Women's History Month (WHM) - March 2007

Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi

Also known as: Nancy D'Alesandro

Birth: March 26, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Occupation: Politician

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

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 to1971.

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.

She also filed bills that helped nonprofit organizations create affordable housing and insured access to healthcare coverage for people with disabilities. She promoted the creation of a national network to track the chronic disease effects of environmental pollutants. Advocating increased investment in health research, she led the fight for double funding for the National Institutes of Health and beat back Republican-led efforts to reduce funding for family planning programs abroad.

An early supporter of the movement for democratic rights in China, Pelosi sponsored the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992. A staunch critic of the human rights record of the People's Republic of China, she chaired the Congressional Working Group on China. Pelosi supported the Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule and led mostly unsuccessful efforts to tie trade privileges to better performance by the Chinese government on human rights.

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.

Pelosi's name is associated with a crucial amendment to an important world trade bill, the International Development and Finance Act of 1989. The "Pelosi Amendment" requires the World Bank and regional development banks to make public environmental impact assessments for all development projects they fund.

Pelosi has also served on House ethics and banking committees, and has campaigned and raised funds for other Democratic candidates across the country. In 2001, she was elected House minority whip, the second-highest party post. She was the first woman to achieve that high a position in a major U.S. political party. She later described her presence at a meeting of top congressional leaders with the president at the White House, saying: "For an instant, I felt as though Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton--everyone who'd fought for women's right to vote and for the empowerment of women in politics, in their professions, and in their lives--were there with me in the room. Those women were the ones who had done the heavy lifting, and it was as if they were saying, At last we have a seat at the table."

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."

By early 2004, the Democratic caucus in Congress was energetic. "They are enthused that after years of defections to the Republican position on many key votes, the caucus now displays an almost unprecedented unity in its voting," Harold Meyerson said in The American Prospect. "...They approve of their leaders' consistent attacks on the Bush administration... They feel that all wings of the caucus are getting not only a fair hearing by party leaders but also real input into party positions. They even believe that their leaders' indefatigable fund raising and candidate recruitment have been going so well that they have a shot at retaking the House. And when asked why they feel this way, all of them come around to the same answer: Nancy Pelosi."

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. She was able to find common ground on just about any issue. "She has a deft touch with the caucus, strategic smarts, an instinct for a winning issue," Meyerson wrote. "She also has a rhetorical clunkiness--heavy on the alliteration--that makes her sound now and then like a compendium of bumper stickers."

Though warm and maternal, Pelosi was also tough, and she led a crackdown on party unity after 16 Democrats defected from the party position in November 2003 to give the Republicans a victory on an administration medical reform bill. She told members there were only three acceptable reasons for breaking from the caucus: "conscience, constituents, or the Constitution." Pelosi was an ardent fundraiser, spending much of her time recruiting candidates for House seats and raising money for their campaigns.

Pelosi also led tougher Democratic criticism of the Bush administration. After the president's 2004 State of the Union address, Pelosi said: "America must be a light to the world, not just a missile." In an interview with Soledad O'Brien of CNN after the speech, she attacked the president sharply, charging "he is in denial when it comes to the fact that nine million Americans are put of work and he's boasting job growth." She also charged that he "did not build a true international consensus on Iraq. He went into war on the basis of unproven assertions, without evidence. He used a doctrine, a dangerous doctrine, of preemptive strike, which is unprecedented in our history."

Pelosi's suggestion that the president's policy was responsible for the deaths of U.S. service people enraged Republicans, who called on Pelosi to apologize for the remarks, but she did not. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said: "She apparently is so caught up in partisan hatred for President Bush that her words are putting American lives at risk." Pelosi stood her ground on Bush: "His activities, his decisions, the results of his actions are what undermines his leadership, not my statements. My statements are just a statement of fact."

Still, Bush and the Republicans solidified their hold on government in the 2004 elections. Pelosi told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "Democrats did not connect well enough with the American people" on issues of faith and patriotism during the campaign. She said she was "very concerned about the radical right-wing agenda of President Bush and the Republicans in Congress." But characteristically, she refused to dwell on the defeat and said defiantly: "We're ready for the next session of Congress. We're ready for the next election."

A few days later, Pelosi said the Democrats were ready to work with the president. "Our partisan split, rather than being an excuse for inaction, must be a call to compromise and commonsense," she said in the Democrats' weekly radio address. "We stand strongest as a nation when we stand on common ground." In a later interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace, Pelosi said: "I'm very proud of my leadership of the Democrats in the House of Representatives and proud of them to make history, choosing a woman as their leader. I'm proud of the fact that we have had unity in our party...We have clarity in our message. We know who we are as Democrats."

UPDATES

January 4, 2007: Pelosi was elected the first female speaker of the House of Representatives. Source: CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/04/congress.rdp/index.html, January 4, 2007.

November 7, 2006: Pelosi was re-elected to Congress in the 8th District of California, defeating Republican Mike DeNunzio. Source: CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/CA/, January 31, 2007.

SOURCE CITATION

Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol. 25. Thomson Gale, 2005.