Pelosi, Nancy

views updated

Pelosi, Nancy

The first woman to serve in a top leadership role in a major U.S. political party, California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (born 1940) became the Democratic Party's minority leader of the House of Representatives. Pelosi, known as an outspoken liberal, became a strong critic of the administration of President George W. Bush, but also strove to reunify dispirited Democrats while Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House.

Born as Nancy D'Alesandro in Baltimore, Pelosi inherited her family's political tradition. Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., was the ward boss for Baltimore's Little Italy ward, then a city councilman and five-term congressman before becoming Baltimore mayor from 1947 through 1959. Later, her brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also became Baltimore's mayor, from 1967 to 1971. The young woman met her future husband, Paul Pelosi, who came from San Francisco, California, while both were attending Trinity College in Washington, D.C. After they married, they moved to San Francisco and started a family. Her husband, who made a living as an investor, also had a family with political leanings, his brother winning a seat on the city's board of supervisors. The Pelosis had five children: Nancy Corinne, Christine, Jacqueline, Paul, and Alexandra. Only when the youngest, Alexandra, entered school did their mother become involved in local Democratic Party politics. Alexandra later became a documentary filmmaker who chronicled political campaigns. Starting at the grass roots with house parties and door-to-door campaigning, Pelosi eventually became Northern California party chairwoman. She became a close ally of a powerful Democratic politician, Congressman Phillip Burton, who represented San Francisco. In 1983, Burton died, and his wife, Sala, won a special election to finish his term in office. But when she was diagnosed with cancer, Sala Burton asked Pelosi to run for her seat. Pelosi won a special election in 1987 and was re-elected every two years after that from California's Eighth District.

Pelosi represents one of the country's most left-leaning Congressional districts, encompassing most of San Francisco. Reflecting the concerns of her constituency, which strongly favors gay rights, Pelosi sponsored a bill creating a special housing opportunities program for people infected with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. In related work, she championed programs to expand access to Medicaid for people with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, to increase funding for HIV- and AIDS-related healthcare and to spur development of an HIV vaccine. Pelosi served on the House's powerful Appropriations and Intelligence committees. On the latter, her more than ten years of continuous service was the longest in the committee's history, and for two years she was the ranking Democrat on the panel. Pelosi met with leaders of intelligence services in the United States and in allied countries and advocated stronger efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Pelosi wrote a bill creating the independent 9/11 commission, and that panel conducted a thorough, high-profile investigation of the U.S. government's intelligence and response efforts before and after the attacks. Despite her liberal stance on domestic matters, Pelosi supported the U.S. Patriot Act.

When Richard Gephardt resigned as the party's minority leader in 2002 to run for president in 2004, Pelosi was selected to replace him. Under Gephardt's leadership, the Democrats had appeared powerless to stop what they saw as the radical conservative agenda of the George W. Bush administration. When Pelosi declared her desire to take over from Gephardt, she said: "We must draw clear distinctions between our vision of the future and the extreme policies put forth by the Republicans. We cannot allow Republicans to pretend they share our values and then legislate against those values without consequence." Despite her liberalism, Pelosi appealed to all wings of the party, working closely with moderate party whip Steny Hoyer and filling a new position of assistant to the leader with another centrist, John Spratt. She also routinely helped junior party members gain media exposure and integrate them into the legislative process.

In the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congree following the 2006 elections, Pelosi was elected the first woman Speaker of the House on January 5, 2007. She commented that "In this House, we may be different parties, but we serve one country," as she pledged to try and work with Republicans after years of partisan warring between the parties.