Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as the powerful Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said on Thursday that she will not run for re-election to Congress in 2026, ending a four-decade career of a progressive Democratic icon often vilified by the right.
The 85-year-old congresswoman, first elected in 1987, made her announcement two days after voters in California on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved “Proposition 50,” a state redistricting effort aimed at flipping five House seats to Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.
Any guesses on who will try to replace her? Is her district a safe blue district?
Pelosi is great, but this is probably for the best. She’s 85, and it’s better to leave politics on a high note than the way Biden did (or worse, Feinstein).
A Democratic state senator named Scott Weiner had already announced he was going to run for that seat, before she made this announcement. He looks much younger but he is actually 55 (this really surprised me when I looked it up) and he is gay. He is also very progressive.
Other candidates mentioned are Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, and a San Francisco supervisor, Connie Chan. The Chronicle also mentions Saikat Chakrabarti, a former aide to AOC.
I haven’t seen any mention of a Republican candidate, I mean, there always is one, but that is suretly the poster child for a thankless job.
And Mike Johnson says that an 85 year old retiring is evidence that she’s being “forced out by the radical leftists who control the Democrat Party”. What an asshole.
From here I see that some Democrat named Shahid Buttar finished second or third in the jungle primary in 2018, 20, and 22, but didn’t run last year. Never heard of him, but sounds like he has some organization in place already.
Yes, my very same thoughts when I first read the news. This will leave her with a much better legacy than Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who fought a great fight but ultimately left us screwed in the end.
Well, we’re still waitin’ for the high note, but I get your point.
In fact, the day he leaves office for whatever reason will be the day he performs the greatest service of his life for his country (what’s left of it).
I used to know him when he lived in DC. I collaborated with him in the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency, where they were spitting rhymes to drumbeats at the Dupont Circle fountain. After he moved to SF, another woman from the Insurgency told me that he had sexually harassed her. She made her allegations public. I cut off contact with him. No more respect. Don’t vote for him if he runs again.