Nancy Pelosi, the 85-year-old California Democrat and first woman to serve as US House speaker, has announced that she will retire from Congress at the end of her term.
Ms Pelosi led House Democrats for almost two decades, encompassing two stretches as speaker under four presidents. She announced her retirement in a video posted on social media Thursday morning.
“We have made history. We have made progress,” she said in the video. “And now, we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”
Her departure leaves a vacancy in a solidly Democratic San Francisco-based seat for the first time in nearly 40 years. More broadly, Ms Pelosi’s retirement creates a hole in national Democratic leadership, underscoring questions about the future of a party that has struggled to find a winning message in the era of president Donald Trump.
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A fierce legislative tactician and prolific fundraiser, she was instrumental in securing signature policy achievements for Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, holding together a fractious caucus marked by tensions between progressives and centrists. This also made her a prime target for Republicans, who cast her as a villain in attack ads to motivate their voters.
Several candidates had emerged to campaign for her seat before she announced her departure, including state senator Scott Wiener and progressive Saikat Chakrabarti.
“Nancy Pelosi is an iconic, legendary, transformational figure, who has done so many things over so many years to make life better for so many people,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on November 3rd.
Among her biggest accomplishments as party leader was helping to enact Mr Obama’s Affordable Care Act. She was also instrumental in passing the Dodd-Frank Act to put more guardrails on Wall Street after the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the economic stimulus package to help banks and others recover from the ensuing recession.
Ms Pelosi managed her fractious caucus to pass large parts of Mr Biden’s economic agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, which created new renewable energy incentives and lowered prescription drug prices.
Some of her most memorable moments emerged from spars with Mr Trump. She oversaw two impeachments during his first term, and also grabbed headlines after ripping up a copy of the president’s State of the Union address while standing behind him on camera in 2020.
In a 2018 Oval Office meeting after Democrats won control of the House, she chided him “not to characterise the strength that I bring to this meeting.” Video of her striding out of the White House afterwards in dark sunglasses and an orange overcoat quickly became a social media meme.
But her friction with the White House hasn’t been limited to Republicans. She demonstrated one of her most remarkable flexes of intra-party power after splitting with Mr Biden, saying he should drop out of 2024 race. Her snub helped kick-start a pressure campaign which led to him exiting the race, prompting former vice president Kamala Harris to step in as his replacement.
Ms Pelosi’s retirement comes as Democrats grapple with the future of the party. New York City’s Democratic mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has mobilised voters by emphasising affordability and promising to make progressive changes, including city-run grocery stores and free child care. Other successful Democrats, including Virginia’s governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, have embraced more pragmatic policies
The former speaker has kept some distance from some of the party’s emerging progressive wing. She has publicly disagreed with one of Democrats’ most well-known progressive members, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
As one of the oldest members in the House, Ms Pelosi faced increasing pressure from colleagues to retire in recent years to make room a new generation.
The consequences of an increasingly hostile and divided political environment have struck Ms Pelosi directly, as she has been routinely targeted by threats. Capitol police hustled her out of the House chamber ahead of an invading mob during the January 6th, 2021 insurrection, with some chanting “Where’s Nancy” and ransacking her office.
In 2022, a hammer-wielding assailant broke into Ms Pelosi’s San Francisco home and fractured the skull of her husband, Paul Pelosi. The invader said he was looking for Nancy Pelosi, who was his intended target.
Weeks later, after an election in which Democrats lost control of the House and under pressure to allow a new generation in the party to rise up, Ms Pelosi announced she wouldn’t seek another term in party leadership.
Ms Pelosi’s political career goes back to the Democratic Party’s past of big-city working-class machines. She learned politics from her father, long-time Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.
She entered through the liberal bastion of San Francisco, where she first ran for office at the age of 47 after raising five children with her husband, a property and venture capital investor. – Bloomberg
