders."
That would be Saikat Chakrabarti, who worked on the 2016 presidential campaign for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Chakrabarti also helped bring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., out from behind a bar to become one of the most powerful House Democrat figures in Congress as her 2018 campaign manager.
Chakrabarti, 39, was the third hire at Stripe and is reportedly worth hundreds of millions, making him a formidable challenger to Pelosi, if not the leader to replace her if she retires.
"I just realized the Democrats weren't actually changing at all," Chakrabarti, who was once bounced from AOC's staff amid rampant criticism of the then-Speaker Pelosi's leadership. "They're still obsessed with this seniority culture, relying on a backlash to Trump and hoping the pendulum swings back their way.
"I think we're in an existential moment for the country. How are we going to rebuild from this mess?"
Jaye predicts Pelosi might not want to battle Chakrabarti and his wallet when she will be 86 at the end of this term.
"I doubt she has any appetite for that," Jaye told the Times. "And she has nothing left to prove."
Just the talk of Chakrabarti's candidacy touched a Pelosi nerve.
"I have them every time," she said dismissively when asked recently, the Times reported.
"I didn't come here to talk politics. When I'm in a political arena, I'll have an answer for you. But that doesn't worry me one bit."
A former Pelosi staffer denied Chakrabarti was the reason for Pelosi's consternation.
"The furthest thing from her mind after the weather in the South Pole is this kid," Drew Hammill, who was a strategist for Pelosi from 2006-23, told the Times.
Christine Pelosi is a lawyer who might be in line to win the coveted San Francisco House seat.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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