The Sunrise Movement is leaning into its roots in climate activism with a congressional endorsement of Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and one of the architects of the landmark environmental legislation known as the Green New Deal.
The youth climate group shared its endorsement with The Intercept with early voting underway in California and less than a week to go before primary day. Chakrabarti will face off against State Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Connie Chan, both Democrats, in a heavily contested primary race to succeed Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in California’s 11th Congressional District.
“For years, the Sunrise Movement has shown us the power that people like all of us have when we organize strategically,” Chakrabarti wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “Together with Sunrise, we pushed Washington to respond to the needs of working people when most Democrats (and of course Republicans) refused to do so. We were able to change political reality in Washington, and we’ll do it again.”
Chakrabarti rose to national prominence after co-founding Justice Democrats in 2017 alongside other former presidential campaign staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to support progressive primary challengers to establishment Democrats. He has been a thorn in the side of moderate Democrats ever since.
Chakrabarti became Ocasio-Cortez’s first chief of staff after her upset victory over longtime incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018, a win that helped put Justice Democrats on the map and ushered in the first members of the progressive Squad in Congress. In Ocasio-Cortez’s office, he worked with the Sunrise Movement and other stakeholders to draft the Green New Deal. Elements of the bill were later included in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, which invested $369 billion in fighting climate change, but ultimately fell short of progressives’ loftiest ambitions.
Chakrabarti has long espoused progressive views and is expected to vote with Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Squad if elected to Congress. But despite his prominent role in Ocasio-Cortez’s early rise, his former boss has not endorsed Chakrabarti, driving speculation of a rift, which the candidate has continuously denied. Progressive Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., have endorsed Chakrabarti, as has former Rep. Jamal Bowman, D-N.Y. Justice Democrats, the group he helped found, is also backing his campaign.
After leaving Ocasio-Cortez’s office, Chakrabarti went on to lead New Consensus, a progressive environmental policy think tank that recently released the Mission for America, which he bills as a “successor” to the Green New Deal. The policy proposal seeks to “rapidly slash emissions” and “build a new, clean economy” to protect workers against the threat of job cuts driven by the rise of artificial intelligence.
“We’re proud to endorse Saikat Chakrabarti. Saikat has spent years fighting for the Green New Deal, taking on corporate power, and delivering for working people, not billionaires and special interests,” wrote Aru Shiney-Ajay, Executive Director of the Sunrise Movement, in a statement to the Intercept.
The climate justice group pivoted this cycle to emphasize its explicit opposition to President Donald Trump and presented Chakrabarti as a candidate “ready to fight back with courage and vision,” Shiney-Ajay added. “We know he’ll be instrumental in helping build a Democratic Party that is unapologetically for working people, serious about confronting the climate crisis, and ready to take on authoritarianism head-on.”
Chakrabarti has relished his role as an opponent of entrenched political power. He has long antagonized the 20-term congresswoman he seeks to replace, slamming her in a series of 2019 tweets after then-House Speaker Pelosi penned an op-ed critical of AOC, at the time Chakrabarti’s boss. (The two congresswomen, who hold divergent ideologies but are both known for their political savvy, have built bridges in the years since.)
While running for her district, Chakrabarti has continued to provoke Pelosi, calling her out in a recent video after she endorsed Chan against him. He launched his campaign to challenge the former Speaker before she announced her retirement in November, unlike his two opponents, who jumped in once it was clear they’d be competing for an open seat.
“My goal, honestly, is to replace a huge part of the Democrat establishment,” Chakrabarti said in November during an episode of the Intercept Briefing. “I’m calling for primaries all across the country. … I think we actually have to get in there and be in a position of power where we can do all that, so it’s not going to be this constant compromising with the establishment, trying to figure out how we can push.”
Politics is Chakrabarti’s second act. The tech entrepreneur made millions as a founding engineer of the payment process platform Stripe.
But in the tech-dominated district where Pelosi won re-election with 81 percent of the vote last cycle, Chakrabarti faces an uphill battle. Wiener, a state senator who has the support of the California Democratic Party, has a clear lead over both Chan and Chakrabarti, who appear to be neck and neck for second place. The top two candidates next Tuesday will advance to the general election in November.
“I believe we can improve the material lives of working people and build a future we all actually want to live in,” Chakrabarti told The Intercept. “I’m grateful to the Sunrise Movement for joining our coalition, and I look forward to working with them again in Congress.”
