The Race to Replace Nancy Pelosi Could Be All About Tech Regulation

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s retirement will open up a congressional seat that technology consumer advocacy groups hope will lead to more aggressive regulation of the industry.

The San Francisco-area seat is at the heart of the tech industry. And while Democrats including Pelosi have long taken a posture friendly toward tech growth, many of the groups closely tracking the election are now seeing a growing bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and candidates who are skeptical of the concentration of power in Silicon Valley and see an opportunity to elect a strong advocate for regulation to Congress.

“Any opening in Congress is an opportunity for new and exciting things, including tech regulation, especially when it comes from Northern California,” Sacha Haworth, executive director of Tech Oversight Project, told NOTUS.

“When you put this in context of like, of the generational change, or the new class of politicians who are looking into running for office, who are running for office, who are perhaps in office right now, is when you’re seeing leaders starting to speak up against the abuses of big tech,” Haworth said.

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For decades, Pelosi, as a leader of the Democratic Party, represented Northern California as social media and artificial intelligence grew astronomically. And while many tech regulation advocates agree that she is a progressive champion in many policy areas, they argue that she missed out on regulating the technology industry by failing to pass social media regulation and slow-rolling antitrust bills when Democrats were in power.

J.B. Branch, a tech accountability advocate for Public Citizen, said that during her tenure, Pelosi played a moderating role in managing both a party that was consistently skeptical of the growing powers of big tech and building a coalition with donors in the tech sector.

“She played, I would say, a fine balancing act between keeping her members happy with regulation, like calls for regulation, while also keeping her constituents happy by basically trying to pursue as light a touch of regulation as possible,” Branch said.

“The problem with that specific district is that it’s a district in big tech’s back yard. The former speaker laid out a kind of a playbook that might be able to be pursued by the next elected official of that area. Being more moderate in the tech regulatory space, but then being as progressive as they can be in other areas,” he added.

Pelosi’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

From eliminating content moderation policies that Republicans had criticized in the past to contributing to President Donald Trump’s presidential ballroom, the industry’s coziness with Trump has alienated the progressive base of the Bay Area, and Pelosi’s approach to the tech industry is a vestige of the past of the Democratic Party, many advocates for tech regulation say.

“Pelosi is out of touch. Regulating AI and regulating the tech industry in general is a very popular enterprise right now,” David Evan Harris, a tech policy scholar at the University of California, Berkeley who is active in advocacy groups like the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, told NOTUS.

“The thing that maybe is hard to see for people in Washington, D.C., is the extreme disconnect that has emerged over the past year between people who work in the tech industry and tech CEOs,” Harris said. “Most of the people who work in the tech industry are very politically progressive and most have political views about regulation of the tech industry that are broadly supportive.”

At least one candidate who is running to replace Pelosi is already positioning himself accordingly.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener, one of the main candidates in the race, has become a champion of tech regulation for many in the space.

Wiener, who has been in the state Legislature since 2016, has authored several such measures in California, including a first-of-its-kind state law that creates public disclosure requirements for the training of AI models and protection for whistleblowers in California.

His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Last year, Pelosi opposed a version of Wiener’s bill that AI developers like OpenAI said went too far into regulating the nascent technology’s development. The bill was eventually vetoed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which outraged many advocates concerned by the possible risks of AI.

Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who in the past worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been a critic of the tech industry and is also running for the seat — although his stances on the issue remain unclear. While he has spoken against the concentration of power in Silicon Valley and came out in support of antitrust enforcement, his tech regulation policies are not getting prime placement in his campaign. Chakrabarti did not respond to a request for comment.

And while across the country there are more and more congressional candidates who are making tech regulation a central part of their campaign platforms, putting openly pro-regulation candidates in office might be more of a challenge, Chris MacKenzie, spokesperson for Americans for Responsible Innovation, a Washington-based group advocating for proactive regulation of AI and other emerging technologies, told NOTUS.

“It’s a battle, I absolutely think it’s a battle. There’s opportunity here but there’s also a lot of risk going to the next election. Big Tech has announced that they’re launching several $100 million super PACs. So we’re up against very big money,” MacKenzie said, referring to super PACs like Leading the Future, which recently pledged $100 million going into the midterm elections to elect candidates who are friendly to AI.

“We have a winning message about the harms people are facing from unregulated technologies,” MacKenzie continued. “We’re also up against a big war chest.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to better reflect David Evan Harris’ role.