| Nancy Pelosi | |
| Term Start1: | January 3, 2019 |
| Term End1: | January 3, 2023 |
| Predecessor1: | Paul Ryan |
| Successor1: | Kevin McCarthy |
| Term Start2: | January 4, 2007 |
| Term End2: | January 3, 2011 |
| Predecessor2: | Dennis Hastert |
| Successor2: | John Boehner |
| Office3: | House Minority Leader |
| 1Blankname3: | Whip |
| 1Namedata3: | Steny Hoyer |
| Term Start3: | January 3, 2011 |
| Term End3: | January 3, 2019 |
| Predecessor3: | John Boehner |
| Successor3: | Kevin McCarthy |
| 1Blankname4: | Whip |
| 1Namedata4: | Steny Hoyer |
| Term Start4: | January 3, 2003 |
| Term End4: | January 3, 2007 |
| Predecessor4: | Dick Gephardt |
| Successor4: | John Boehner |
| Office5: | Leader of the House Democratic Caucus |
| Term Start5: | January 3, 2003 |
| Term End5: | January 3, 2023 |
| Deputy5: | Steny Hoyer |
| Predecessor5: | Dick Gephardt |
| Successor5: | Hakeem Jeffries |
| Office6: | House Minority Whip |
| Leader6: | Dick Gephardt |
| Term Start6: | January 15, 2002 |
| Term End6: | January 3, 2003 |
| Predecessor6: | David Bonior |
| Successor6: | Steny Hoyer |
| Office7: | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California |
| Term Start7: | June 2, 1987 |
| Predecessor7: | Sala Burton |
| Office8: | Chair of the California Democratic Party |
| Term Start8: | February 27, 1981 |
| Term End8: | April 3, 1983 |
| Predecessor8: | Richard J. O'Neill |
| Successor8: | Peter Kelly |
| Awards: | Presidential Medal of Freedom (2024) |
| Birth Name: | Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro |
| Birth Date: | 26 March 1940 |
| Birth Place: | Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Residence: | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Party: | Democratic |
| Children: | 5, including Christine and Alexandra |
| Father: | Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. |
| Relatives: | Thomas D'Alesandro III (brother) |
| Education: | Trinity College, Washington (BA) |
| Signature: | Nancy Pelosi Signature.svg |
| Signature Alt: | Cursive signature in ink |
Nancy Patricia Pelosi (; ; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who served as the 52nd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first woman elected as U.S. House Speaker and the first woman to lead a major political party in either chamber of Congress, leading the House Democrats from 2003 to 2023. A member of the House since 1987, Pelosi currently represents, which includes most of San Francisco. She is the dean of California's congressional delegation.
Pelosi was born and raised in Baltimore, and is the daughter of mayor and congressman Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. She graduated from Trinity College, Washington, in 1962 and married businessman Paul Pelosi the next year; the two had met while both were students. They moved to New York City before settling down in San Francisco with their children. Focused on raising her family, Pelosi stepped into politics as a volunteer for the Democratic Party in the 1960s. After years of party work, rising to chair the state party, she was first elected to Congress in a 1987 special election and is now in her 19th term; she is the longest-serving member of California's Congressional delegation. Pelosi steadily rose through the ranks of the House Democratic Caucus to be elected House minority whip in 2001[1] and elevated to House minority leader a year later,[2] becoming the first woman to hold each of those positions in either chamber of Congress.
In the 2006 midterm elections, Pelosi led the Democrats to a majority in the House for the first time in 12 years and was subsequently elected Speaker, becoming the first woman to hold the office.[3] Until Kamala Harris became vice president in 2021, Pelosi was the highest-ranking woman in the presidential line of succession in U.S. history, as the speaker of the House is second in the line of succession. During her first speakership, Pelosi was a major opponent of the Iraq War as well as the Bush administration's attempts to partially privatize Social Security. She participated in the passage of the Obama administration's landmark bills, including the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the 2010 Tax Relief Act. Pelosi lost the speakership after the Republican Party retook the majority in the 2010 midterm elections, but she retained her role as leader of the House Democrats and became House minority leader for a second time.
