Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's lack of an endorsement for her former chief of staff in the San Francisco House race was already playing an outsized role in this primary season, but now we get a bit more to the story.

While Saikat Chakrabarti has been quick to drop AOC's name on his TV spots and during door-knocking sessions, AOC has not been so quick to offer an endorsement to her onetime chief of staff and campaign manager. And this has raised questions about what the status of their relationship is, exactly.

And while Chakrabarti may indeed still have a friendly relationship with AOC, as he says he does, he may have pissed off too many of the wrong people in Congress during his brief stint as her chief of staff in 2019. As the Chronicle reports today, citing people who would know, including House Speaker Emerita's then-chief of staff, Drew Hammill, Chakrabarti was likely fired from AOC's staff for mouthing off on Twitter too much about their more moderate Democratic colleagues in the House — thus his tenure in that role was only about seven months long.

"[As a staffer] you are supposed to be seen and not heard," Hammill tells the Chronicle. "If other members don’t want to work with your chief of staff, that’s a problem."

Hammill would not confirm or deny whether Pelosi herself had suggested to AOC that Chakrabarti needed to go, but Hammill tells the Chronicle that "it was made very clear to AOC a number of different ways that there is behavior here that is not in your interest," implying that AOC was pressured to fire Chakrabarti.

That would be the implication of this August 2019 article from The Hill, in which Rep. Ocacio-Cortez sought to distance herself from Chakrabarti and specifically one tweet of his from a month earlier. At the time, July 2019, Pelosi was squabbling with some of the younger progressives in her party, including the so-called "Squad," who had recently joined the House and was attempting to get them in line, and Chakrabarti posted a since-deleted tweet that only inflamed matters.

In it, he accused the Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions of being segregationists, or even racists. "They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s," he wrote.

Pelosi held a closed-door meeting shortly after the tweet was posted, in order to scold members, including AOC, for airing their inter-party grievances publicly instead of bringing their concerns to her, per The Hill. And in a public statement Pelosi even addressed the Chakrabarti tweet, saying, "Our members took offense at that. I addressed that."

After Chakrabarti departed her office, Ocasio-Cortez gave an interview to the New York Daily News, saying of the tweet, "I think it was divisive. I believe in criticizing stances, but I don’t believe in specifically targeting members."

Still, Ocasio-Cortez denied at the time that the tweet was the reason for Chakrabarti's departure, saying, "We had been discussing this transition before that whole incident happened."

The timing certainly points to the tweet being a pretty big problem, and a sort of straw that broke the camel's back for Speaker Pelosi.

Chakrabarti also tells the Chronicle this week that he wasn't fired, and it was a "planned departure." "I felt that the stuff I was good at doing — setting up her office, the Green New Deal stuff — was accomplished," he says.

Nevertheless, an endorsement from Pelosi seems fairly unlikely at this point, and the Chronicle notes that no other sitting member of Congress has offered their endorsement so far either.

In the most recent poll, state Senator Scott Wiener held a solid lead with 44% of the vote, and Chakrabarti had 26%, with challenger Connie Chan a distant third at 11%.

The primary is on June 2, and ballots have already started being mailed out.

Previously: AOC Declines to Endorse Former Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti In Awkward Video