- Nancy Pelosi rose through the ranks in Congress, eventually becoming the first female Speaker of the House.
- This was a monumental accomplishment for the California congressman and the Baltimore native’s daughter.
- And in many ways, it was fueled by her early political instincts and her role as a full-time mother.
In many ways, Nancy Pelosi’s political rise was not surprising.
Decades before Ms. Pelosi became the first female speaker of the House of Representatives in U.S. history, she was a member of the highly influential Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., who served as a member of the Maryland House of Representatives and was mayor of Baltimore from 1947 to 1959. and a daughter, Nancy D’Alesandro.
Nancy D’Alessandro was born in Baltimore on March 26, 1940, the youngest of seven children (and the only girl) in an Italian-American family that was synonymous with public service in Baltimore.
She graduated from Notre Dame Institute in Baltimore in 1958 and then attended Trinity College in Washington, D.C., where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science. While in college, she attended President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961, and served as current member of Mary, who rose from the state legislature to become Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and one of the most respected members of Congress. He also interned at the Capitol with RAND Congressman Steny Hoyer. .
In September 1963, Nancy D’Alesandro married Paul Pelosi, whom she met in college. The couple went on to have five children: Alexandra, Jacqueline, Nancy Collin, Christine, and Paul Jr. Together with her husband, Pelosi has an estimated net worth of $46 million.
In 1969, the Pelosi family would eventually move to San Francisco, where the future Speaker enjoyed being a full-time mother, a role that prepared her for her rise as a California politician and on the national stage. She said it became.
“It’s one of the hardest things to do,” Pelosi said of raising children in a 2019 interview with The Washington Post. “It’s going to be easier to go to work, isn’t it?”
welcome to san francisco
San Francisco has traditionally been the political center of California politics and was a magnet for the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s.
Summer of Love. Black Panthers and Black Activism in the Bay Area. Intensification of protests against the Vietnam War. The rise of the gay rights movement.
These movements had a major influence on the liberalism that would come to define the region.
During this period and in later years, Pelosi cut her teeth into the city’s Democratic politics. In 1976 she became a Democratic National Convention Committee member. From 1981 until 1983, she served as chair of the powerful California Democratic Party. And in June 1987, she was first elected to her House of Representatives in a special election to replace the late Representative Sarah Burton.
To this day, Pelosi still holds the House seat centered in San Francisco.
rise to the top
In 2003, Ms. Pelosi became the first woman to lead a political party in Congress, serving as House Minority Leader.
Over the next three years, she worked diligently to regain the House majority, recruiting Democratic candidates from across the ideological spectrum and raising millions of dollars.
In 2006, Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives after a 12-year drought, and Pelosi became the first female speaker. She will assume her chair in January 2007.
When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, Ms. Pelosi was instrumental in passing legislation through Congress, including the Affordable Care Act, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, among others. did.
After Democrats lost the House majority in November 2010, she remained minority leader until the party regained control of the House in 2018.
Pelosi served as a foil to President Donald Trump’s conservative policies during her final two years in office, undermining them by making it appear that Trump ignored her handshake before the State of the Union address in February 2020. I even did it.
With Joe Biden taking office as president in 2021, Pelosi once again used her political acumen to not only pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in the House of Representatives, but also to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the 2022 The inflation control law was also passed. Biden.
future
Pelosi stepped down as party leader after Republicans narrowly flipped the House in 2022. This means that for the first time in 20 years, she is no longer leading the House caucus.
She was replaced by Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York as House Democratic leader.
However, Pelosi continues to serve as a lawmaker and as a representative for Democrats aiming to regain the House majority in November 2024.
The 84-year-old congressman, who recently received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is running for re-election in the fall, adding a new chapter to a career that has spanned nearly 40 years in Washington.