Facts about Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi Biography
Democrat Nancy Pelosi is the first woman ever to hold the post of Speaker of the House of in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Nancy Pelosi graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. in 1962, then married businessman Paul Pelosi and moved to his native San Francisco. She worked her way up through the state Democratic party before entering Congress after a special election in California’s 5th District in 1987. (The 5th District later became the 8th District and then the 12th District, which includes much of San Francisco. It is considered one of the more liberal districts in the United States, a fact that her political opponents enjoy pointing out.)
She was named Minority Leader in November of 2002, becoming the first woman to lead a political party in the history of the U.S. Congress. After Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in the national elections of November 2006, Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House for the session beginning in 2007, taking that post on January 4, 2007. She was re-elected in 2009 as fellow Democrat Barack Obama took office.
Republicans won control of the House in the elections of 2010, and Pelosi was replaced as Speaker by Republican John Boehner of Ohio. But after Democrats took control of the House after the elections of 2018, during the presidency of Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi again became Speaker of the House on January 3, 2019, succeeding Republican Paul Ryan.
Extra credit
Nancy Pelosi is the mother of filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, director of the documentaries Journeys With George (2002, with George W. Bush) and Friends of God (2007, featuring Ted Haggard)… Nancy Pelosi was first elected to congress in a special election to replace Representative Sala Burton, who died in office… Pelosi’s father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. was a congressman from Maryland (1939-47) and mayor of Baltimore (1947-59). Her brother, Thomas J. D’Alesandro III, also was mayor of Baltimore from 1967-71… About those Congressional districts: Pelosi was elected to what was California’s 5th District during her first three terms in Congress. It then became the 8th District from 1993 to 2013, before again changing to the 12th District.