That willingness to set aside party differences was noted by former Republican Speaker John Boehner at the unveiling of Pelosi’s official portrait in 2022.
“You’ve been a fierce warrior for your party, but when the stakes were highest, you were willing to put the interests of the nation first and take the heat for it. Now that’s leadership,” Boehner said, adding, “No other speaker of the House in the modern era, Republican or Democrat, has wielded the gavel with such authority or with such consistent results.”
In some ways, the things Pelosi did worst — like media interviews — were the things most people saw, while her strengths were seen by few: cultivating relationships and understanding how to win enough votes to pass legislation. It’s what made her, in her own words, a “master legislator.”
“You have to understand people’s motivation, their district, their priorities,” Pelosi said.
After Democrats retook the House in 2018, Pelosi was again elected speaker. She guided investigations into President Donald Trump, including two successful impeachments in the House that ultimately failed in the Senate.
During Joe Biden’s administration, Pelosi again wielded enormous power, helping the House pass landmark legislation, including COVID-19 funding, climate change initiatives and the CHIPS Act, which provided incentives for domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors — essential computer components made mostly overseas.
Pelosi and Biden were close political allies for decades. But in 2024, after the president’s disastrous debate performance against Trump, it was Pelosi who opened the door to Biden dropping out during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” saying “time is running short” for the president to decide whether he would run again — even though he had already said he would. Pelosi’s subtle yet unmistakable nudge for Biden to step aside succeeded.
“She tried to get others to go raise this issue with President Biden, saying that he shouldn’t run again, and no one would make it as directly as she would,” Page said. “So she finally did it herself, not just in private, but in public.”
To this day, Biden is reportedly angry with Pelosi over her role in pushing him aside. “In retrospect, turns out she was right. He shouldn’t have run again,” Page said.
In 2022, the speaker’s family paid the price of rising political violence when David DePape broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco and attacked her husband, Paul, with a hammer, fracturing his skull. DePape said he was looking for Nancy Pelosi, who was out of town at the time, and wanted to “break her kneecaps.” DePape was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison and life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
Ultimately, Pelosi made history as the first woman and the first Californian to become Speaker of the House. But it’s what she did with that power — for her district, her state and her nation — that mattered most.
“You can never take that for granted,” Newsom said in assessing Pelosi’s impact. “It will take 40, 50 years for someone to build the kind of credibility that she’s built and the influence and the capacity to deliver that as Nancy Pelosi.”
