Scott Wiener

Background

Scott Wiener grew up in New Jersey, graduated from Duke University and Harvard Law School, and spent a year in Chile on a Fulbright Scholarship. He practiced law for fifteen years, as a law clerk to Justice Alan Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court, in private practice at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, and as a Deputy City Attorney in San Francisco. He chaired the San Francisco Democratic Party and has lived in the Castro since 1997. Voters elected him District 8 supervisor in November 2010 and re-elected him in 2014. He won the State Senate seat for District 11 in 2016 and was re-elected in 2020 and 2024. The district covers San Francisco, Broadmoor, Colma and Daly City, plus parts of South San Francisco and San Bruno.

In office

Wiener has chaired the Senate Budget, Housing and Human Services committees and now chairs the Elections Committee. The Legislature's records for the 2025-26 session list him as lead author of 55 measures, 32 of them chaptered, among them the Budget Act of 2025 (SB 101, signed June 27, 2025).

Many of his laws concern housing and transit. Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 79, which eases home building near transit, on October 10, 2025, after Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass urged a veto. SB 63, signed October 13, 2025, authorizes a Bay Area regional measure to fund public transit. His earlier laws SB 35 and SB 423 speed housing permits.

On artificial intelligence, Newsom vetoed Wiener's SB 1047 on September 29, 2024; Nancy Pelosi had also opposed it. Newsom signed SB 53, which sets rules for large AI developers, on September 29, 2025. Chan and her supporters say Wiener weakened that bill to pass it; at their October 13, 2026 debate he called the claim "bunk."

Other laws he wrote cap insulin costs (SB 40, 2025) and restrict face masks for on-duty law enforcement (SB 627, 2025), followed by a second mask bill, SB 1004, signed September 29, 2026. Newsom signed his SB 895, the California Science and Health Research Bond Act, on September 30, 2026, and vetoed his SB 944, on Medi-Cal acupuncture, the same day.

On the ballot

Wiener's Senate seat is next on the ballot November 7, 2028, and he is serving his last allowed Senate term. On November 3, 2026, he faces Supervisor Connie Chan, also a Democrat, for the District 11 House seat Nancy Pelosi is leaving. Preliminary June primary results gave him about 41 percent to Chan's 29 percent. Through September he had raised $5.3 million to Chan's $2.2 million, and each had about $843,000 left. If he wins, he would leave the Senate in January 2027 and the seat would need a special election.

Connie Chan, the opposing candidate, called Wiener a corporate Democrat and said that on AI “it's always a watered-down bill that the industry can accept” (The American Prospect, September 28, 2026).