Shahid Buttar

Shahid Buttar (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent California's 11th Congressional District. He lost in the primary on June 7, 2022.

Buttar completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Shahid Buttar was born in London, England. Buttar earned a B.A. from Loyola University Chicago and a J.D. from Stanford University Law School in 2003. His career experience includes working as a legal advocate and the director of grassroots advocacy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[1]^[2]^[3] He is affiliated with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (now Defending Rights and Dissent), Muslim Advocates, and the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy.^[4]

Elections

2022

General election

General election for U.S. House California District 11

Incumbent Nancy Pelosi defeated John Dennis in the general election for U.S. House California District 11 on November 8, 2022.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Nancy Pelosi (D)	84.0	220,848
	John Dennis (R)	16.0	42,217

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 263,065
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 11

The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House California District 11 on June 7, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Nancy Pelosi (D)	71.7	133,798
✔		John Dennis (R)	10.7	20,054
		Shahid Buttar (D)	10.4	19,471
	Submit photo	Eve Del Castello (R)	3.9	7,319
		Jeffrey Phillips (D)	1.9	3,595
		Bianca Von Krieg (D)	1.3	2,499

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 186,736
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Endorsements

To view Buttar's endorsements in the 2022 election, please click here.

2020

General election

General election for U.S. House California District 12

Incumbent Nancy Pelosi defeated Shahid Buttar in the general election for U.S. House California District 12 on November 3, 2020.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Nancy Pelosi (D)	77.6	281,776
	Shahid Buttar (D)	22.4	81,174

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 362,950
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 12

The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House California District 12 on March 3, 2020.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Nancy Pelosi (D)	74.0	190,590
✔	Shahid Buttar (D)	13.0	33,344
	John Dennis (R)	7.7	19,883
	Tom Gallagher (D)	2.0	5,094
	DeAnna Lorraine (R)	1.8	4,635
	Agatha Bacelar (D)	1.5	3,890

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 257,436
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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2018

See also: California's 12th Congressional District election, 2018

General election

General election for U.S. House California District 12

Incumbent Nancy Pelosi defeated Lisa Remmer in the general election for U.S. House California District 12 on November 6, 2018.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Nancy Pelosi (D)	86.8	275,292
	Lisa Remmer (R)	13.2	41,780

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 317,072
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 12

The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House California District 12 on June 5, 2018.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Nancy Pelosi (D)	68.5	141,365
✔		Lisa Remmer (R)	9.1	18,771
		Shahid Buttar (D)	8.5	17,597
		Stephen Jaffe (D)	5.9	12,114
		Ryan Khojasteh (D)	4.6	9,498
		Barry Hermanson (G)	2.0	4,217
	Submit photo	Michael Goldstein (Independent)	1.4	2,820

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified.	Total votes: 206,382
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Chase Demasi (R)

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

Shahid Buttar completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Buttar's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Shahid has been building social movements and speaking truth to power for two decades. He's an immigrant of Pakistani descent from the United Kingdom and the youngest of four children who grew up in the midwest. Since graduating from Stanford Law School in 2003, Shahid has worked in both San Francisco and Washington as a legal advocate, a non-profit leader, a grassroots organizer, and a poet & musician.

His wide-ranging work reflects a commitment to intersectional feminism, international human rights, and the future we all share. His passions have long aligned around a common purpose: building the movement to put human rights and human needs before corporate profits.

An early advocate for marriage equality for same-sex couples and a national leader in the movement to end warrantless government surveillance, Shahid also built a national grassroots network for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the organization’s Director of Grassroots Advocacy.

In addition to LGBTQ rights, privacy, and the right to encryption, Shahid’s work has also advanced immigrant rights, campaign finance reform, government transparency, international human rights, and police accountability. His writing has explored issues from the right-wing attack on reproductive freedom to the erosion of voting rights, and from effective counter-terrorism strategies to examples of counter-cultural activism promoting progressive politics at the intersection of art and organizing.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

The corporate corruption of Congress is outrageously bipartisan, has infected every area of federal policy, and will run the future off a climate cliff unless we force change from the bottom up.
San Francisco’s voice in Congress is a poster child of corporate corruption. The overdue controversy over insider trading is just one example.
Human rights to healthcare and climate justice are more important than Wall Street profits. A Congress of millionaires is not poised to make the changes we need.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Establishing human rights to all basic human needs, including healthcare and housing.

