Nancy Pelosi retakes gavel as House speaker, becomes the most powerful elected woman in U.S. history
Nancy Pelosi officially took the gavel as the Speaker of the House on Thursday — and in turn, she is now the most powerful elected woman in U.S. history.
As Speaker of the House, Pelosi, 78, will be no. 2 in line for the presidency behind the vice president. More importantly, she will be leading the record-breaking, history-making, name-taking 116th Congress to create real change for women.
“Our democracy will be strengthened by the optimism, idealism and patriotism of this transformative freshman class,” Pelosi said in her speech on Thursday. “Working together, we will redeem the promise of the American Dream for every family, advancing progress for every community.” Pelosi received 220 votes — a majority — to secure her role as Speaker.
“I’m particularly proud to be woman speaker of the House of this Congress, which marks the 100th year of women having the right to vote,” Pelosi said before the 116th Congress.
This isn’t the first time Pelosi has sat in this seat of power.
In 2007, Pelosi became the first woman ever to serve as Speaker of the House, a position she held for four years under intense scrutiny for her stance on social security, healthcare and immigration. Pelosi even fought off criticism for the type of plane she used.
“When you are effective, you are a target,” Pelosi told MAKERS of her history-making role. “It’s a tough arena; it’s a very tough arena.”
But that never deterred Pelosi from politics. “You jump in the ring. If you throw a punch you better be ready to take one,” Pelosi told MAKERS about her historic position in Congress. “And if you take one, you better be ready to throw one.”
She says she learned how to battle those frustrations early in life, growing up in Baltimore as the daughter of the city’s mayor, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. “You never walked into our home without seeing bumper stickers, placards, brochures…campaigning was a way of life for us.”
After graduating with a political science degree from Trinity College in 1962, Pelosi married Paul Pelosi and started a family. “We had five children. On the day I brought my baby Alexandra home from the hospital, that week my oldest child Nancy-Corrine had turned six,” Pelosi says. “I was busy!”
But never too occupied to give her time to the Democratic party. When the Pelosi family moved to San Francisco, the mom of five dedicated time to volunteer for local campaigns.
In 1987, her district’s congresswoman Sala Burton was battling cancer when she tapped Pelosi to be her successor.
“It was nothing I had really even thought about, but she said, ‘It would make me feel better if you say you will run,’” Pelosi recalls. “Within a matter of weeks, she passed away. I think it surprised people when I was a front-runner right from the start.”
Pelosi was elected to Congress in 1988 — when there were only 23 women out of 425 representatives. Today, there are 125 women, with a number of historic firsts, sworn into Congress.
“It was a time when you would make a suggestion, and they’d say next … And if it were a man and he said exactly said what you said, they’d say ‘Well isn’t that great? Let’s go with what Joe suggested,’” Pelosi told MAKERS of her freshman year in Congress.
By 2006, Pelosi was the leader of the Democratic Party but tired of Republicans winning control of Congress. She decided “I’m not waiting for lightning to strike — I know how to win elections.”
To win the midterms, “we had a plan,” she says. “it was cold-blooded, clear-eyed and effective.”
She’s taking that same approach to lead the 116th Congress — and folks are getting behind her. “Let me be clear, House Democrats are down with NDP: Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) declared as he nominated Pelosi on behalf of the Democratic party.
“For over 200 years, we had a pecking order of what man was going to do what next,” Pelosi says. “We’re going to break the marble ceiling. We’re doing things differently and that is resisted. But the ability to make a contribution to our country, to have some influence on public policy, to make the future better for our country is worth all that aggravation.”
And her advice to the incoming freshwoman class of representatives? “What I keep saying to women is that there is no secret sauce,” Pelosi says. “A man in a suit with a tie, there’s a given that there are certain things that go with that but nu-uh. You have something very special to contribute. Do not let anyone shake your confidence about what you came here to do.”
Watch more about Nancy Pelosi’s inspiring story below:
