Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been barred from driving for six months after a hit-and-run crash into a parked car, prosecutors said.
Paul Pelosi, 86, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of hit-and-run and a traffic infraction of making an unlawful turn in connection with the July crash in Yountsville, the Napa County District Attorney’s Office said.
Under the plea agreement, Napa County Superior Court Judge Scott R.L. Young placed Pelosi on one year of probation and barred him from driving for six months — the maximum time allowed.
The court also ordered Pelosi to complete a 10-day work program and pay fines. As part of the plea agreement, Pelosi paid about $11,200 in restitution to the owner of the damaged vehicle.
Authorities at the time said witnesses saw the convertible briefly stop before driving away. The parked car was unoccupied, and no injuries were reported.
Prosecutors said they do not typically issue news releases regarding misdemeanor hit-and-run cases involving only property damage, but that the release was being issued due to public interest around the case.
Paul Pelosi has been issued at least eight driving violations over a more than a decade before the Yountville crash, cited for speeding, blowing through several red lights, and driving the wrong way down a one-way street, a New York Times review of court records found.
In 2022, he pleaded guilty to charges of driving under the influence after crashing his Porsche into an oncoming Jeep. He was fined, sentenced to five days in jail, and put on probation for three years.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), a prolific lawmaker who has reshaped California policy on a host of fronts — from housing to transgender rights — will succeed House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco’s representative in Congress after San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan called Wiener on Wednesday to concede, her campaign confirmed.
Wiener, 56, who is gay and reviled by some on the far right for his progressive policies and staunch LGBTQ+ advocacy work, overcame Pelosi’s endorsement of Chan in the much-watched race between Democrats, and will be the first out LGBTQ+ person to represent the bright-blue city in the House.
“In Washington I’ll bring the same determination I showed in Sacramento every single day,” Wiener said in a statement. “It’s time to deliver a better tomorrow for our city and our country.”
Wiener’s win hands Pelosi — known for her deft political instinct and sweeping influence over the Democratic Party and donor base — a rare defeat in her home city just as her nearly 40-year career in the House concludes.
The Associated Press had yet to call the race in Wiener’s favor as of late Wednesday.
But Chan, a progressive backed by labor, announced she was conceding the race in a statement, writing, “After reviewing the results and the ballots remaining to be counted, while we expect the margin to narrow significantly, we do not have a clear path to victory. I congratulate Scott Wiener on his election and wish him success in serving San Francisco.”
Chan said she was “deeply grateful” to Pelosi “for her trust and for four decades of extraordinary service that have strengthened San Francisco and our country.”
Pelosi in her own statement said Chan “brought courage, conviction and a deep love for San Francisco” to the campaign.
“As a working mom, a public servant, and an immigrant, she gave voice to families whose struggles she knows firsthand,” Pelosi said. “I was proud to support her, and I am so proud of the campaign she ran.”
Pelosi also congratulated Wiener. “Representing San Francisco is an extraordinary honor and a profound responsibility. My office stands ready to assist in the transition, and I wish him success in service for the people of our city,” she said.
Wiener thanked Chan for a “spirited and hard-fought campaign,” his campaign team, volunteers, supporters and donors for their hard work, and Pelosi — whom he hailed as “the greatest Speaker in modern American history” — saying he is “humbled to carry forward the powerful legacy of this seat.”
He also thanked San Franciscans for placing their trust in him — and making history by sending their first queer representative to Congress, something he said he never could have imagined when he first arrived in the city’s Castro neighborhood as a young man and “fell head over heels for this city.”
“San Franciscans voted for results, and we have so much work ahead: Building the millions of homes we need; moving toward true universal health care; investing in clean energy, public transit, and high-speed rail; standing up for science, education, and immigrants; making sure people — not massive corporations — decide what works for this country, including on AI; and ensuring the rule of law applies to everyone, including the President,” he said.
He said it “won’t be easy” but that voters nationwide had “delivered a powerful mandate for Democrats in Congress” to get it done.
The race, which ratcheted up when Pelosi bypassed Wiener to endorse Chan in May, just before the June primary, had divided the Democratic Party.
Chan — who immigrated to the city from Hong Kong at age 13 and has deep ties to its large Chinese and immigrant communities — was a community and legislative aide for years, including for then-Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, before being elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2020. She has served as budget chair since 2023.
In addition to Pelosi’s imprimatur, Chan had received endorsements from major labor groups including the California Federation of Labor Unions and the California Teachers Assn.; a host of Congress members, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); various progressive organizations; fellow and former supervisors; former mayor and S.F. power broker Willie Brown; and Saikat Chakrabarti, the third-place finisher in the primary.