In the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats regained majority control of the House, and Pelosi was again elected Speaker, becoming the first former speaker to reclaim the gavel since Sam Rayburn in 1955. During her second speakership, the House twice impeached President Donald Trump, first in December 2019 and again in January 2021; the Senate acquitted Trump both times. She participated in the passage of the Biden administration's landmark bills, including the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and the Respect for Marriage Act. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans narrowly regained control of the House for the new Congress, ending her tenure as speaker. She subsequently retired as House Democratic leader. On November 29, 2022, the Steering and Policy Committee of the House Democratic Caucus named Pelosi "Speaker Emerita".
Nancy Pelosi was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to an Italian-American family. She was the only daughter and the youngest of six children of Annunciata M. "Nancy" D'Alesandro (née Lombardi)[4] and Thomas D'Alesandro Jr.[5] Her mother was born in Fornelli, Isernia, Molise, in Southern Italy, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1912;[6] her father traced his Italian ancestry to Genoa, Venice and Abruzzo. When Pelosi was born, her father was a Democratic congressman from Maryland. He became Baltimore mayor seven years later.[7] [8] Pelosi's mother was also active in politics, organizing Democratic women and teaching her daughter political skills.[9] Pelosi's brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also a Democrat, was elected Baltimore City Council president and later served as mayor from 1967 to 1971.
Pelosi helped her father at his campaign events, and she attended President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address in January 1961.
In 1958, Pelosi graduated from the Institute of Notre Dame, an all-girls Catholic high school in Baltimore. In 1962, she graduated from Trinity College (now Trinity Washington University) in Washington, D.C., with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.[10] Pelosi interned for Senator Daniel Brewster (D-Maryland) in the 1960s alongside future House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.[11]
After moving to San Francisco, Pelosi became friends with 5th district congressman Phillip Burton and began working her way up in Democratic politics.[12] In 1976, she was elected as a Democratic National Committee member from California, a position she would hold until 1996.[13] She was elected as party chair for Northern California in 1977, and four years later was selected to head the California Democratic Party, which she led until 1983. Subsequently, Pelosi served as the San Francisco Democratic National Convention Host Committee chairwoman in 1984, and then as Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee finance chair from 1985 to 1986.[14]
Phillip Burton died in 1983 and his wife, Sala Burton, won a special election to fill the remainder of her husband's congressional term. She was then reelected to two more terms in her own right. Burton became ill with cancer in late 1986 and decided not to run for reelection in 1988. She wanted Pelosi to succeed her, guaranteeing Pelosi the support of the Burtons' contacts.[15] Burton died on February 1, 1987, one month after being sworn in for a second full term. Pelosi won the special election to succeed her, defeating Democratic San Francisco supervisor Harry Britt on April 7, 1987, and Republican Harriet Ross in a June 2 runoff. Pelosi took office a week later.[16] [17] In the primary, Britt, a gay man, had courted San Francisco's sizable homosexual population by arguing that he would be better than Pelosi at addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic.[18] Pelosi had held many campaign events, amassed a large number of campaign volunteers, and fundraised prolifically for her campaign.[19]
Pelosi has continued to represent approximately the same area of San Francisco for her entire congressional career, despite the boundaries shifting marginally in decennial post-reapportionment redistrictings. This area has been represented in the House by Democrats uninterruptedly since 1949, and is strongly Democratic-leaning (as of 2006, 13% of registered voters in the boundaries of Pelosi's district were Republican). It has not seen a serious Republican congressional contender since the early 1960s. Pelosi has been reelected to the House 18 times[20] without any substantive opposition. Unlike in her 1987 campaign, Pelosi has not participated in candidates' debates in her reelection campaigns. In her first seven reelection campaigns (from 1988 through 2004), she won an average of 80% of the vote.[21]
At the time that Pelosi entered office, there were only 23 women in the House.
