Nancy Pelosi elected US House speaker for second time

Nancy Pelosi is elected US House speaker, the only woman who has held the post and now one of few elected officials to return to it.

California Democrat Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker of the House of Representatives this morning, making her the first person to reclaim the gavel since 1955.

Mrs Pelosi picked up the majority of votes needed to win the speaker’s gavel and lead the House in an era of divided government. She will take the reins of an ideologically diverse Democratic caucus into the 2020 presidential race. She won 220 votes to 192 for Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy of California. Eighteen members voted for other candidates and three members voted present.

The 116th Congress convened at noon local time with Democrats newly in control of the House of Representatives and Republicans still leading the Senate, the first time in modern history a new session of Congress opened during a partial government shutdown.

Mrs Pelosi, 78, was first chosen to lead the House Democratic caucus in 2002 and served as the first female speaker from 2007 to 2011. The Baltimore-born daughter of a congressman, she rose through California party politics, starting as a campaign volunteer, and was first elected to Congress in 1987.

Accepting the post, she acknowledged that she had “no illusions” working with Republicans will be easy in the era of Donald Trump.

“We have no illusions that our work will be easy, that all of us in this chamber will always agree,” she said. “But let each of us pledge that when we disagree, we will respect each other and we will respect the truth,” she added.

“This House will be for the people,” she said in prepared opening remarks. She said she wanted to work “to lower health costs and prescription drugs prices, and protect people with pre-existing conditions; to increase paychecks by rebuilding America with green and modern infrastructure — from sea to shining sea.”

Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is photographed with fellow Congresswomen during the opening session of the 116th Congress at the US Capitol.

In the Senate, Republicans hold a 53-47 majority. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has led his party in the Senate since 2007, has two more seats than before last year’s midterm elections.

Both chambers are expected to focus on reopening portions of the government which have been closed for 13 days due to a funding lapse. House Democrats plan to put forward a package of six full-year spending bills that would fund most of the shut-down part of the government through September. Separately, they will propose a short-term extension of current funding through Feb. 8 for the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. McConnell has largely put the onus of negotiating on President Trump and Senate Democrats, whose votes will be needed to pass spending legislation through the chamber.

The 116th Congress is the most diverse in terms of race and gender, and both chambers will include more members hailing from their parties’ more ideologically extreme wings.

One hundred and two women will serve in the House and 25 in the Senate, increasing the percentage of women in Congress to 24 per cent from 20 per cent, according to analysis by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

The incoming lawmakers constitute the least politically experienced House of Representatives in the chamber’s history, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. Among the freshmen of the 116th Congress, just 32 per cent have state-level political experience and 15 per centhave local government experience.

The last lawmaker to resume the position of House speaker was Sam Rayburn in 1955, when the Texas Democrat took the gavel for the third time.

The Wall Street Journal