Posted at 8:08 p.m., Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Pelosi set to become first female speaker
By Laura Litvan
Bloomberg News Service
Now comes the hard part.
The Democrats' gain of more than the 15 seats they needed for a House majority puts Pelosi, 66, on track to become the first female House speaker and the highest-ranking woman in U.S. political history. Constitutionally, the post puts her second in line to replace President George W. Bush, whose policies she has spent the last six years condemning.
"Today the American people voted for change and Democrats to take us in a new direction," Pelosi said today as she celebrated the Democrats' victory. She vowed to oversee "the most open, most honest Congress in history," and to appeal to Bush to "work together to find a new direction in Iraq."
Her accession, she said in an interview this weekend, is a chance to demonstrate that women can occupy the highest positions of power and "can breathe in that rarified atmosphere."
While she tends to stress her softer side as a grandmother of five with voters, she has shown she can be a tough leader in the House, threatening Democrats who defy her with the loss of top committee assignments. Republican opponents paint her as the perfect representative of her San Francisco district, which they say espouses values that are far more liberal than those of mainstream Americans by favoring gay marriage and a greater role for government.
