In announcing Thursday she won’t seek another term after nearly 40 years in Congress, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the powerful former two-time House Speaker who led passage of major Democratic legislation and proved a formidable adversary to President Donald Trump, said San Francisco must remain “a beacon of hope, justice and peace.”
Her video announcement was met with an outpouring of gratitude from Democrats in the Bay Area, who described her in legendary terms: a “giant,” a “political creature” through and through, an “unmatched” leader.
“Her record is unmatched, and her impact runs deeper,” said East Bay Rep. Lateefah Simon, a first-term Democrat whom Pelosi has mentored in Washington D.C. “It lives and will continue to live in the movements that she’s inspired, in the women that she’s lifted up.”
During the two stints as Speaker, Pelosi shepherded passage of the Affordable Care Act, the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan and Biden-era infrastructure and climate bills, driven by what supporters call a singular ability to whip up votes and outwit her opponents. Pelosi raised more than $1 billion for the Democratic Party during her political career, known by party faithful for her relentless — and dramatic — fundraising emails.
“She’s a giant of American politics,” said David McCuan, political science professor at Sonoma State University. He described Pelosi as uniquely effective and possibly the strongest House speaker in recent history.
Pelosi has relished her role as nemesis of Trump and his Make America Great Again movement. In 2020, she went viral for tearing up Trump’s State of the Union speech on the House floor. The President took a victory lap on Thursday.
“The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America,” Trump told Fox News. “She was evil, corrupt and only focused on bad things for our country.”
But he’ll have to contend with her for another year. In her announcement, she said she will serve the remainder of her term, which ends in January 2027.
The year ahead will be critical for Democrats. With wind in their sails for the first time since Trump swept back into office last year, Democrats are withholding their votes from a government funding agreement over health care subsidies that Republicans have let expire. Strategists are gearing up for high stakes midterm elections in 2026, of the kind Pelosi has played a key role in for more than a decade.
The party will need Pelosi’s “counseling, her fire and her voice,” Simon said.
Other Bay Area boosters said Thursday that there will never be someone in politics quite like Pelosi.
“Nancy was a force of nature who knew better than anyone how to wield power and how to use that power to get things done and bring about positive change,” said Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy group.
But that doesn’t mean others won’t try. Already in the hunt for the seat are state Sen. Scott Wiener and software engineer Saikat Chakrabarti.
Bill James, chair of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, said Pelosi formed a “secret power” unit wielding influence with other Bay Area representatives inside the House Democratic Caucus, including veteran Rep. Zoe Lofgren, whose district includes part of San Jose.
Pelosi first joined the House of Representatives in 1987 at age 47 in a special election to fill a vacancy left when her predecessor, Sala Burton, died in office. She rose to become the first woman Speaker of the House in 2007, and would go on to lead passage of the Affordable Care Act, financial reforms following the Great Recession and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy against openly LGBTQ service members.
Pelosi was forced to relinquish the gavel in 2011 after a Republican Tea Party wave flipped the House to the GOP. But she regained it in 2019 when Democrats retook the majority in the midterm elections during Trump’s first term. Under her leadership, the House would impeach Trump twice, in 2019 and 2021, though both times the Senate acquitted him.
In 2022, Pelosi gave up her leadership post after her husband, Paul, was brutally attacked inside the couple’s San Francisco home. Republicans then recaptured the majority in the midterm elections with many campaigning on a “Fire Pelosi” agenda.
Pelosi would remain influential within the Democratic party though, playing a key behind-the-scenes role in getting President Joe Biden to bow out of his sinking re-election bid, leading to the rapid nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee who lost to Trump a year ago.
James said that Pelosi’s announcement comes as the Democratic Party transitions to elect a younger generation of leaders. Those leaders, he said, will look up to Pelosi as a shining example of “dogged devotion to the country and to the Democratic Party and the success of Democratic policies.”
Nonetheless, after Trump swept back into office last year, some Democratic activists wondered aloud if their party leaders were too old. Biden’s age — 81 — was at the core of party officials’ pressure campaign to persuade him to drop out of the race for president last summer.
Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat in his forties, has called for “a new generation of leadership for the party and fresh, transformative vision.”
Asked for comment on Thursday, Khanna said in a statement that Pelosi had showed faith in him “as a young man who ran an anti-Iraq War primary when few others in our party did.”
“I will always be grateful for that and her commitment to fighting for working families,” Khanna said.
Those dynamics in the party — between young and old, insiders and outsiders — will be at play in the race to replace Pelosi that’s already heading up. Wiener, the state senator, announced his candidacy last month, even though Pelosi had yet to bow out, and she insisted that she could win reelection if she wanted to.
Chakrabarti, a progressive former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had already entered the race and taken direct aim at the former House Speaker.
“Forty years in Congress is enough,” his website read. “New leaders for a new world.”
