ShareThisBy MARC SANDALOW
Friday, November 10, 2006
On a snowy morning last December when the talk in Washington was that Rep. Nancy Pelosi's support for pulling troops from Iraq might cost Democrats the 2006 election, a reporter asked Pelosi whether she needed to gain seats in the coming election to return as Democratic leader.
"I fully intend to be standing here as speaker of the House next year. Any other questions?" Pelosi responded.
Nearly a year later, Pelosi has exceeded even her own expectations. Not only will she be speaker, but her party will govern with a comfortable majority after picking up at least 28 seats. The Senate will be in Democratic hands. Her picture is expected next week on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and there is already talk that she should run for president in 2008.
So how did the San Francisco congresswoman, who even some Democrats said was too partisan, liberal and shrill to lead the party, take them to the majority?
The answer has as much to do with the tactical skills Pelosi developed as chairwoman of the California Democratic Party in the early 1980s as her positions on policy matters such as the war, which now are regarded well within the mainstream of American politics.
Pelosi is a hands-on political operator who was personally involved in more than 60 congressional races through election day, aides say.
After Democrats lost three House seats in the 2004 election, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders made a series of strategic decisions _ to recruit conservative Democratic candidates, refuse to compromise on Social Security, threaten to punish House Democrats who don't vote with the party, aggressively go after President Bush on Iraq _ that contributed to the largest Democratic gains since the post-Watergate election of 1974.
"We had plans starting 23 months ago _ when we were told we were the permanent minority, to give it up, accept your fate," Pelosi recalled in an interview just before Tuesday's election. "Harry Reid (the Senate Democratic leader from Nevada) and I decided we would have to create our own environment, because that diagnosis was totally unacceptable."
Anger at Bush, at the war in Iraq and at the conduct of Republicans running Congress were critical components of the Democratic victory. Nevertheless, players from both parties credit Pelosi, along with Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, her choice to run the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for shrewdly harnessing those sentiments for Democratic gain.
"What Pelosi has been successful doing is channeling that anger and creating the environment in districts around the country to take advantage _ to have surfers poised on their surfboard to take advantage of the wave," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic Party strategist and former campaign committee official.
Pelosi, who first won the leader's post in part because of her fundraising prowess, has raised roughly $110 million for Democratic candidates since becoming leader in November 2002, according to her staff.
Even members of her inner circle expressed surprise at how quickly Democrats have seized the majority.
Pelosi's first national election as the Democratic leader was unsuccessful in 2004, when attention was focused on the presidential contest between Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
"I honestly believed we would win the White House. I staked everything on that," Pelosi said.
The first step toward regrouping was to take down the re-elected Republican president, Pelosi said.
"We went outside Congress and got help from professionals in the corporate world who told us, 'You're No. 2 and you want to be No. 1. You have to take down No. 1.' "
The opportunity came early in 2005 when Bush introduced his Social Security plan. Democrats rallied to defeat it and at Pelosi's insistence rejected calls that they introduce an alternative.
"Keep the spotlight on him. Take his numbers down," she said, a formula that Democrats embraced for much of the past two years.
Pelosi's rhetoric grew sharper after the 2004 election. She called then-Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay "not only unethical, but delusional." She called Bush "oblivious, in denial, dangerous."
Republican scandals and the party's failure to move legislation led to a steady decline in Congress' approval ratings, leading Democrats to grow more confident about the 2006 election.
And then "along came Katrina and sealed the deal," Pelosi said of the bungled government response to the hurricane that decimated New Orleans in 2005 and prompted many Republicans to lose faith with their own leaders.
The hurricane came just as Democrats were in the final stages of recruiting candidates to run for Congress, a task that yielded much better results when the once-popular president's approval ratings dipped into the mid-30s.
Later in the fall, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a 37-year-Marine vet, a former war supporter and a close ally of Pelosi, announced that the Iraq war was a failure and called on Bush to begin an early withdrawal.
Pelosi stood aside for the first days but soon embraced the plan and stepped into a noisy public debate over the Democratic position on the war.
Pelosi showed no sign of retreat, and 11 months later the notion of a phased withdrawal is widely accepted by voters and elected officials.
Pelosi's efforts have made her a lock to be named speaker-designee when the new Democratic Caucus gathers in Washington next week. The entire House will vote on the new speaker as its first order of business when it convenes Jan. 3.
Pelosi will be the first woman, first Californian and first Italian American to become speaker, an accomplishment she often mentions on the stump. Even Bush honored her election Thursday as "historic."
After spending the past four years trying to attain the majority, Pelosi now has the daunting task of keeping the majority together.
Asked last week if she is afraid of the pitfalls of keeping the Democratic Caucus united, Pelosi responded: "Afraid is not a word that is in my vocabulary or my mentality."
