Nancy Pelosi

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Nancy Pelosi (2019)
Nancy Pelosi's signature

Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi (born March 26, 1940 in Baltimore , Maryland ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party . She has represented part of the city of San Francisco in the United States House of Representatives since 1987 and has been its spokesperson since January 3, 2019 . She already held the same function from 2007 to 2011 and was chairwoman of the democratic minority group ( Minority Leader ) from 2003 to 2007 and in the meantime .

Family and education

Nancy Pelosi is Italian-American . The ancestors of the father Thomas D'Alesandro had immigrated to the USA from Abruzzo , their mother Annunciata Maria "Nancy" (née Lombardi) was born in Italy. Growing up as the youngest of six siblings and only daughter in Little Italy Baltimores, where her father was a formative figure in local politics, she came into contact with politics at an early age. Her father, a New Deal supporter , was elected mayor of Baltimore three times and was a member of the US House of Representatives from 1939 to 1947. Her brother Thomas was also mayor of the city. She attended her first Democratic National Convention when she was twelve, and when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961 she was a guest at the evening ball.

She studied political science at the Catholic Trinity College in Washington, DC and graduated there in 1962 with a bachelor's degree. She then did an internship with Democratic Senator Daniel Brewster .

In 1963 she married the investment banker Paul Pelosi, whom she had met while studying. She has five children with him and moved the family from New York City to their Californian homeland in San Francisco in 1969 . There she raised the children and founded a club for local supporters of the Democratic Party.

Political career

Pelosi in January 2007 when she was sworn in as Speaker of the House of Representatives

Pelosi was politically active all her life, including as a fundraiser and in the 1976 presidential campaign of then California Governor Jerry Brown . She chaired the Democratic Party in California from 1981 to 1983 and participated in candidate recruitment and fundraising. At the 1984 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles , Pelosi was chairman of the organizing committee. Between 1985 and 1986 she was the chief financial officer of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee , the campaign arm of the Democrats in the United States Senate .

Pelosi befriended MP Phillip Burton , who represented San Francisco in the US House of Representatives, and his widow Sala Burton , who took that seat after his death in 1983. Fatally ill, she asked Pelosi to run for that seat, which Pelosi did after Sala Burton's death in 1987. She was elected to the United States House of Representatives in a narrowly won by-election for the 5th  Congressional District of California (first ballot April 7, 1987, runoff election June 2, 1987). It was re-elected in 1988 with 76.4% and in 1990 with 77.2%. She was elected ten times in California's 8th District from 1992 to 2010 (1992: 82.5%, 1994: 81.9%, 1996: 84.3%, 1998: 85.5%, 2000: 84.4%, 2002 : 79.6%, 2004: 83.0%, 2006: 80.4%, 2008: 71.9%, 2010: 80.1%). From 1993 she represented the 8th congressional electoral district of her state in the House of Representatives, and since 2013 the 12th, which includes most of San Francisco . In 2012 it received 74.9% of the vote, in 2014 73.6%, in 2016 78.1% and in 2018 68.5%. The different numbering of the geographically largely identical areas resulted from restructuring according to the respective United States Census .

Pelosi earned the reputation of a shrewd politician and rose in the leadership of the Democrats in the House of Representatives; In 2002 she became a minority whip , the manager of the minority faction. In 2003 she was the successor to Dick Gephardt's group chairman of the Democrats, who were then the minority (minority leader). She strove for the unity of the various currents within her group. With the constitution of the 110th Congress, elected on November 7, 2006, on January 3, 2007, she became the first woman in the history of the United States to take over the leadership of the House of Representatives as speaker . After the mid- term election in President Obama's first term in 2010 , in which Pelosi prevailed in her constituency with 78% of the vote, but her party lost the majority, she had to give up her post as spokeswoman in January 2011 to Republican John Boehner . She took over the chairmanship of the minority Democratic group again, which she kept after the 2016 election , despite being challenged by her colleague Tim Ryan . After the defeat in the 2016 presidential election, particularly due to the loss of many white workers from the labor force, some Democrats had expressed dissatisfaction with Pelosi.

