The Facts

Scott Wiener’s congressional campaign launched ConnieChan.ai, a parody chatbot portraying Supervisor Connie Chan as reflexively opposed to housing, transit, education reform, public safety, parks, and economic recovery.

Chan’s campaign repeatedly prompted the bot about her identity until it managed to produce a line about her “San Francisco accent” in order to manufacture a scandal. Nancy Pelosi and six other elected officials—all Chan endorsers—then denounced the bot as racist and sexist. Wiener’s campaign points out that a couple users rapidly submitted 109 questions about Chan’s accent, race, gender, appearance, or citizenship to provoke the desired response.

The Context

Wiener beat Chan 40.7% to 29.7% in the June primary, but two later polls showed a dead heat.

The GrowSF Take

Pelosi and Chan’s camp should be embarrassed for manufacturing a racism-and-sexism scandal out of a response their own side worked relentlessly to provoke. The media should be embarrassed for playing along. Wiener’s campaign deserves some criticism for handing them an opening with a campaign gimmick, but these offenses are not equivalent.

The chatbot is silly, but its core satire is fair: Chan opposes more homes and better transit. Her allies deliberately baited an offensive response, then presented it as proof that the parody itself is racist and sexist. That is dishonest left-wing slopulism, not a serious defense of Chan’s record.

Pelosi made it worse. A former Speaker of the House used her stature to validate an accusation built on intentionally provocative prompts, then Chan’s other endorsers eagerly joined the fake outrage. Instead of explaining why voters should want Chan’s obstructionist politics in Congress, Pelosi turned an obvious campaign stunt into a moral emergency. San Francisco deserves better from one of its most powerful political figures.

The media then breathlessly elevated obvious campaign theater into news.

Voters care about housing costs, safe streets, reliable transit, good schools, and whether San Francisco can function. Both campaigns should retire the chatbot drama and argue about those things, instead.

If you work in AI and would like to help us elect Scott Wiener instead of anti-datacenter, anti-AI Connie Chan, email us!