Pelosi showed her temper on Thursday after a reporter asked her a question she found annoying: would the 82-year-old lawmaker commit to serving the full two-year term to which she was just elected?
“What is this? What is this? Don’t bother me with a question like that,” Pelosi let fly. “Really, really, OK. I said what I’m gonna do. You know, those kinds of questions are such a waste of my time.”
Pelosi represents California’s 12th Congressional District, which in the 2022 elections included most of the city of San Francisco. Thanks to redistricting, in the coming 2024 elections it will instead represent several East Bay cities, including Oakland and Alameda.
Pelosi said last month, following the 2022 midterm elections, that she would not seek to return to the speaker’s post when the new Congress takes office in January. This is in keeping with a 2019 deal she struck with several hesitant lawmakers, who only voted for her if she agreed to their stipulations, one of which was term limits for top Democratic leaders. The House Democrats, now in the minority, instead elected Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to be minority leader.
Accordingly, Pelosi’s official portrait that will hang in the US Capitol was unveiled on Wednesday. The artist, Ronald Sherr, had completed the portrait in 2014 and it had been held in storage ever since. Sherr died a week before its unveiling.
However, Pelosi also said she was not stepping back from her elected office, and would serve her complete term.
That said, she has also clarified that one of her daughters, Christine Pelosi, might look to replace her mother as the 12th District’s representative. However, if she dies while in office, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, will be tasked with appointing a replacement to serve the rest of her term.
Pelosi has served in Congress since June 1987, and led the Democrats in the House since 2003. In addition to her 2019-2023 term as speaker, she also served in the role from 2007 until 2011, becoming the first woman to do so.
Speaking at the unveiling ceremony for Pelosi’s portrait on Thursday, her once-bitter rival, former House Speaker John Boehner, fought off tears as he praised her, saying there was “no other speaker of the House in the modern era, Republican or Democrat, who has wielded the gavel with such authority or with such consistent results.”
“Needless to say, you’re one tough cookie,” he added.