When Pelosi entered office, the AIDS epidemic was at a dire point.[22] San Francisco was greatly affected; its large population of gay men was the epidemic's initial epicenter.[23] Beginning in her first term, Pelosi became a prominent congressional advocate on behalf of those impacted by HIV/AIDS.[22] Shortly after she took office, she hired a gay man as her congressional office's director of AIDS policy. In her first floor speech, Pelosi promised that she would be an advocate in the fight against what she called "the crisis of AIDS." With great stigma around the subject, some in her party privately chastised her for publicly associating herself with it.[18] Pelosi co-authored the Ryan White CARE Act, which allocated funding dedicated to providing treatment and services for those impacted by HIV/AIDS.[22] President George H. W. Bush signed the bill into law in December 1990.[24]
In March 1988, Pelosi voted for the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (as well as to override President Ronald Reagan's veto).[25] [26] [27]
Pelosi helped shape the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, working with California Senator Dianne Feinstein and New York Congressman Chuck Schumer. It became law in 1994.[19] Pelosi also held chairs on important committees, such as the House Appropriations Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.[19]
In 2001, Pelosi was elected the House minority whip, second-in-command to Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. She was the first woman in U.S. history to hold that post.[28] Pelosi defeated John Lewis and Steny Hoyer for the position. A strong fundraiser, she used campaign contributions to help persuade other members of Congress to support her candidacy.
In 2002, Pelosi opposed the Iraq Resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq, which passed the House on a 296–133 vote.[29] [30] She said, "unilateral use of force without first exhausting every diplomatic remedy and other remedies and making a case to the American people will be harmful to our war on terrorism."[31]
In November 2002, after Gephardt resigned as House minority leader to seek the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election, Pelosi was elected to replace him, becoming the first woman to lead a major party in either chamber of Congress.[32] In the campaign to succeed Gephardt as the House Democratic Caucus's leader, Pelosi was challenged by Harold Ford Jr. and Marcy Kaptur. Kaptur withdrew her candidacy for the position before the November 15, 2002, caucus vote, and Pelosi defeated Ford 117–29 in the closed-door vote of caucus members.[33] Critics of Pelosi characterized her as too liberal to be a successful House leader.[34] [35]
As minority leader, Pelosi sharply criticized the handling of the Iraq War by President Bush and his administration, in 2004 saying Bush had demonstrated areas of "incompetence".[36]
In a relative surprise, the Democratic Party lost three seats in the 2004 House elections, which coincided with Bush's reelection as president.[37] Focused on retaking the House majority in 2006, in her second term as minority leader Pelosi worked to criticize the Bush administration more effectively and to contrast the Democratic Party with it.[37] As part of this, Pelosi voiced even harsher criticism of Bush's handling of the Iraq War.[38] In November 2005, prominent congressional Democrat John Murtha proposed that the U.S. begin a withdrawal of troops from Iraq at the "earliest predictable date". Pelosi initially declined to commit to supporting Murtha's proposal.[39] Speaker Dennis Hastert soon brought to the floor a vote on a non-binding resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops, seeking to trap Democrats into taking a more radical stance. Pelosi led Democrats in voting against the resolution, which failed in a 403–3 floor vote.[40] Roughly two weeks later, Pelosi held a press conference in which she endorsed Murtha's proposal.[41] Some critics believed that Pelosi's support for a troop withdrawal would prevent the Democrats from winning a House majority in the 2006 elections.[38]
During her time as minority leader, Pelosi was not well known to much of the American public. Before the 2006 elections, Republicans made a concerted effort to taint public perception of her, running advertisements assailing her. Advertisements demonizing Pelosi became a routine part of Republican advertising in subsequent elections.[42] For instance, during the 2022 election cycle, Republicans ran more than $50 million in ads that negatively characterized or invoked Pelosi, and in the 2010 cycle, they spent more than $65 million on such ads.[42] [43]
In the 2006 elections, the Democrats took control of the House, picking up 30 seats,[44] the party's largest House seat gain since the 1974 elections held in the wake of the Watergate scandal.[38] The party's House majority meant that as the party's incumbent House leader, Pelosi was widely expected to become speaker in the next Congress.[45] [46] On November 16, 2006, the Democratic caucus unanimously nominated her for speaker.[47]
Pelosi supported her longtime friend John Murtha for House majority leader, the second-ranking post in the House. His competitor was House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who had been Pelosi's second-in-command since 2003.[48] Hoyer was elected House majority leader over Murtha by a margin of 149–86.[49]
On January 4, 2007, Pelosi defeated Republican John Boehner of Ohio, 233 votes to 202, in the election for speaker of the House.[50] [51] [52]
Rahm Emanuel, the incoming chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, nominated Pelosi, and her longtime friend John Dingell swore her in, as the dean of the House of Representatives traditionally does.[53] [54]
Pelosi was the first woman, the first Californian, and the first Italian-American to hold the speakership. She was also the second speaker from a state west of the Rocky Mountains. The first was Washington's Tom Foley, the last Democrat to hold the post before Pelosi.