Securing climate justice, including not only a Green New Deal but also nationalizing the fossil fuel sector.
Checking and balancing right wing courts by ending judicial life tenure to force turnover on the bench.
Restoring freedom of conscience and association by ending mass surveillance

Restoring the right to trial in the face of predatory mass incarceration and industrialized slavery.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

Shirley Chisholm

Paul Wellstone
Russ Feingold

Cynthia McKinney

Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?

The People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn

Legacy of Ashes, by Tim Wiener

The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

Honesty

Vision
Integrity

Relentlessness

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

Represent the people of San Francisco and the United States.

Hold the executive and judicial branches accountable by checking and balancing them.
Investigate the executive branch to inform the policy process and the public.
Serve constituents who have discrete needs vis-a-vis the federal government.
Seek transparency in the face of executive secrecy.

Promote international human rights, and expose where bipartisan deference to Wall Street interests has abandoned human rights.

What legacy would you like to leave?

If successful in Congress, I will leave a legacy of human rights and government accountability, after long periods in which each of those values have effectively been in exile.

What is your favorite book? Why?

A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn is a historical tour de force. It explains the history of our country not only through accessible narratives, but particularly by centering the stories of people who endured the abuses of our empire from beneath its boots. It is vitally important to acknowledge reality in order to make effective policy. Too many legislators never bother learning our history, which leaves them incapable of putting current events in a meaningful context.

If you could be any fictional character, who would you want to be?

Zorro

What was the last song that got stuck in your head?

Move Any Mountain by the Shamen

What is something that has been a struggle in your life?

My family lost our home to foreclosure when I was in my teens, which forced me to delay my undergraduate education and stretch it out over the course of a decade while working full-time and attending college mostly at night. Today, 20 years after graduating from college, I remain indebted from my education.

My challenges with housing insecurity and funding my education forced me to learn early on what it means to struggle in our economy. Even after getting my degrees, having worked for non-profits since 2005, it remains challenging to survive in San Francisco, especially given the costs of housing.

What qualities does the U.S. House of Representatives possess that makes it unique as an institution?

All measures to spend federal resources must originate in the House. That makes it a crucial institution in the struggle to, for instance, dismantle America's imperial military-industrial complex that continues to undermine human rights and environmental sustainability around the world.

The House also turns over more frequently than any other federal institution since the terms are only 2 years. The constitutional design aimed to render the House maximally responsive to the public, which is why the 35-year career of an incumbent who has never debated an opponent is so constitutionally offensive, beyond the political disrespect that her refusal to debate indicates for our city, the voters, and the democratic process.

Do you believe that it's beneficial for representatives to have previous experience in government or politics?

Of course it's beneficial for representatives to have experience outside politics! That's one reason why we aim to replace the incumbent, who has never worked a day in her life and whose only qualification for her election in 1987 was her substantial wealth.

In contrast, I've worked in finance, law, and service industries. My family lost our home to foreclosure when I was 16, and I've spent a decade funding my college education before going to law school and working for a series of non-profits over the past 15 years.

What do you perceive to be the United States’ greatest challenges as a nation over the next decade?

Our greatest challenges include the accelerating global climate catastrophe, alongside the continuing fleecing of America by a bipartisan military-industrial complex.

Uniquely among people in the world, Americans are accumulating staggering levels of medical debt, on top of already-unsustainable levels of student debt.

Meanwhile, our corrupt Congress of millionaires continues to pad their pockets through insider trading, while freezing the minimum wage since 2009 and repeatedly passing targeted tax breaks favoring the wealthy, including the incumbent in our race and her wealthy donors.

If you are not a current representative, are there certain committees that you would want to be a part of?

Judiciary

Intelligence

Foreign Affairs

Do you believe that two years is the right term length for representatives?

Yes. The House was designed to respond to the needs of the public. While many vectors entrench incumbents, frustrating that purpose, the relatively short term should not be adjusted.

What are your thoughts on term limits?

I published an article in 2010 explaining the need for judicial term limits as a matter of constitutional checks and balances to preserve the separation of powers. As it relates to legislative offices, I'm more concerned with whether an incumbent's ideas are stale or fresh than how long they've been in office.

Is there a particular representative, past or present, whom you want to model yourself after?

Shirley Chisholm

Keith Ellison

Cynthia McKinney

Both sitting representatives and candidates for office hear many personal stories from the residents of their district. Is there a story that you’ve heard that you found particularly touching, memorable, or impactful?

