Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in a social media post Friday that she will once again seek to represent her San Francisco-based district in Congress.
"Now more than ever our City needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery," Pelosi wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. "Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for ALL. That is why I am running for reelection — and respectfully ask for your vote."
Pelosi, 83, stepped down from her role as House Democratic leader in January when Republicans won back control of the chamber in the midterms, handing the reins over to New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. Pelosi's decision came in the aftermath of a brutal attack on her husband, Paul, in their San Francisco home last year.
Questions remained about whether Pelosi would remain in Congress after Republicans retook the House in the 2022 midterms and after the attack on her husband, but stayed on after Democrats outperformed expectations last year's elections.
The venerable California Democrat was first elected to Congress in 1987 after years volunteering and fundraising for California Democrats. Pelosi rose the ranks in the caucus until ultimately becoming the leader of the House Democrats in 2003, the first woman to hold the role in U.S. history.
In 2006 — the final midterm election of then-President George W. Bush’s tenure in office — Democrats were swept into power in both chambers of Congress, picking up 31 seats in the house and 5 seats in the U.S. Senate. Pelosi was unanimously chosen by her party as Speaker of the House, marking the first time in U.S. history a woman held the office that is third in the line of presidential succession.
During the first two years of her first speakership, Pelosi was an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War and blocked Bush’s proposal to partially privatize Social Security, but also refused calls from within her own party to launch an impeachment into the president.
After Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Pelosi spearheaded a number of his key legislative proposals, helping to carry the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform bill, the 2009 stimulus bill and the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy across the finish line.
Pelosi also became a key target for Republican campaigns as they hoped to retake the House in 2010 — and remained a foil for GOP campaigns acrossthe country throughout her political career, painting Democrats nationwide as allies to her “liberal, out-of-touch agenda,” as an ad for a Montana political candidate from 2017 described.
Or, as Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly described it in a 2017 interview with POLITICO, “using [Pelosi] as the boogeyman.”
After Democrats lost the House in the 2010 midterms, Pelosi remained on as leader of the House Democrats, guiding the party through the rise of the Tea Party Republicans and, later, through the first two years of Donald Trump's presidency. As minority leader, she broke the record for the longest "magic minute" speech by a party leader, delivering a more than eight-hour speech about DREAMers to protest a budget deal that would not address DACA recipients, who were at risk of deportation under Trump; that record stood until 2021, when then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy delivered an eight hour, 32-minute speech ahead of the passage of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill.
After the 2018 midterms, which saw the Democrats net a 41-seat gain in the House, Pelosi was once again tapped to serve as House Speaker, the first person to reclaim the gavel in more than 60 years.
As speaker once again, Pelosi led her caucus through two impeachments of President Trump – the first in 2019 over allegations that Trump unlawfully solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election, and the second in 2021 following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In both cases, Trump was acquitted by the Senate.