Wiener, a former deputy city attorney and local Democratic Party chair before being elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2010 and to the state Senate in 2016, was endorsed by the state and local Democratic parties; state leaders including California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, state Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister); various queer organizations; labor groups including AFSCME; more than half the city’s supervisors; and various members of Congress.
Many of Wiener’s supporters cited his legislative effectiveness — he’s the author of more than 100 laws, including some of the state’s most progressive laws on LGBTQ+ rights — and his willingness to fight hard battles, which they said is needed with President Trump in the White House.
Wiener has pushed progressive laws backing safe injection sites, extending bar hours until 4 a.m., decriminalizing psychedelic drugs, and limits on federal immigration agents in California. He has pushed for housing deregulation and development near transit hubs statewide to solve the housing and affordability crises, and pushed for artificial intelligence regulation while seeking buy-in from wealthy tech leaders — some of whom backed his campaign.
He also has passed laws protecting net neutrality, capping prescription drug costs and mandating mental health parity, ending mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, and requiring that corporations disclose their greenhouse gas emissions.
Wiener ran on his experience as a lawmaker who would be able “to fight in a smart way, and to fight in an aggressive way, to defeat Donald Trump and to lower the cost of living.”
“This is a race to succeed the most effective and operational member of Congress in modern American history,” Wiener told The Times in September. “San Francisco should send someone who actually has a track record, a proven track record, of being able to deliver.”
In backing Chan, Pelosi made a point of noting that she had spent much of her political career backing fellow women in office, and said she believed Chan — an immigrant woman — would make a mark in Congress, particularly given the political atmosphere under the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Pelosi cheered the election of other women across the country — even if not her own chosen successor.
“When I came to Congress in 1987, there were only twelve Democratic women. We made it our mission to change that. Today, we celebrate the election of more than 100 Democratic women to the House — a tremendous joy and source of pride,” Pelosi wrote on X. “When women succeed, America succeeds!”
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Is it resentment that Wiener’s years-long maneuvering blocked the ascension of Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, who’d been widely talked about as her mom’s name-brand successor? (Instead, she’s running for Wiener’s seat in 2028, or sooner if he makes it to Congress.)
Is it Pelosi once more leaning into her long-standing role as a champion of women and women in politics, which drew her to support Supervisor Connie Chan?
Perhaps it’s a bit of all three.
Pelosi, for her part, told reporters that “nobody knows Congress better than I do” and she believes, simply enough, that Chan “would be the best member of Congress.”
But maybe there’s something more elemental.
“Pelosi is the daughter of a machine politician,” said Eric Jaye, a strategist who’s spent decades working in and around San Francisco politics. “She moves from Baltimore” — where her father was a congressman and mayor — “and becomes initially a lieutenant in the political machine here and, ultimately, the general of it.
“She’s playing by the classic rules of machine politics,” Jaye said, “which is the machine has the prerogative of choosing the line of succession…. Nancy Pelosi wanted to be able to make that choice.”
Peas in a pod
Chan, a leader of the city’s progressive wing and a favorite of organized labor, was languishing until Pelosi delivered her endorsement in the final stretch of the primary campaign. Her imprimatur sent Chan surging past tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti to place second behind Wiener.
With less than two weeks until election day, the November runoff appears too close to call, though many give Wiener the edge.
There is little that substantively divides the two candidates, both liberals in good standing. Wiener is considered the more moderate of the two, graded on San Francisco’s very-left curve.
“Connie Chan and Scott Wiener are going to vote the same way 99.9% of the time,” said Jim Ross, another longtime San Francisco political strategist. Further, he noted, it’s going to be years before either acquires the clout needed to be a significant force on Capitol Hill. “That’s just the reality of how Congress works.”
Which makes Pelosi’s heavy involvement in their fratricidal fight all the more striking.
She’s put her hefty fundraising muscle behind Chan, helping narrow Wiener’s financial advantage. She’s appeared in pro-Chan advertising — striding in her trademark stilettos — and lent her Washington communications director to the campaign.
San Francisco politics have long been personal, nasty and brutish. The city’s close quarters and intraparty rivalries help make it so, and Pelosi’s intervention has further frayed old ties and strained deep-seated alliances.
Susie Tompkins Buell, a San Francisco philanthropist and one of the Democratic Party’s most influential donors, told Politico she couldn’t understand why Pelosi would use her final months in office to torpedo Wiener’s campaign. She’s spoken to other prominent Democrats, Buell said, who felt pressured to endorse Chan because the speaker emerita hit them up.
“All you do is say, ‘Why, why is this happening?’ ” Buell wondered aloud.
It’s been nearly 40 years — going back to when Pelosi was first elected in 1987 — since San Francisco had an open congressional seat. Winning here is tantamount to a lifetime appointment; since 1964, just three people have held the seat Pelosi is vacating.
Both Wiener, who is gay, and Chan, who immigrated to San Francisco from Hong Kong, are bidding to write their own bit of history. Wiener, 56, would be the first out LGBTQ+ person to represent San Francisco in Congress. Chan, 48, would be the first Asian American.
As for Pelosi, her aggressive intervention in the contest won’t even merit “a footnote in her biography,” Jaye said.
WASHINGTON — Xavier Becerra was dubbed a “rising star” before he even entered the halls of Congress.
His June 1992 Democratic primary victory over Los Angeles school board member Leticia Quezada in California’s 30th Congressional District earned the 34-year-old candidate that description in The Times.
When the boyish, affable congressman became the first Latino lawmaker appointed to the powerful House Ways and Means Committee in his second term, national outlets took notice.
Thirty years later, in the final weeks of his gubernatorial race with Republican Steve Hilton, Becerra now finds himself poised to lead the most populous state in the country.
An examination of Becerra’s more than 25 years in Washington shows a politician who was skilled at building important alliances and amassing power on Capitol Hill, but had some stumbles along the way and faced criticism for his performance in his highest profile role.
Becerra built his reputation as a diligent consensus-builder — a workhorse rather than a show horse, to use an analogy favored by political scientists — but also revealed himself to be an ambitious political operator in key moments.
“He’s an affable person who’s not afraid to pull out a knife in politics while smiling,” said Christian Grose, a political science professor at USC.
Becerra’s campaign declined to comment on his time in Washington.
Becerra’s origin story traces back to his youth in Sacramento, and a moment when a high school friend was about to throw out a blank, unused application to Stanford University. The elite university was only 125 miles away, but it might as well have been across the ocean from the working-class world Becerra was raised in. Still, he applied.
He earned a law degree there four years later, and it was at Stanford that he met his wife, Carolyn Reyes, who became a physician.
After living in Boston while Reyes attended Harvard Medical School, Becerra moved to Los Angeles to work for state Sen. Art Torres. Within a few years he was tapped by Henry Lozano, then chief of staff to trailblazing Latino Rep. Edward Roybal, to run for state Assembly in 1990; and then, two years later, to succeed Roybal, who was retiring after 30 years in Congress.
Roybal endorsed Becerra, whose victory in the heavily Latino district that included Central and Eastside Los Angeles communities, was seen as a passing of the torch to the next generation.
Frank Villalobos, the founder and president of Barrio Architects, was among the leaders in East L.A. who encouraged Becerra to run for political office, and he said he was impressed early on by Becerra’s genuine commitment to the community and his ability to unite the area’s sometimes divided political factions.
“I thought if we kept this going, someday he’ll become the governor,” Villalobos said.
Becerra was part of a wave of young Latino lawmakers entering Congress, and his growing power within Democratic ranks helped him escape Roybal’s long shadow. Soon after Becerra’s barrier-breaking appointment to the Ways and Means Committee — which writes tax legislation — Becerra became chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a position he held from 1997 to 1999.
An early test
He put his growing stature to the test a few years later when he decided to enter the L.A. mayor’s race in 2001.
It didn’t go well.
Former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa was also running, and Becerra — who had slept on Villaraigosa’s couch when he first ran for Congress — faced criticism for potentially splitting the Latino vote.
Becerra performed poorly, winning only 6% of the vote in the Democratic primary. His nice-guy reputation took a hit when his campaign was found to have been behind automated phone calls attacking Villaraigosa by a woman who falsely gave the impression that she was county Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose endorsement had been crucial in Becerra’s first run for Congress.
Becerra also faced criticism for his role in contacting White House staffers as part of an effort to push for the release of convicted L.A. cocaine dealer Carlos Vignali, whose father was a political contributor to Becerra. Vignali’s sentence was commuted by President Clinton on his last day in office; Becerra acknowledged calling the White House several times to discuss the possibility of Vignali’s release. Villaraigosa also wrote a letter on Vignali’s behalf.
Becerra told The Times in 2001 that he wasn’t lobbying for Vignali’s release, but merely asking White House officials to review the details of the conviction on behalf of the family.
“If I was going to try to put pressure on, I would have tried to call the president,” Becerra said at the time.
Villaraigosa fared better than Becerra but ultimately lost the 2001 election to City Atty. James Hahn, then rebounded to win the first of two terms as mayor in 2005.
Becerra got the better of Villaraigosa in their rematch this year in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, and won Villaraigosa’s support after.
“We’ve been friends a long time and, yes, we’ve been adversaries as well, but most of the time we’ve been friends,” Villaraigosa told The Times. “He’s got the experience and the wherewithal to lead this state.”
As for Becerra as a house guest during his first run for Congress?
