Why Nancy Pelosi was key to nudging Biden out: 'For her, it’s all about winning'

This story originally appeared at CalMatters.

When the dam of discontented Democrats calling upon President Joe Biden to suspend his flagging presidential campaign finally broke last week, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was standing at the floodgates.

Pelosi stepped down from being speaker of the House in 2022. Technically, that makes her a mere congressional backbencher from San Francisco, just one member, well into her 80s, among 212 other Democrats in the House of Representatives. That she has played such a pivotal role, mostly out of the spotlight, in convincing, badgering and pressuring Biden to end his campaign — a decision he announced in a letter today — may surprise some.

Longtime allies and observers of the former House speaker say it shouldn’t. This, they say, is who Pelosi has always been.

“She is very much a behind-the scenes vote-counting tactician. That’s what she’s good at. She knows how to win,” said Marc Sandalow, the former Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle whose Pelosi biography “Madam Speaker” debuted shortly after she was elected to lead the House in 2006.

Pelosi was early to publicly voice concerns about the viability of Biden’s campaign after a disastrous late June debate performance. When Biden attempted to slam the door shut on that discussion, it was Pelosi who subtly, but very publicly, nudged the door back open. When vulnerable congressional Democrats began fretting that a flagging Biden would drag them down come November, Pelosi reportedly offered to be a sounding board and repository of their complaints. When Rep. Adam Schiff came out last week as the most high-profile Democrat yet to call on Biden to exit for the sake of the party and country, many saw in it the handiwork — or at least, the tacit approval — of Pelosi, Schiff’s mentor and political benefactor. And when it came time to deliver the unwelcome pitch and tell Biden that his hopes for reelection were faint, it was Pelosi who reportedly gave him a dispassionate analysis of the polls, even as she remained evasive in her public statements.

For a storied political strategist, this may be the last play in a career of gambits. In triggering a risky and entirely unprecedented electoral reset for the Democratic Party so close to a presidential election that many voters believe is pivotal for the future of American democracy, it also may be her most consequential.

Sandalow is now a faculty member at the University of California Washington Center and stressed that he has no specific knowledge of Pelosi’s activities over the last month. But he sees a familiar character in the speaker emerita working the phones and guiding Biden to the exit based on an unsentimental reading of the electoral environment.

“By all accounts, she has great affection for Joe Biden,” said Sandalow. “But for her, it’s all about winning.”

Politics in the blood

“Cold-blooded,” or some synonym of the term, comes up a lot when discussing Pelosi’s political reputation. It’s usually meant as a compliment. It’s a term that Pelosi has proudly applied to herself. That, or a synonym.

“I’m more reptilian,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last year, describing the 2022 midterms. “Cold-blooded. To win the election.”

For Pelosi, any consideration of ideology is always tempered by electability. That’s sharply at odds with the caricature that Republicans and conservative media constructed around her during her years as speaker: the embodiment of San Francisco’s lefty politics and out-of-touch elitism. Pelosi’s personal views do tend to run progressive, but her leadership was never rooted in her policy preferences, said John Lawrence, her former chief of staff who now also works at the UC Washington Center.

“People have this mistaken notion of her as some sort of a zealous ideological warrior,” he said. “Her power, her strength, her reputation comes from the fact that she has a cold-blooded way of analyzing the facts, of taking her personal ideology or her personal aspirations out of the equation, and making decisions based on what is feasible.”

Many who know Pelosi’s life story attribute that to her upbringing.

Her father, Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., was a state legislator turned congressman turned Baltimore mayor — a committed New Deal liberal. Growing up in the city’s Little Italy, Pelosi’s childhood home also served as a community meeting place, campaign headquarters and constituent services center. When her older brother was elected mayor of Baltimore, few were surprised.

But coming of age as a woman in the 1960s, Pelosi’s political career was much less of a sure thing. All the more so when she married Paul Pelosi, losing her politically prized last name, and then moved with him to San Francisco, a town where “D’Alesandro” didn’t open many doors anyway.

From her perch in the city’s ritzy Presidio Terrace neighborhood, she still managed to start climbing the rungs of California Democratic political power — first as a fundraiser, then a city party leader, then chair of the California Democratic Party. All the while, she raised five kids.

“She had the disadvantage in some ways of being a very attractive, wealthy San Franciscan,” said Lawrence, which some in the city’s male-dominated political class took to mean that she was a lightweight. “I don’t think that lasted very long,” he said.

Nothing about Pelosi suggested that she would be a strong campaigner of the handshaking, baby-kissing variety. She regularly described herself as shy. Her gender remained a liability. But when Rep. Sala Burton, the wife of the late Rep. Phillip Burton, lay on her deathbed, it was “Nancy” she named as her hoped-for successor.

The Burton political machine that had dominated local politics for 24 years. Reporter John Jacobs described the made-for-TV-movie scene in his Phillip Burton biography, “A Rage for Justice”:

An independently wealthy resident of Pacific Heights who was at home in some circles where it was impolite to mention Phillip’s name, Pelosi seemed an odd choice. But this daughter of one congressman from Baltimore and sister of another was a partisan, liberal Democrat to her core.
From her sickbed, Sala questioned Pelosi closely on whether she was truly interested in the job. She would be 2,500 miles from her husband and five children; the hours would be long and grueling. Was Nancy Pelosi fully committed to serve? She looked at the dying woman and said, “I expect you to get well. If you do not, I would be honored to succeed you.”

John Burton, the last member of the Burton dynasty, saw another reason why Pelosi would be a smart pick. She was, in his words, “operational,” someone who could get things done (the notoriously profane Burton would not have used the word “things.”)

With him running her campaign, Pelosi won her first seat in 1987, her first and only close election. In the primary, she narrowly edged out Harry Britt, a socialist and political successor to Harvey Milk, who had the backing of organized labor, environmental activists and much of the gay community. But Pelosi had the San Francisco machine on her side, including then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. The Los Angeles Times reported that Pelosi spent more than her 13 opponents combined. Her role as political insider had its perks once she arrived in D.C. too. She already knew roughly half of the members of the Democratic delegation by name. Many had been at her home for fundraisers.

She would go on to become the first and only female House speaker and shepherd through landmark legislation, including the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare. Along the way, she nurtured the political careers of younger Democrats. Among them are two Californians who’ve been prominently mentioned as potential Biden replacements: Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — both of whom remained publicly loyal to Biden until the bitter end.

This month, as Pelosi worked with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and her successor, minority leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries cajoled Biden to close out his campaign, her personal and political connections to the rest of the House Democratic caucus were the source of her credibility and power, he said.

“She’s very much in the tradition of the smoke-filled backroom politician,” Sandalow said — minus the smoke. “There are still scores of House Democrats who owe their success to her…So the idea that she has enormous influence shouldn’t surprise anybody.”