Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the first woman ever elected speaker of the House, announced Thursday that after 38 years in Congress she will not seek another term.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi, the first woman ever elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, announced today that she will not seek another term. Pelosi spent 38 years representing her San Francisco voters in Washington. KQED senior political correspondent Scott Schafer looks back on his historical legacy.
SCOTT SHAFER, BYLINE: As Rep. Nancy Pelosi prepares to leave the political stage at age 85, she leaves behind a long list of accomplishments, including the passage of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Pelosi was first elected in 1987 to fill a seat left vacant by the death of Congresswoman Sala Burton. Her first campaign was no cakewalk. Some of her opponents portrayed her as privileged and out of touch, including City Manager Carol Ruth Silver in a televised debate hosted by KQED.
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CAROL RUTH SILVER: How can she relate to people like me – a single parent, a working mother?
SHAFER: But Pelosi stood her ground.
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NANCY PELOSI: My position is they'll take the low road, and I'll take the high road, and I'll get to Congress before they do.
SHAFER: And she did, quickly demonstrating her political skills. Over the years, her reputation as a tenacious street fighter has been firmly established, as she admitted in 2018.
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PELOSI: As I always tell candidates, you have to know how to take a punch and throw a punch.
SHAFER: Pelosi came to Washington as the AIDS epidemic was ravaging her district. She pushed for increased federal funding at a time when the Reagan administration ignored it. Ernest Hopkins of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation said Pelosi's influence was felt far beyond her district.
ERNEST HOPKINS: She understood that we couldn't end the HIV epidemic without addressing the epidemic in black and Latino communities, and so she was fully involved.
SHAFER: But Pelosi's rise to power in the Democratic Party hasn't been easy.
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PELOSI: And when I was running for high office and leadership, some men said, who said she could run (laughter)? Well, it just lit a fire in me, really.
SHAFER: In 2006, Democrats regained the House majority for the first time in 12 years. They chose Pelosi as the next speaker. Pelosi was a partisan warrior, but Republicans used her as an opponent, a liberal San Francisco Democrat, linking her with other Democrats running in more conservative parts of the country.
There were times when she worked across the aisle. In the final year of George W. Bush's presidency, as the economy collapsed due to the subprime mortgage crisis, she mustered enough Democratic votes to bail out financial institutions in what critics called a Wall Street bailout. Even former Republican Speaker John Boehner praised her at the unveiling of Pelosi's official 2022 portrait.
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JOHN BOENER: The fact is that no other Speaker of the House in the modern era, Republican or Democrat, has wielded the gavel with such authority or with such consistent results.
SHAFER: Pelosi's superpower was developing relationships and understanding how to get enough votes to pass legislation. She has also been a thorn in President Trump's side. In an Oval Office meeting during Trump's first term, Pelosi said that in the event of a government shutdown, the blame would rest squarely with the president.
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PELOSI: Trump should not be shut down. Do you have (tel)…
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: What? Did you say Trump?
PELOSI: Shutting down Trump.
SHAFER: The photo of her emerging from her meeting with the president, wearing a bright red coat and sunglasses, has become an iconic image. Democrats took back the House in 2019 and Pelosi was elected speaker for a second time, presiding over two Trump impeachments that ultimately failed in the Senate. She became the face of the Democratic Party's resistance, abruptly tearing up a copy of Trump's 2020 State of the Union speech. She later explained the reason in an interview with KQED, saying it was, quote, “full of lies.” Pelosi made history as the first woman and first Californian to become Speaker. But as Gov. Gavin Newsom points out, it was what she did with that power that mattered.
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GAVIN NEWSOM: You may never get something like this back. It would take someone 40-50 years to gain the kind of authority she has gained, as well as the influence and ability to get results.
SHAFER: Several candidates are already vying for her place. Whoever wins will have a hard time matching Pelosi's ability to wield power.
For NPR News, I'm Scott Shafer in San Francisco.
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