After the Democrats' victory in the November 2018 House election, some, particularly newly elected members of their parliamentary group, called for younger leadership. Nevertheless, in its internal vote on November 28, 2018, the parliamentary group again nominated Pelosi as spokeswoman for the coming legislative period. On January 3, 2019, she was re-elected Speaker of the House of Representatives with 220 of 430 votes. All Republicans and 15 Democrats, especially newly elected and younger, centrist politicians, voted for other candidates or with present . After a period in the minority, Sam Rayburn had last been elected for the second time more than 60 years earlier .

On January 3, 2021, Pelosi was re- elected chairman of the House of Representatives with 216-209 votes against Republican Kevin McCarthy .

Positions and Initiatives

Nancy Pelosi on the cover of Ms. Magazine for Winter 2007

Pelosi voted against authorizing the Iraq war and clearly criticized President George W. Bush ; Among other things, she called him an incompetent leader. She is committed to environmental protection and against a reduction in social benefits. The practicing Catholic, supported the equality of homosexuals , restrictions on the possession of arms and the right to abortion , which is why it than in the US "liberal" is considered (to German as " liberal left ").

She was seen as the driving force behind many of President Barack Obama's initiatives , including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009 and the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Their popularity declined as the economic mood clouded over and laws like Obamacare aroused strong opposition, especially among conservatives (see Tea Party movement ). In Donald Trump's presidency , her intransigent stance against the president at the government shutdown at the turn of the year 2018/19 was praised within the party, when she kept her group closed and got Trump to give in. After Pelosi countered internal party calls for impeachment proceedings against Trump, she launched an official House of Representatives investigation into the impeachment of the president on September 24, 2019 . Trump had previously admitted that in a phone call he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump's political rival Joe Biden . The trial ended on February 5, 2020 with Trump's acquittal in the Republican-majority Senate of Congress . When President Trump delivered his State of the Union Address to Congress on February 5, 2020 , Pelosi, sitting behind him in the Presidium, could be seen demonstratively tearing up the manuscript of her speech at the end of the speech in front of the cameras.

Web links

Commons : Nancy Pelosi  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Nancy Pelosi  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ron Cassie, The Gavel Goes Back to Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi of Little Italy . 4th January 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c Amy Tikkanen: Nancy Pelosi. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , January 19, 2007.
  3. ↑ Stephanie Salmon: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Nancy Pelosi. In: US News & World Report , Nov. 7, 2006; Walt Hickey, Mariana Alfaro: How Nancy Pelosi went from San Francisco housewife to the most powerful woman in US politics. In: Business Insider , January 3, 2019.
  4. ↑ Stephanie Salmon: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Nancy Pelosi. In: US News & World Report , Nov. 7, 2006; Walt Hickey, Mariana Alfaro: How Nancy Pelosi went from San Francisco housewife to the most powerful woman in US politics. In: Business Insider , January 3, 2019.
  5. ↑ Pelosi, Nancy. In: Our Campaigns.
  6. ↑ elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov (p. 21, pdf)
  7. ↑ Ted Johnson: Democrats Nominate Nancy Pelosi as Next Speaker, but 32 Members Vote No. In: Variety , November 28, 2018.
  8. ^ Lindsey McPherson: Pelosi elected speaker with 15 Democratic defections. In: Roll Call , January 3, 2019.
  9. ↑ https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wahlen-neuer-us-kongress-tritt-nach-wahl-erstmals-z together- dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com- 20090101-210103-99-879921
  10. ↑ https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2021-01/us-kongress-nancy-pelosi-wahl-vorsitzende-us-repraesentantenhaus
  11. ↑ Amy Tikkanen: Nancy Pelosi. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , January 19, 2007.
  12. ↑ Trump impeachment: Pelosi launches inquiry into Ukraine claims. In: BBC World , September 25, 2019.
  13. ↑ Trump's affairs: Democrats initiate impeachment proceedings . In: Spiegel Online . December 5, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 5, 2019]).
  14. ↑ Impeachment proceedings end with Trump's acquittal. Zeit.de. February 6, 2020, accessed February 6, 2020.
  15. ^ Joan E Greve, Ed Pilkington: Nancy Pelosi rips up Trump's speech after divisive State of the Union address. The Guardian, February 5, 2020, accessed January 4, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Pelosi, Nancy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pelosi, Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro (full name); D'Alesandro, Nancy Patricia (maiden name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION American Democratic Party politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore , Maryland, United States