During her speech, she discussed the historical importance of being the first woman to hold the position of Speaker:
She also said Iraq was the major issue facing the 110th Congress while incorporating some Democratic Party beliefs:
As speaker, Pelosi remained the leader of the House Democrats, as the speaker is considered the leader of the majority caucus. But by tradition, she did not normally participate in debate and almost never voted on the floor, though she had the right to do so as a member of the House. She was also not a member of any House committees, also in keeping with tradition.
Pelosi was reelected speaker in 2009.
During and after her first tenure as speaker, Pelosi was widely characterized as a polarizing political figure. Republican candidates often associated their Democratic opponents with her.[55] [56] Pelosi became the focus of heavy disdain by "mainstream" Republicans and Tea Party Republicans alike, as well as from the left.[57]
As they had in 2006, Republicans continued to run advertisements that demonized Pelosi.[58] Before the 2010 House elections, the Republican National Committee prominently used a "Fire Pelosi" slogan in its efforts to recapture the House majority.[59] [60] This slogan was rolled out hours after the House passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[61] Republicans spent $65 million ahead of the 2010 elections on anti-Pelosi advertisements.[43] Pelosi has continued to be a fixture of Republican attack.[62] Ads demonizing her have been credited with fostering intense right-wing ire toward her,[63] and have been seen as one of the top factors in her unpopularity with the public.
Shortly after being reelected in 2004, President Bush claimed a mandate for an ambitious second-term agenda and proposed reforming Social Security by allowing workers to redirect a portion of their Social Security withholding into stock and bond investments.[64] Pelosi strongly opposed the plan, saying there was no crisis, and as minority leader she imposed intense party discipline on her caucus, leading them to near-unanimous opposition to the proposal, which was defeated.[65]
In the wake of Bush's 2004 reelection, several leading House Democrats believed they should pursue impeachment proceedings against him, asserting that he had misled Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and violated Americans' civil liberties by authorizing warrantless wiretaps.
In May 2006, with an eye on the upcoming midterm elections—which offered the possibility of Democrats taking back control of the House for the first time since 1994—Pelosi told colleagues that, while the Democrats would conduct vigorous oversight of Bush administration policy, an impeachment investigation was "off the table". A week earlier, she had told The Washington Post that although Democrats would not set out to impeach Bush, "you never know where" investigations might lead.[66]
After becoming speaker in 2007, Pelosi held firm against impeachment, notwithstanding strong support for it among her constituents. In the 2008 election, she withstood a challenge for her seat by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who ran as an independent primarily because of Pelosi's refusal to pursue impeachment.[67]
See main article: 100-Hour Plan.
Before the midterm elections, Pelosi announced that if Democrats gained a House majority, they would push through most of their agenda during the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress.[68] [69]
The "first hundred hours" was a play on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise for quick action to combat the Great Depression during his "first hundred days" in office. Newt Gingrich, who became speaker of the House in 1995, had a similar 100-day agenda to implement his Contract with America.
See main article: Iraq War troop surge of 2007.
On January 5, 2007, reacting to suggestions from Bush's confidants that he would increase troop levels in Iraq (which he announced in a speech a few days later), Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid condemned the plan. They sent Bush a letter reading:
Pelosi was named Permanent Chair of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.[70]
Pelosi has been credited for spearheading Obama's health care law, the Affordable Care Act,[71] when it seemed doomed to defeat. After Republican Scott Brown won Democrat Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat in the January 2010 Massachusetts special election, costing Democrats their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority, Obama agreed with his then chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's idea to do smaller initiatives that could pass easily. But Pelosi dismissed Obama's compunction, mocking his scaled-back ideas as "kiddie care".[72] After convincing him that this was their only shot at health care reform because of the large Democratic majorities in Congress, she rallied her caucus as she began an "unbelievable marathon" of a two-month session to craft the bill, which passed the House 219–212. In Obama's remarks before signing the bill into law, he called Pelosi "one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had."[73] [74]
By early 2010, analysts were assessing Pelosi as possibly the most powerful woman in U.S. history and among the most powerful speakers of the previous 100 years.[75] In March 2010, Mark Shields wrote,