Even As A Freshman, Pelosi Was A Political Insider
The new class of House freshmen have gotten an awful lot of buzz for their willingness to upend the status quo. Many progressive rabble-rousers and moderate district-flippers have professed some dissatisfaction with the leadership and hierarchies of the House Democratic caucus. Much of their rhetoric centered on what they thought of the speaker of the House or what they wanted her to do. Moderates like Rep. Abigail Spanberger wanted a new speaker, while Rep. Rashida Tlaib wanted the speaker to give her a prime committee spot typically reserved for more seasoned members.
And that speaker in question? Rep. Nancy Pelosi, of course — the first woman speaker of the House, MaxMara poster girl, and polished face of the Democratic establishment for over a decade. Pelosi, a divisive figure in American politics and a near-universally acknowledged master of the legislative process, has served in Congress since 1987, making her freshman term 32 long years ago. These days she has become the object of high-profile dissension from a new generation in her party who want to break staid political conventions, yet when she first came to Washington, her insider party experience was seen as her strength.
As the 116th Congress kicks off, a potential Democratic battle looms not over ideology, but rather over how Democrats should best exert their power. For the newest crop of Democrats, overthrowing some of the old ways of doing things is key. But from the earliest days of her career, Pelosi has leveraged her access to backroom decision-making to exert political change. If the speaker and her caucus have a disagreement, it’s likelier to be about that point than about her policy positions.
Pelosi moved to California with her husband and five children in 1969, and her political involvement was shaped in part by her closeness to Democratic power broker Phil Burton.
Burton was a liberal legislative powerhouse who engineered rules changes in the House that helped break the power of conservative Southern Democrat committee heads, a change that, as The New York Times put it in his obituary, “brought greater influence to younger members.”
Pelosi herself would later find political strength by navigating the inner-sanctum politics of the Democratic Party in Congress, but her start in politics was as a fundraiser — her gracious home proved the perfect location to practice the art of separating people from their money. By 1976, she was a California member of the Democratic National Committee, and she was chair of the state Democratic Party from 1981 to 1983.
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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-as-a-freshman-pelosi-was-a-political-insider/
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