Word: pelosi
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That fighting philosophy has defined Pelosi's leadership style as well. Her predecessor Dick Gephardt was known as "Ironbutt" for the hours he spent sitting and wheedling his colleagues. "Gephardt would plead with people to do the right thing, and they would know that there was no penalty for it," recalls a veteran senior aide on Capitol Hill. Not Pelosi. "Once you cross her," he says, "your life is not going to be very pleasant...
Knowing that also explains why the lefty caricature that Republicans paint of Pelosi has never quite stuck. Hers is not the loopy liberalism of San Francisco, where you can be branded as a right-wing extremist if you vote, as Pelosi once did, for cracking down on rave parties. The politicians in her family were progressives of a rougher cut, rooted in the Depression and the New Deal and in doing things for desperate people who turned to the government when there was nothing else for them...
...entirely clear that Pelosi would ever make the family business anything more than a hobby. After graduating from an all-girls Roman Catholic college in Washington, she married Paul Pelosi, whom she met at summer school at Georgetown University and who would eventually make a fortune in investment banking and real estate. They moved first to New York City and then to San Francisco. Pelosi had five children in six years. Between diapers and laundry, she raised money for Democrats and ultimately became the state-party chairwoman...
...convention to her city in 1984. In 1987 she decided to run for the seat left vacant by the death of Sala Burton, the widow of Phillip Burton, who had run his own storied political machine. One of Sala's final acts was to give her endorsement to Nancy Pelosi...
...Pelosi made her first move toward the leadership with a bid for the No. 2 job, which pitted her against Hoyer. As it happens, the two had interned in the office of Senator Daniel Brewster of Maryland in 1963. That experience also introduced Pelosi to the different opportunities that Capitol Hill offered men and women. Hoyer "worked directly for me and helped me with a number of different projects," recalled Brewster, 83, in an interview last week with Capital News Service. Pelosi was a receptionist--or, as Brewster put it, "an excellent front person...