If former Indian American Silicon Valley engineer Saikat Chakrabarti, running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress, has his way he would turn Donald Trump’s gilded White House ballroom into the “Smithsonian Museum on Corruption and Authoritarianism.”
Chakrabarti, 39, who previously served as the chief of staff to congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is among the Democrats vying for former Speaker Pelosi’s long-held San Francisco seat. Pelosi, 85, has said she will not seek re-election.
If elected next year, Chakrabarti says he would introduce legislation to fill the 90,000 sq. ft. structure, to be built in place of the now-demolished East Wing, with exhibits dedicated to the “modern dangers posed by the current wannabe dictator.”
“There’s going to have to be this moment of reckoning in the whole country after this Trump administration where we actually call out everything that just happened,” he told the Guardian previewing the proposal. “We need to teach the history about how we got there and how we don’t get there again.”
Since launching his campaign in February, Chakrabarti has positioned himself as a progressive disruptor, aiming to tap into the bubbling discontent with the party’s establishment.
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Chakrabarti, the son of immigrants from India, was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He moved to San Francisco after college “like so many others, with dreams of making a difference and fell in love with our city.”
On the campaign trail, he has emphasized his tech background – a founding engineer at the $100 billion payments processing company Stripe – as both a credential and a lens for tackling corruption.
Drawing on his Silicon Valley experience and tech fluency, he says he would be well-equipped as a member of Congress to hold powerful tech leaders accountable, particularly those with business before the government.
“I used to work as a programmer and so I actually have knowledge here,” he told the Guardian. “That means when a tech CEO comes in front of me at a congressional hearing and they try to bullshit me, I’ll call their BS because I know that shit.”
Chakrabarti argues that corruption in Washington, or the appearance of it, is a systemic problem facing both parties.
“When you have a situation where people believe their politicians are corrupt, people believe the institutions are corrupt and there’s a complete failure of faith in our institutions, I think that is what allows someone like Donald Trump to get elected, saying he’s going to ‘drain the swamp’,” Chakrabarti was quoted as saying.
“And so I think we have to reclaim the Democratic party as being a party that stands against corruption, especially in the face of a president who is probably the most corrupt president in our history, and certainly in my lifetime.”
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Restoring faith in U.S. democracy, Chakrabarti says, requires political leaders willing to wage a sustained campaign against corruption.
If elected, Chakrabarti has vowed to file a “discharge petition” on his first day in office to force a House vote on a stock trading ban, a proposal that is broadly popular with voters and has gained bipartisan traction in recent years.
He also calls for a publicly financed election system to democratize the process of running for office and to “end the role of big money in politics.”
Chakrabarti is self-funding his campaign and has pledged to reject corporate and lobbyist Pac money.
“That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s important to have primary challenges all around the country where you have non-corporate-backed Democrats who will make this an issue,” he said, encouraging more candidates to run on an anti-corruption platform.
“For Democrats to have the moral standing on this issue going in 2028, we’ve got to call it out everywhere.”