Nancy Pelosi Recordings

When Americans think of the Speaker of the House in Contemporary History, we tend to think of Giants in the House like John Garner who was the second man in history to serve as Speaker of the House and as President of the Senate when he was elected Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. There was Carl Albert during Watergate, who had Richard Nixon not had appointed Gerald Ford to be his Vice President after the resignation of Spiro Agnew in 1973 might have become the first Speaker of the House to ascend to the presidency per the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. Tip O'Neill during the Reagan administration who during the day they trash talked each other and by six o'clock they were having drinks together in the White House. Then there was Newt Gingrich during the Clinton Impeachment that resulted in his resignation as Speaker due to marital indiscretions of his own as well as the Speaker to never be who was Gingrich's handpicked successor, Robert Livingston who himself resigned on the floor of the House of Representatives the day of the impeachment for his too, marital indiscretions. Do we even remember Jim Wright, the Speaker who resigned due to a House Ethics Scandal? But, he was also present at the Kennedy Assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

While these MEN contributed to the history of the American landscape as did their male predecessors and successors did too, this collection focuses on that one Speaker who was not like the rest. This Speaking was not a man and is none other than Nancy Pelosi.

Born in 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland, Nancy D'Alesandro was the youngest of seven children and the only girl born to Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. and Annunciate D'Alesandro. At the time of her birth, D'Alesandro, Jr., was already a Democratic Congressman from Maryland's Third Congressional District. He would be a member of the House of Representatives from 1939 to 1947 and from 1947 to 1959 was the mayor of Baltimore. Her mother was involved in local Democratic politics where she organized Democratic women. It was at this time that Nancy learned how to network. Also, her eldest brother; Thomas D'Alesandro l, III served as mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971. So for their children to join the family business of politics seemed a given.

In 1958, Pelosi had graduated from an all girls Catholic high school in Baltimore called the Institute of Notre Dame. While at Trinity College in Washington, DC, she got to attend the Inauguration. Of John F. Kennedy in 1961 and intervened in the office of Senator Daniel Brewster, D-MD along with future House colleague and House Majority Leader under her Speakership, Steny Hoyer, D-MD5. She graduated from Trinity College in 1962 with a Bachelor's degree in political science.

While in college, Nancy met her future husband, Paul Pelosi, a student at Georgetown. They married on September 7, 1963 and immediately moved to New York. They had five children and by 1969; the Pelosis moved to San Francisco.

Once they moved to San Francisco, Nancy became friends with Phillip Burton a 5th term Congressman, elevating her in Democratic Politics. By 1976, she was elected as a member of the Democratic National Committee of California a position she would hold until 1996. In 1981, Nancy was selected to head the California Democratic Party. She held this position until 1983.

From July 15 through 19, 1984, the Democratic Party met in San Francisco for their political nominating convention to nominate Former Vice President Walter Mondale to run for President and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as Vice President to run against Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush in the 1984 General Election. Nancy Pelosi was chair of the host committee for the Democratic Party at the convention that year.

"The reason it's difficult for a woman to advance in the seniority in place in Congress, is because they spend the early part of their lives raising children."

Having raised her five children and waiting until her youngest to get involved in elective politics, Pelosi decided to run in the 1987 Special Congressional Election for the Fifth District of California due to the vacancy caused by dying Congresswoman Sala Burton when Pelosi was 47 years old. She won the Primary narrowly on April 7, 1987 against San Francisco supervisor Harry Britt and then on June 2, 1987 defeating Republican Harriet Ross.

Pelosi would rise through the ranks of Congressional seniority and particularly when she spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives in defense of Bill Clinton during the Clinton Impeachment in December 1998. By 2002 she was the House Minority Whip under Richard Gephardt, then becoming the House Minority Leader in 2003.

From 1995 to 2007, the Democrats in both houses of Congress were virtually in exile when it came to majorities. With the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, there was no way that the Democrats would win back majorities in the 2002 Midterm Elections. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Biden voted for the Iraq War in October 2002.

By 2006, the United States was growing wary of fighting two unpaid wars. For the first time in 12 years the Democrats would take majorities in both the House and the Senate. Nancy Pelosi was elected by the House the first female Speaker of the House. In fact, during the 2007 State of the Union, George W. Bush pointed out that for the first time he had the honor of referring to "Madam Speaker."

Under Pelosi's first Speakership there were two big issues to take place. The first was that of the economic meltdown in the fall of 2008 to which Congress voted on a $7 billion relief package to bailout the auto industry and the banking industry. The other was in 2010 when Congress passed and Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Unfortunately for the Democrats for the latter vote, and the rise of the Tea Party, the Republican Party took over the majority in the House of Representatives. The Democrats would be in the minority in the House for the remainder of Barack Obama's presidency and they would lose the majority in the Senate in 2014.

In her first four years as Speaker, the big piece of legislation was the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. This was the piece of legislation designed to expand health insurance to 20 million Americans. Barack Obama signed the ACA of 2010 or as Joe Biden declared it, "a big F'ing deal." into law on March 23, 2010. Unfortunately, due to the tireless campaigning by the Tea Party in 2010, the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi was no longer Speaker of the House.

Pelosi would remain the House Minority leader for the remaking six years of the Obama administration, but by the 2018 Midterms under Donald Trump, the Democrats took back the House again and Nancy Pelosi was again elected Speaker of the House. Just before the new Congress started in 2019, Leader Pelosi and Leader Schumer paid a call to the House for a meeting with President Trump. The exchange did not go well as Trump would withhold allocated funds if he did not get his border wall, welcoming a government shutdown.

But, perhaps the two big events in the second four years of her Speakership were the two impeachments of President Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. On December 18, 2019; ironically one day shy of the 21st anniversary of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump on two counts. He would be acquitted by the US Senate.

The House of Representatives would meet one week after the DC Riots of January 6, 2021 to impeach Donald Trump a second time; just one week before leaving the presidency. Again, on February 13, 2021, the Former President was acquitted by the US Senate.

On April 28, 2021, Nancy Pelosi would make history again as she, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, both San Franciscans and both women who are the presiding offices of both Houses of Congress sat up on the rostrum in the House Chamber as President Joe Biden delivered his first Joint Session of Congress. History would repeat on March 1, 2022 when Joe Biden delivered his first State of the Union Address.

This collection celebrates the first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.