Constituents who have ended up homeless due to medical debt—like David C, or any of his neighbors in our city's many encampments—illustrate the profound inequity, corruption, and indefensibility of our system. It is appalling that, in the richest country in the history of humankind, half a million Americans are sleeping outside every night. We have tens of thousands of unhoused neighbors here in San Francisco alone.

Tell us your favorite joke.

My favorite new restaurant is called Karma.
It doesn't have a menu! You get whatever you deserve.

Do you believe that compromise is necessary or desirable for policymaking?

Compromise is necessary and part of the legislative process, but it's also more meaningful in the specific than the abstract. In other words, *who* compromises *what* is more important than the mere fact of compromise. And for decades, working families have been forced to compromise all of their goals in exchange for crumbs from Washington and Wall Street.

It is certainly neither desirable—nor even legitimate—for our Congress of millionaires to compromise the opportunity for the future to survive and thrive, in exchange for the support of corporate interests that would destroy humanity left to their own devices.

The Constitution says that all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House. What role would this power play in your priorities if elected?

I'm eager to raise taxes on corporations, wealthy tax filers and families, and particularly inherited estates.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

2020

Shahid Buttar completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Buttar's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Shahid embodies San Francisco's values, and has actively represented them in both San Francisco and Washington as a legal advocate, national non-profit leader, grassroots organizer, and movement musician. Through his work building movements for peace, immigrant rights, black lives, and the Occupy movement, Shahid dedicated his career to public service long before running for public office.

An early advocate for marriage equality for same-sex couples and a prolific organizer in the movement to end warrantless surveillance, Shahid most recently built a national grassroots network for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the organization's Director of Grassroots Advocacy. He has been building social movements and speaking truth to power for two decades, and graduated from Stanford Law School in 2003.

In addition to LGBTQ rights, privacy, and the right to encryption, Shahid's work has advanced immigrant rights, campaign finance reform, government transparency, international human rights, and police accountability. His writing has explored issues from the right-wing attack on reproductive freedom to the erosion of voting rights, and from effective counter-terrorism strategies to counter-cultural activism leveraging art & culture.

More information about his background and previous advocacy before running for Congress is available at https://shahidforchange.us/more-about-shahid-buttar-pelosis-leading-2020-challenger/

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

I'm here to defend democracy and prevent the consolidation of fascism
I'm here to end the bipartisan consensus on corporate rule
I'm here to defend human rights in crisis and expand them to include healthcare, housing, and food.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Shahid's writing for Huffington Post, Truthout, the Burning Man Journal, Tech Crunch, Project Censored, and academic legal journals addresses a wide range of issues, from foreign policy and counterterrorism to human rights and torture, from transparency and drone strikes to voting rights and tax law, from the crisis in executive power and corresponding threat to democracy to the bait-and-switch surrounding police body cameras.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

I look up to former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, for two particular reasons.

First, I admire his willingness to cast the sole dissenting vote against the passage of the USA Patriot Act under the Bush administration. It takes tremendous courage to do the right thing in the face of an opposing consensus, especially when the recognition of what "the right thing" requires may be elusive to so many others.

I also admire Senator Feingold for his work enacting the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2003, which aimed to take corporate soft money out of politics.

I've had opportunities to work on each of these issues, which has offered the chance to examine his legacy in two distinct arenas. We need more public servants like him.

Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?

I take my marching orders from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he exhorts his supposed allies to demonstrate solidarity with communities most impacted by oppressive institutions. Many centrists expect support from more radical and marginalized voices, failing to understand that, until they demonstrate solidarity with those communities, they have no reason to offer their support, or their votes, or their volunteer hours. Our campaign, and my work as an advocate and organizer long before running for Congress, are defined by solidarity.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

Even without a seat in Congress, I've done the job of representing San Francisco's voice in Washington before. When I organized the first impact litigation seeking to establish the right of consenting adults to marry the partner of their choice, I did that while working as a young lawyer in Washington, where I was organizing grassroots resistance to Bush's wars at night.

I listen actively. I empathetically strive to understand the experiences of my neighbors and would-be constituents. Over the course of my two decades advocating for civil rights and civil liberties, I've come to wield both history & theory to place current policy proposals in a broader context.

A big part of that understanding of history & theory relates to intersectional feminism, post-colonial liberation, and democratic Socialism.

What is your favorite book? Why?

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X," as told by Alex Haley. Haley's work is a masterpiece, and Malcolm's life was a remarkable reflection of resilience, adaptation, leadership, and loss. His later years, when he sought to cultivate international support for human rights within the U.S., remains an inspiring aspirational project with relevance well beyond Malcolm's own movement. For instance, the central strategy that he developed has guided much of the contemporary environmental movement.

