Nancy Pelosi – Vote Counter and Leader Extraordinaire
One of the most powerful women of her—or any—generation, Nancy Pelosi has now put down her gavel as speaker of the House of Representatives. Her two terms as speaker, from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, encompassed landmark legislation passed under her leadership. She will continue to serve as the representative of California’s 8th District.
Pelosi’s successor as leader of the Democratic Caucus and House Minority Leader in the now Republican-controlled chamber is Hakeem Jeffries of New York’s 8th Congressional District in Brooklyn.
In summarizing Pelosi’s leadership as the first female speaker, Jeffries called her the “most accomplished speaker” in history. He recalled her frequent observation to the Democratic Caucus that, in the words of Thomas Paine, “the times have found us.”
At the center of history
Since she entered the House as a newly elected representative from California’s 5th District in San Francisco (later the 8th District) in 1987, Pelosi has stood—and often led—in the maelstrom of some of the most significant events in the history of the world. And through it all, she has also served as an example of what a powerful, insightful, and empathetic leader can accomplish. She has never lost an election.
In 2001, Democrats elected Pelosi House Whip. The following year, they chose her as the first-ever female House minority leader.
She took the speaker’s gavel from John Boehner in 2007, when the Democrats won the majority in the midterm elections during President George W. Bush’s second term. Pelosi said at the time that her speakership had broken the “marble ceiling” and represented a historic moment for women and girls.
Vote-counter
If most of her peers could choose only one characteristic of Pelosi’s as the most outstanding, it would likely be her ability to count her votes.
It’s a skill that draws on a speaker’s rapport with her members, her knowledge of their and their districts’ needs, and an immense amount of strategizing, negotiating, and building consensus. No speaker before her—and probably none after her—seems to have perfected the art to the level that Pelosi did. Vote-counting is the gear in any speaker’s legislative machine: It’s the foundation for making things happen.
Pelosi’s vote-counting acumen was easy to see during the early days of her ascension to power in the House. The outcome of the contest for minority whip in 2001, under the leadership of Rep. Dick Gephardt, was step one toward leadership of the House Democratic Caucus on Gephardt’s anticipated stepping-down to make a 2004 presidential bid.
As whip, minority leader, and speaker, Pelosi demonstrated her extraordinary gift for understanding how to get her membership to the “yes” votes she needed to move forward.
Legislation driver
During the administration of President Barack Obama, Pelosi delivered on major legislation such as the Affordable Care Act. In November 2009, she had to ensure passage of the massive and complex bill by holding together a diverse collection of Democrats.
Unlike Obama, Pelosi harbored no illusions that Republicans would vote for the bill. So she focused on holding her own ship together on the rocky seas of give-and-take negotiations with her members, looking for 218 votes. The bill passed 219-212, with not a single Republican vote.
The Affordable Care Act gave millions of Americans the opportunity to access health insurance. Notably, it did away with insurance companies’ ability to deny or charge more for coverage due to previously existing conditions.
Pelosi also led her Obama-era caucus to pass clean energy legislation, historic reforms on Wall Street operations, and laws upholding the rights of workers—notably women workers in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act—against employment discrimination.
Trump-defier
During President Donald Trump’s administration, Pelosi as minority leader from 2017 to 2019, and speaker beginning in 2019, took principled stands against Trump’s authoritarian proclivities, delivering memorable one-liners and photo ops.
Will you ever forget the iconic image of Pelosi in her bright red coat and cat-that-ate-the-canary smile as she exited a 2018 White House meeting with Trump? Or the 2019 photo of her literally standing up across the Cabinet Room table from the seated Trump while pointing her finger accusingly at him?
In 2019, Pelosi became the first speaker since Sam Rayburn in 1955 to regain the position after serving in the minority.
She promptly stood up against Trump’s continuation of a government shutdown in an attempt to bully Congress into funding his anti-immigrant “wall” at the southern border. Trump ended up caving as Pelosi kept her coalition together.
She refused to allow Trump to address Congress in the House chamber while the government was shut down. And she sent two bills for his impeachment to the House: in 2019 on charges of withholding aid to Ukraine in hopes of bullying President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into “investigating” Joe Biden, and in 2021 within days of his encouraging the violent mob that stormed Congress on January 6.
In March 2020, with COVID-19 taking the global economy, she helped gain passage for the biggest economic stimulus legislation in the nation’s history. Pointing to multiple failures of the Trump Administration to address the crisis—and the president’s cavalier and unserious attitude toward the virus—she labeled COVID the “Trump virus.”
Goal-unlocker
Pelosi’s greatest accomplishments during the Biden Administration include her leadership in securing passage of the president’s 2021 bipartisan infrastructure package to rebuild crumbling roads, airports, and bridges while upgrading broadband Internet access, and the 2021 Build Back Better legislation designed to strengthen the social safety net and climate change protections.
On the international stage, Pelosi demonstrated U.S. soft power in 2022 by visiting both Taiwan—in defiance of China’s asserted claims on the island—and war-ravaged Ukraine. At the close of the year, President Zelenskyy delivered especially warm thanks to her in his speech before the U.S. Congress.
After leading two of the most productive Congresses in history, Pelosi seems ready to relish her new role as mentor and advisor to a new generation. She always attributed part of her success to being able to speak common sense in her “mother-of-five voice.” It goes without saying that the incoming Republican House majority is going to need a good talking-to.