“He makes his bed. He was neat,” said Villaraigosa. “He was pretty inconspicuous.”
Capitol Hill climbing
After his mayoral defeat, Becerra’s focus returned to Washington, where an alliance with another powerful Californian was a boon to his career on Capitol Hill.
Becerra was a close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), serving as assistant to the speaker from 2007 to 2009.
John Lawrence, Pelosi’s former chief of staff, said that Becerra’s standing within the California delegation and particularly among Latino lawmakers was a big part of his appeal.
“Speaker Pelosi had set a goal of elevating minorities and women who had historically been excluded from leadership,” he said.
Their relationship took a hit after Becerra told progressive lawmakers in 2009 that he believed party leadership gave up too easily on including a public option in the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law the following year.
“I understand I have tire tracks on my back because Xavier threw me under the bus,” Pelosi said during a Democratic Party leadership meeting in 2009, Politico reported.
And Pelosi would later question Becerra’s appointment in 2021 to be secretary of Health and Human Services. She has not endorsed Becerra in the gubernatorial race.
But any bad blood between the two didn’t stop Becerra from continuing to advance within the party ranks.
He became chair of the House Democratic Caucus in 2012, leading weekly meetings of all Democrats in the House and uniting the party’s members.
Former Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Ron Kind said Becerra was an excellent listener and skilled at building consensus.
“He could get in the room with anyone and find common ground,” Kind said.
Becerra joined several high-stakes negotiations, notably a 2013 bipartisan effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform, in the wake of the “Gang of Eight” deal struck in the Senate.
John Yarmuth, a Democratic congressman from Kentucky who was also part of the House negotiation, said Becerra was “an amazing positive force” in the process.
“I think he, more than anyone else, was focused on fixing the problem,” Yarmuth said.
Xavier Becerra bumps elbows with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) before his Senate committee confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services secretary in 2021.
(Greg Nash / Associated Press)
The group was able to achieve a compromise, but it never saw the light of day.
Then-House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, later blamed then-President Obama, whom he accused of “poisoning the well” on an immigration compromise. Yarmuth said Republicans were spooked about potential blowback.
Several potential off-ramps appeared during Becerra’s time in Washington. He was considered by Obama for U.S. trade representative in 2008, but Becerra declined the offer. After flirting with the idea of running for outgoing U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat, Becerra declined to enter the race, ultimately won by then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. He was briefly floated as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but that didn’t materialize either.
In late 2016, Becerra found himself at a crossroads.
After more than a decade on the Ways and Means Committee, he faced the possibility of becoming the top Democrat on the committee and had the endorsement of the outgoing top Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan.
But Harris’ victory in the 2016 Senate race created a vacancy for state attorney general.
Becerra decided to return home to Sacramento to take the role and spent the next four years as the state’s top law enforcement official, serving as “defender-in-chief” of the state, as USC’s Grose put it, against the Trump administration.
Fraught second act in D.C.
Becerra returned to Washington in 2021 for a second act that would prove to be far more controversial than his first.
Despite having no background in healthcare, Becerra was nominated to be the secretary of Health and Human Services and confirmed, over significant opposition by Republicans.
He took the reins of the healthcare agency as the country was still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and struggled to establish a clear role for himself in a response effort that was centered in the White House.
In his first year in office, he was called out by reporters for failing to hold regular press briefings.
And he faced criticism when health officials under his purview offered contradictory information in late 2021 about reduced quarantine requirements for people testing positive for COVID-19.
And Becerra’s chief of staff at Health and Human Services and longtime advisor, Sean McCluskie, pleaded guilty last year to participating in a scheme to use campaign funds from a dormant Becerra state political committee to pay for McCluskie’s frequent travel between Washington and California.
Dana Williamson, a longtime political consultant for Becerra and former chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom, pleaded guilty earlier this year for her role in the scheme. McCluskie and Williamson are scheduled to be sentenced in December. Neither Becerra nor Newsom were accused of wrongdoing.
Democratic operative Xochitl Hinojosa, who served as the spokesperson for the Department of Justice in the Biden administration, earlier this year offered a blunt assessment of Becerra’s performance.
“He was not effective in government, and I think that a lot of people in the Biden administration are talking about this because they realize that he was not an effective HHS secretary,” Hinojosa said on CNN in May.
While other members of the Biden administration have defended Becerra’s performance, his time at the helm highlighted an issue that even allies concede has bedeviled Becerra in the past, his tendency to sometimes recede into the background.
Loretta Sanchez, a former Democratic congresswoman from Orange County who credits Becerra with encouraging her to run for Congress, put it simply.
“Will Xavier be bold?” she said. “I hope he takes those bold moves, because California needs it.”
