Pelosi May Already Have Her Replacement - A Family Member Who Has Never Held Elected Office
With Nancy Pelosi nearing what could be the end of her reign as House Speaker if Republicans regain control of that chamber of congress, there is speculation that the era of one Pelosi could give way to another.
The speculation has been simmering in the background for months. It was January when Mark Barabak wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Christine Pelosi might follow in her mother’s footsteps.
“Republicans seem exceedingly likely to win control of the House in November. It seems exceedingly unlikely that Pelosi would happily settle into the role of minority leader, much less fall back as a workaday member of a shrunken, enfeebled Democratic caucus,” Barabak wrote then.
“Would she time her departure to benefit her daughter by, say, requiring a snap election that would take advantage of Pelosi’s brand name?”
Months later, as the election nears, the speculation is heating up. Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener has been making indirect moves to call attention to himself as a possible heir.
But not too much, notes Politico.
“Nancy Pelosi is so well-respected and so well-appreciated that no one is looking forward to seeing her leave, and the last thing anybody wants is to be viewed as making even the littlest insult to the speaker,” said Todd David, a former political director for Wiener. “From a pure practical, political point of view, no one wants to offend Nancy Pelosi.”
Christine Pelosi, 56, hasn’t said anything that could be construed as an intention to run for the House, but as Politico noted, she is “widely expected to pursue the seat if it opens.”
Christine Pelosi has never held an elective office. She was a prosecutor in San Francisco, had a gig in the Clinton administration and was chief of staff to former Democratic Rep. John Tierney. She has been a Democratic National Committee member and a chair of the California Democratic Party’s Women’s Caucus.
“She’s very thoughtful about how she uses her name, because she knows it does have weight,” said Adama Iwu, a political consultant who helped to lead the We Said Enough movement.
However, one of Christine Pelosi’s comments has come back to haunt her. When Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was physically attacked by a neighbor in 2017, Pelosi tweeted three years later that his “neighbor was right.”
Paul noted that in a tweet last month.
No one deserves to be assaulted. Unlike Nancy Pelosi’s daughter who celebrated my assault, I condemn this attack and wish Mr. Pelosi a speedy recovery. https://t.co/2LxIlbIYQP
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 28, 2022
Some expect that if Christine Pelosi wants her mother’s House seat, she will have to fight for it.
“Given the ATM that is San Francisco, this is going to be a brawl,” Max Szabo, a San Francisco-based Democratic consultant, told Politico. “No one is going to leave anything on the field.”
John Avalos, a former member of the city’s Board of Supervisors and now a San Francisco Democratic Party official, said Nancy Pelosi, 82, will not dictate her successor.
Once she announces her retirement, he said, “she becomes irrelevant in terms of determining who’s going to be replacing her.”
Christine Pelosi received a dose of publicity Friday in connection with the intruder attack on her father, Paul Pelosi, last week at his San Francisco home, according to The Associated Press.
The judge in the case, Loretta Giorgi, said she and Christine Pelosi worked together in the city attorney’s office in the 1990s but had not interacted in years. Giorgi made the revelation so that either side in the case could object to her role in it.
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