Pelosi’s departure opens high-profile San Francisco seat; Ocasio-Cortez’s ex-chief of staff in race

Rep. Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she will retire at the end of this term, closing out a 20-term congressional career that carried her into history as the first female speaker of the U.S. House.

She lost that post and then regained it eight years later before turning over the reins to a younger generation of Democrats.

She was the driving force behind two administrations, those of President Obama and President Biden, including the passage of Obamacare in 2010 and the recovery from the 2008 Wall Street collapse and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

She also served as a foil to President Trump. She twice oversaw successful House votes to impeach the president, though the Senate acquitted him.

Mrs. Pelosi, 85, first won election to her seat in San Francisco in 1987.

“I have truly loved serving as your voice in Congress,” she said in a video message Thursday announcing her decision. “With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative.”

“As we go forward, my message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power. We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way, and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear,” she concluded in her video.

She had hinted at the move in recent days. She said she would have an announcement after Tuesday’s elections, as California voters approved new congressional maps aimed at reducing the number of Republican-held seats.

Fellow Democrats hailed her as an unparalleled leader and political icon.

“Nancy Pelosi is the greatest speaker in the history of our country,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, Colorado Democrat. “She has a backbone of steel, and her determination to stand up for our democracy will be written about for decades.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who succeeded Mrs. Pelosi as the Democratic leader in the House, called her “an incredible mentor, trusted friend and awesome colleague.”

Her departure opens a high-profile seat in an overwhelmingly Democratic district.

Two Democrats have entered the primary: state Sen. Scott Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat.

Another possibility is Mrs. Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, who has been involved in the Democratic Party for decades but has not officially declared her candidacy.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, commended Mrs. Pelosi for her years of service but said her departure was “a very important sign” about the direction of the Democratic Party.

“Even the famous San Francisco liberal is not far left enough for the neo-Marxists,” he said.

That was a reference to the Tuesday election of Zohran Mamdani, a self-proclaimed socialist, as mayor of New York City.

Indeed, Mrs. Pelosi rose as part of her party’s left flank and became its center before Democrats drifted even further to the left as young stars such as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez emerged.

During her four terms as speaker, from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, she oversaw the passage of the Affordable Care Act; the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which set standards for lawsuits over gender pay parity; the Recovery Act and the American Rescue Plan, to bolster the economy after economic downturns; and the Inflation Reduction Act, Mr. Biden’s major budget-climate law.

In a statement Thursday, Mr. Biden said, “I often said Nancy Pelosi was the best Speaker of the House in American history.”

She was instrumental in helping Mr. Biden exit the presidential race last year. Her swift endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris helped short-circuit any other challenges.

Mrs. Pelosi was presiding over the counting of votes from the Electoral College on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, disrupted business and invaded her office.

She forged a panel to investigate the events of that day, which became fuel for criminal cases against those in the mob and was used by special counsel Jack Smith in one of his criminal prosecutions of Mr. Trump.

Mrs. Pelosi’s role that day came under scrutiny after she was accused of refusing to accept National Guard troops in advance. She has maintained her stance that Mr. Trump is responsible for the delay in deploying the guard.

A video from Jan. 6 released last year showed her amid the chaos saying she took “full responsibility.”

“We have totally failed. We have to take some responsibility for not holding the security accountable for what could have happened,” she said.

Her daughter, a documentary filmmaker, recorded the video.

The animosity between Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Trump has persisted. She made headlines in 2020 when, while standing on the dais behind him, she ripped up her copy of his just-delivered State of the Union speech.

She recently labeled the president “the worst thing on the face of the earth.”

Mr. Trump told reporters Thursday, “I thought she was an evil woman who did a poor job, who cost the country a lot in damages and in reputation.”

He told Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy that he was happy to see Mrs. Pelosi go.

“The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America. I’m very honored she impeached me twice and failed miserably twice. Nancy Pelosi is a highly overrated politician,” the president said.

In a farewell piece written for The Atlantic, Mrs. Pelosi compared the resistance to Mr. Trump’s presidency to the founding generation’s fight against King George III and to President Lincoln’s struggle to preserve the nation.

“It is easy to despair. I know this is the way millions of Americans feel now. Yet the story of this country is the story of patience in tribulation, and hope in the face of fear,” she wrote. “What we choose to do in this hour of our history will determine the shape of America and the world for decades.”

Even before she was speaker, Mrs. Pelosi set the bar for her party’s left wing.

As party whip, she led the rebellion among House Democrats to the 2002 resolution that authorized President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, breaking with Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri.

She took over as minority leader after the 2002 elections and built her party for its eventual recapture of control of the House in the 2006 elections.

During her first speakership, she pulled Mr. Obama to the left with a wish list of health care and climate change bills. The health care measure was watered down into Obamacare in the Senate, and the climate change legislation never cleared the upper chamber.

She lost control of the House and the speakership in the tea party wave of 2010 but returned as minority leader for eight years before claiming the top post in the anti-Trump 2018 elections.

By the time Mr. Biden was in the White House, she was more of a brake on her party’s left wing, though still driving the president’s priorities.

Mr. Obama posted to social media a photo of himself and Mrs. Pelosi embracing at the White House.

“She made us proud to be Democrats, and will go down in history as one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had,” he said.