Nancy Pelosi won't seek reelection, ending her storied career in the US
House
[November 07, 2025]
By LISA MASCARO
WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi will not seek reelection
to the U.S. House, bringing to a close her storied career as not only
the first woman in the speaker's office but arguably the most powerful
in American politics.
Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for nearly 40 years, announced
her decision Thursday.
“I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” Pelosi said in a video
address to voters.
Pelosi, appearing upbeat and forward-looking as images of her decades of
accomplishments filled the frames, said she would finish out her final
year in office. And she left those who sent her to Congress with a call
to action to carry on the legacy of agenda-setting both in the U.S. and
around the world.
“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,”
she said. “We have made history. We have made progress. We have always
led the way.”
Pelosi said, “And now we must continue to do so by remaining full
participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we
hold dear.”
The decision, while not fully unexpected, ricocheted across Washington,
and California, as a seasoned generation of political leaders is
stepping aside ahead of next year's midterm elections. Some are leaving
reluctantly, others with resolve, but many are facing challenges from
newcomers eager to lead the Democratic Party and confront President
Donald Trump.
Pelosi, 85, remains a political powerhouse and played a pivotal role
with California's redistricting effort, Prop 50, and the party's
comeback in this week's election. She maintains a robust schedule of
public events and party fundraising, and her announced departure touches
off a succession battle back home and leaves open questions about who
will fill her behind-the-scenes leadership role at the Capitol.
Former President Barack Obama said Pelosi will go down in history as
"one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had.”
An unmatched force in Congress
An architect of the Affordable Care Act during Obama's tenure, and a
leader on the international stage, Pelosi came to Congress later in
life, a mother of five mostly grown children, but also raised in a
political family in Baltimore, where her father and brother both served
in elected office.
Long criticized by Republicans, who have spent millions of dollars on
campaign ads vilifying her as a coastal elite and more, Pelosi remained
unrivaled. She routinely fended off calls to step aside by turning
questions about her intentions into spirited rebuttals, asking if the
same was being posed of her seasoned male colleagues on Capitol Hill.
In her video address, she noted that her first campaign slogan was “a
voice that will be heard.”
And with that backing, she became a speaker “whose voice would certainly
be heard,” she said.
But after Pelosi quietly helped orchestrate Joe Biden’s withdrawal from
the 2024 presidential race, she has decided to pass the torch, too.
Last year, she experienced a fall resulting in a hip fracture during a
whirlwind congressional visit to allies in Europe, but even still it
showcased her grit: It was revealed she was rushed to a military
hospital for surgery — after the group photo, in which she's seen
smiling, poised on her trademark stiletto heels.
Pelosi's decision also comes as her husband of more than six decades,
Paul Pelosi, was gravely injured three years ago when an intruder
demanding to know “Where is Nancy?” broke into the couple’s home and
beat him over the head with a hammer. His recovery from the attack, days
before the 2022 midterm elections, is ongoing.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., arrives to speak about the
House coronavirus bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, March, 13,
2020. (AP Photo/Scott Applewhite, File)
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Pelosi faced a potential
primary challenge in California. Newcomer Saikat Chakrabarti, who
helped devise progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political
rise in New York, has mounted a campaign, as has state Sen. Scott
Wiener.
While Pelosi remains an unmatched force for the Democratic Party,
having fundraised more than $1 billion over her career, her next
steps are uncertain. First elected in 1987 after having worked in
California state party politics, she has spent some four decades in
public office.
Madam speaker takes the gavel
Pelosi’s legacy as House speaker comes not only because she was the
first woman to have the job but also because of what she did with
the gavel, seizing the enormous powers that come with the suite of
offices overlooking the National Mall.
During her first tenure, from 2007 to 2011, she steered the House in
passing landmark legislation into law — the Affordable Care Act, the
Dodd-Frank financial reforms in the aftermath of the Great Recession
and a repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy against
LGBTQ service members.
With Obama in the White House and Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of
Nevada leading the Senate, the 2009-10 session of Congress ended
among the most productive since the Lyndon B. Johnson era.
But a conservative Republican “tea party” revolt bounced Democrats
from power, ushering in a new style of Republicans, who would pave
the way for Trump to seize the White House in 2016.
Determined to win back control, Pelosi helped recruit and propel
dozens of women to office in the 2018 midterm elections as Democrats
running as the resistance to Trump’s first term.
On the campaign trail that year, Pelosi told The Associated Press
that if House Democrats won, she would show the “power of the
gavel.”
Pelosi returns to the speaker's office as a check on Trump
Pelosi became the first speaker to regain the office in some 50
years, and her second term, from 2019 to 2023, became potentially
more consequential than the first, particularly as the Democratic
Party's antidote to Trump.
Trump was impeached by the House — twice — first in 2019 for
withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine as it faced a hostile Russia at its
border and then in 2021 days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S.
Capitol. The Senate acquitted him in both cases.
Pelosi stood up the Jan. 6 special committee to probe Trump's role
in sending his mob of supporters to the Capitol, when most
Republicans refused to investigate, producing the 1,000-page report
that became the first full accounting of what happened as the
defeated president tried to stay in office.
After Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm
elections, Pelosi announced she would not seek another term as party
leader.
Rather than retire, she charted a new course for leaders, taking on
the emerita title that would become used by others, including
Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California during his brief tenure
after he was ousted by his colleagues from the speaker's office in
2023.
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