Do you believe that it's beneficial for representatives to have previous experience in government or politics?

On the one hand, previous experience can lend itself to an understanding of the political process and the policymaking process. On the other hand, experience in a system steeped in corruption can also be stultifying.

Thankfully, I wield two decades of experience as a national advocate for civil rights and civil liberties, without the stain of having bent my vision to accommodate the limits of an era committed to abusing human rights.

What do you perceive to be the United States’ greatest challenges as a nation over the next decade?

I'm very deeply concerned about climate chaos, our military-industrial complex, and the intersection between them. In particular, I'm concerned about both accountability for the fraud, waste, and abuse that pervades military contracting and so-called intelligence activities, as well as the way we use those activities to facilitate corporate fossil fuel extraction. human rights abuses by the CIA, in particular, are a stain on our nations conscience and mark the sacrifices of veterans who fought and died to establish human rights in the week of the second world war. The co-optation of career Democrats (many of whom are demonstrably complicit in executive secrecy) by the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us to fear threatens our republic as much as a Kleptocrat in the White House.

If you are not a current representative, are there certain committees that you would want to be a part of?

I would be most excited to serve on the House Judiciary Committee, though I would also be eager to serve on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, or the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

External links

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Candidate

U.S. House California District 11

Personal

Footnotes

↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on January 15, 2020
↑ Shahid Buttar for Congress, "Shahid's History," accessed March 30, 2020
↑ Shahid Buttar for Congress, "Shahid's History," accessed May 18, 2022
↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on May 2, 2022

[show]

California's current delegation to the United States Congress

Senators

Alex Padilla (D)

Adam Schiff (D)

Representatives

District 1

Doug LaMalfa (R)

District 2

Jared Huffman (D)

District 3

Kevin Kiley (R)

District 4

Mike Thompson (D)

District 5

Tom McClintock (R)

District 6

Ami Bera (D)

District 7

Doris Matsui (D)

District 8

John Garamendi (D)

District 9

Josh Harder (D)

District 10

Mark DeSaulnier (D)

District 11

Nancy Pelosi (D)

District 12

Lateefah Simon (D)

District 13

Adam Gray (D)

District 14

Eric Swalwell (D)

District 15

Kevin Mullin (D)

District 16

Sam Liccardo (D)

District 17

Ro Khanna (D)

District 18

Zoe Lofgren (D)

District 19

Jimmy Panetta (D)

District 20

Vince Fong (R)

District 21

Jim Costa (D)

District 22

David Valadao (R)

District 23

Jay Obernolte (R)

District 24

Salud Carbajal (D)

District 25

Raul Ruiz (D)

District 26

Julia Brownley (D)

District 27

George Whitesides (D)

District 28

Judy Chu (D)

District 29

Luz Rivas (D)

District 30

Laura Friedman (D)

District 31

Gil Cisneros (D)

District 32

Brad Sherman (D)

District 33

Pete Aguilar (D)

District 34

Jimmy Gomez (D)

District 35

Norma Torres (D)

District 36

Ted Lieu (D)

District 37

Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D)

District 38

Linda Sánchez (D)

District 39

Mark Takano (D)

District 40

Young Kim (R)

District 41

Ken Calvert (R)

District 42

Robert Garcia (D)

District 43

Maxine Waters (D)

District 44

Nanette Barragán (D)

District 45

Derek Tran (D)

District 46

Lou Correa (D)

District 47

Dave Min (D)

District 48

Darrell Issa (R)

District 49

Mike Levin (D)

District 50

Scott Peters (D)

District 51

Sara Jacobs (D)

District 52

Juan Vargas (D)

Democratic Party (45)

Republican Party (9)

[bio-1] Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on January 15, 2020

[2] Shahid Buttar for Congress, "Shahid's History," accessed March 30, 2020

[bio3-3] Shahid Buttar for Congress, "Shahid's History," accessed May 18, 2022

[bio4-4] Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on May 2, 2022

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[2]

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Shahid Buttar

Contents

Biography

Elections

2022

General election

General election for U.S. House California District 11

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 11

Endorsements

2020

General election

General election for U.S. House California District 12

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 12

2018

General election

General election for U.S. House California District 12

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 12

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

2020

See also

External links

Footnotes

Information about voting

2025 Elections

2026 Elections

2024 Election analysis

Trending

Public Policy

Information for candidates

Get Engaged

Services

Additional analysis

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