Word: pelosi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stylish grandmother of five who wears Armani suits and a permanent moonbeam smile, Pelosi, 62, grew up in Baltimore, Md., where both her father and brother served as mayor. She moved to California in 1969 with her husband, a San Francisco investment banker, and toiled as a party activist and fundraiser before running for Congress in 1987. Her signature issues--human rights, aids funding, environmental protection--put her as far as any Representative from DeLay, a pro-business Christian conservative from Sugar Land, Texas, whose nickname is "the Hammer" because of his take-no-prisoners approach to politics...
...have been friendly for years. DeLay once shocked Pelosi when he accepted an invitation to tour AIDS-treatment facilities with her in San Francisco. And she was touched when he slipped into her Feb. 6 swearing-in ceremony as whip to pay his respects. They may recognize in each other kindred political instincts. Pelosi ran a three-year insurgency to snare the whip's job from the initial favorite, Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer, by raising millions of campaign dollars in California and funneling them to grateful members of Congress. DeLay did the same to win his post...
...they both have their eye on bigger jobs. Pelosi is quietly angling to be speaker of the House if the Democrats retake the chamber and Gephardt resigns to run for President in 2004. DeLay is similarly maneuvering for majority leader Dick Armey's job; within 36 hours of Armey's announcement in December that he would retire at the end of this term, DeLay and top lieutenants had phoned all 222 Republican Congressmen to try to lock in their votes...
...persuasion often works better than hard-line tactics. Despite the bullwhip he keeps on a window ledge in his Capitol office, DeLay gets his way on most votes by carefully cultivating Republicans. During late-night sessions, Republicans crowd into his office to chat and munch on barbecue or pizza; Pelosi served Chinese takeout to Democrats in her office during midnight votes on campaign-finance reform in February and assembled a task force of 100 members to beat back more than a dozen amendments that DeLay had designed to sink the measure. "I threw everything I could think...
...Because Pelosi and DeLay represent the hard-core loyalists in their party, they can be polarizing figures. "You can't take Pelosi to every district, and you can't take DeLay to every district," admits Davis. Both have been called vindictive. Pelosi gave $10,000 to the primary opponent of the powerful Democratic Congressman John Dingell, who backed Hoyer in the race for whip. "That was dumb," says a senior House Democratic aide. DeLay has lately tried to tone down his bulldog image. At the party's January retreat, he staged a comedy skit, putting on a gray...