They made history once before. Now they’re trying to do it again.
Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly settled into their seats directly behind President Joe Biden as he delivered the opening lines of his first speech to a joint session of Congress. The annual ritual had been repeated for decades. But this time the tableau was very different.
For the first time ever, both leaders were women.
“Madame speaker, Madame vice president: From this podium, no president has ever said those words – and it’s about time,” Biden said, acknowledging the history of the moment on April 28, 2021.
Three years later, Harris is aiming to make history again by becoming the nation’s first female president.
When she formally accepts the Democratic nomination Thursday night at the party’s national political convention in Chicago, she will owe her rise to the top of the ticket in part to Pelosi, whose behind-the-scenes pressure campaign led Biden to drop out of the race just four weeks ago and to the party’s decision to anoint Harris as the nominee.
It was a remarkable turn of events that once again brought together the two most powerful women in American politics – both from the San Francisco Bay area, both products of the city’s Democratic political machine, both at the pinnacle of power in Washington.
From different generations and family backgrounds, Harris and Pelosi aren’t close personally. But their unlikely rise through San Francisco’s competitive political environment instilled in them a mutual admiration, according to multiple people in the orbits of both women.
“Politically, officially, personally, I have great respect for her,” Pelosi said of Harris during a recent interview with USA TODAY.
Pelosi said she was particularly impressed by how quickly Harris wrapped up the presidential nomination after Biden’s exit and the skill with which she navigated her successful campaign for California attorney general more than a decade ago.
“She’s a person of faith and values in terms of civic life and being responsible in the community,” Pelosi said. “She’s a person officially who is strong. And you see how she’s led the way on a woman’s right to choose, for one thing, but there are many others. … She’s politically astute.”
Harris offers similar praise for Pelosi.
“There is so much about the future of our country that has relied on leaders like Nancy Pelosi who have the grit, the determination, the brilliance to know what is possible and then to make it so,” she said at a fundraiser in San Francisco last week.
The thing Pelosi admires most about Harris is the same thing Harris admires about her, said Ashley Etienne, who served as head of communications for Pelosi when she was House speaker and for Harris as vice president.
“Maybe it speaks to their California political roots, but it’s their level of sort of shrewdness, their political astute and shrewdness,” Etienne said. “Pelosi’s has been on full display for decades now. But now we’re starting to see Harris’ to a different degree, which is quite refreshing and interesting.”
Both have the ability to keep their heads down and do the background work necessary to excel without drawing attention to it, Etienne said.
“I always say Pelosi plays five-dimensional chess, and you rarely ever know what she’s fully up to,” she said. “And I think the same is the case with Harris.”
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