Nancy Pelosi: Ms. Woman of the Year 2002
In 2002, Ms. magazine named Nancy Pelosi, incoming Speaker of the House, a Ms. Woman of the Year.  Read her profile below from the Winter 2002 issue of Ms. Magazine.

by Peggy Simpson

Representative Nancy Pelosi has political roots on both sides of the country.  Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., a legendary mayor of Baltimore for 12 years, took office when Pelosi was six.  She began working in politics, however, a world away from Baltimore 's Little Italy, when she moved to northern California in 1969 with her investment banker husband, Paul, and had five children in six years.

Pelosi, now, House Minority Leader and the highest ranking woman Congressional history, began linking her husband's business friends with Democratic activists, including Representative Phil Burton and his wife Sala, who later won her husband's seat in Congress.  By 1974, Pelosi was moving up the ranks of the state and national party, serving on the Democratic National Committee, four years as state party chair, and was finance chair for the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee in 1985-1986, earning much credit for helping Democrats regain power.  At age 47, in 1987, she made her first bid for elective office, winning the San Francisco congressional seat Sala Burton was vacating.  Pelosi has been reelected by huge margins ever since, with a voting record strong on choice, environmental protection, human rights, and increased research funds for AIDS and breast cancer, as well as strong positions on national security.  In October 2001 she became Minority Whip, the first woman of either party to achieve a top job in Congress.

Pelosi grew up seeing firsthand that politics requires hard work and meticulous organization.  "I learned how to count," she said, recalling the "many late-nighters, the legal pads, and the question' where do you get 100,000 votes?'"  Her family taught her to "organize around issues that related to working families."  Her mother, "one of the most astute politicians I would ever know, "Pelosi said, was "always anticipating, always planning" for political causes the family cared about. 

Former Representative Patricia Schroeder said "politics is second nature" to Pelosi but that it was her unusual "power sharing" instincts that propelled her to her "phenomenal" victory as House Democratic whip.  "People always felt that even if they disagreed on the issues, she was fair to them," Schroeder observed.  "And that is something the House lost in the Newt Gingrich era.  Everything then was brutal- 'you're with me or you're a terrorist.'"

Insiders gave Pelosi good marks as party whip, mobilizing her side of the aisle to back the Democratic agenda.  This October, however, the wider world took note when organized support for an Iraq resolution that gave "safe space" for dissidents to oppose President George W. Bush.  Other Democratic House leaders, including then-Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and third-ranked Texas centrist Martin Frost, back Bush's plan authorizing an Iraq invasion.  Pelosi, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, backed a proposal by military veteran John Spratt (D-SC), calling on Bush to first exhaust all diplomatic efforts to force Iraq to disarm.  Seventy percent of House Democrats sided with Pelosi, not Gephardt. 

In the post-election shake-up, Gephardt stepped down.  Frost withdrew from the leadership contest after seeing that Pelosi had lined up 85 percent of the votes and Pelosi was voted overwhelmingly to the position of the Minority Leader.  She named Spratt as top aide.

"She's very pragmatic," said representative Henry Waxman (D-CA).  "She understands politics and is committed on the issues to try and do things, and that's what American politics is about."  Another California Democrat, Robert Matsui, said she has "done a fantastic job as whip-and it's my belief that Nancy will win a race for speaker," if Democrats win back control of the House.

Pelosi said that while she grew up "protected" as the only daughter and youngest child, "it didn't occur to me that I couldn't do anything I set out to do."  She ignored her mother's appeals to become a nun, because, early on, she knew she wanted "more of the decision making" role in life.  She recognized then, as now, "the injustice in the Catholic Church" with priests having all the power and nuns next to none.  "If I could have become a priest, I would have."

It was this self-confidence that prompted her to agree to run for Sala Burton's seat.  Burton , who had succeeded her husband and was herself dying of cancer, urged Pelosi to step out front, after decades of working behind the scenes.  "Sala told me, 'You'll be satisfied to work on the issues yourself, versus getting others to work on them.  And you'll be able to make chance,'" Pelosi recalled.  "She was right."