(Bloomberg) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday she is running for re-election to her San Francisco-area congressional seat, although she has previously indicated this would be her last term as the chamber’s top Democrat.
In a video released by her campaign, Pelosi ticked off a list of unfinished business like “justice for immigrants” and issues related to education, housing, and other goals. She said voting rights and even Democracy itself are under assault, pointing to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and its political repercussions.
“While we have made progress, much more needs to be done to improve people’s lives,” Pelosi said. She added this fall’s midterm elections “are crucial: nothing less is at stake than our Democracy.”
“But we don’t agonize, we organize. I am running for re-election to Congress to deliver for the people and defend democracy,” she said.
Pelosi, 81, has been in Congress since 1987.
Her announcement would appear to delay what had widely been anticipated to be the close of a trailblazing career for the first and only woman to serve as House speaker and the opening of a new era of congressional Democratic politics.
Pelosi’s silence on whether she will also seek to remain in Democratic leadership leaves the party to decide whether to reshape its hierarchy — particularly if it loses the House majority this fall. Pelosi, a fierce political and legislative tactician, is also a superstar fundraiser.
She had been signaling for months that her time in Congress was soon ending and that she was intending to keep a deal with younger party members that this term as speaker would be her last.
Pelosi offered recently that shepherding President Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure and social spending packages to passage with a narrow House majority would be a culmination of her congressional service. The social spending measure, however, remains stalled in the Senate, where an intra-party rift threatens to sink it or force it to be dramatically scaled back.
Pelosi has led Democrats through some of the most consequential events and battles they faced in the late 20th- and early 21st centuries guiding Congress’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and responding to the attack on the Capitol in January 2021.
She also served as a combative foil to President Donald Trump, including overseeing his two impeachments by the House.
Her strong and lengthy leadership hold over her party has come with some drawbacks, which now may come to roost as Democrats face an uphill battle to keep the House majority.
Once the party’s leading liberal lightning rod, Pelosi in the past three years has had to struggle to keep her caucus unified with the flexing by more progressive, mostly younger, new House Democrats of their demands.
Several House Democrats are eyeing that role, some reflecting a new generation of leadership ready to take over. But some Democrats who over the years have been in the wings, eventually tired of waiting — either moving on to the Senate, or choosing to seek other elected positions, or leaving politics, altogether.
Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesman, asked whether, if re-elected, she would seek the speakership or leadership of the Democratic Caucus, said: “The speaker is not on a shift, she’s on a mission.”
(Updates with Pelosi spokesman, in final paragraph.)
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