Last week, less than a month on the job, Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic whip and the highest-ranking woman in Congress, had to deliver. It was one thing to persuade a majority of Democratic House members to elect her to the leadership position, the No. 2 spot in the Democratic lineup. It was quite another to deliver Democratic votes to pass the Shays-Meehan campaign finance bill. 

There were a dozen attempts to kill or damage the bill to outlaw soft money, the largely unregulated contributions to political parties. But when the 16-hour marathon debate ended at 2:45 a.m. on Valentine's Day, Pelosi's whip team delivered all but 12 Democrats in support of Shays-Meehan, while her Republican counterpart, GOP Whip Tom DeLay, lost 41 Republicans. "There is no way we could have done this without Nancy and her whip team," said Rep. Martin Meehan, the Massachusetts Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill. 

Later that day, DeLay approached Pelosi on the House floor. "That was quite impressive, especially on a maiden voyage," he said. 

Rep. Barney Frank, the fast-talking Democrat from Massachusetts, wisecracked: "It's been a long time since Nancy was a maiden." 

Certainly no maiden in politics. But the California congresswoman in the Armani suits is breaking ground for women in politics. 

That reality hit her when House and Senate leaders from both parties paid a courtesy visit to President George W. Bush on Jan. 23, the day Congress returned to work. 

Pelosi had attended many White House meetings but says this felt different, as though she were the first person to peek over a wall into forbidden territory. "There was no one else to check with," she recalls. When the door closed, all the relevant decision makers were in the room--and a woman was among them for the first time. 

More visible, more vulnerable 

Heady stuff for a lifelong feminist, but dangerous too. Pelosi assumes her leadership position at a challenging time for Democrats, who desperately want to take back control of the House but must step delicately to make sure no light shines between them and the Republican president on the war against terrorism. Pelosi is a raging liberal, a longtime champion of human rights and an outspoken defender of causes like AIDS and abortion rights. And as the lone female in the classic male political tableau of dark blue suits and rep ties, she is more visible, and therefore more vulnerable to attack. 

Moreover, "She is taking this on at a time of both war and economic crisis," says Marie Wilson, president of the White House project, a program aimed at getting a woman elected president. "This is where women are least trusted in executive positions in this country." 

Pelosi is acutely aware that plenty of people would love to see her fall flat on her chiseled face. 

"We're in politics. There are traps all over the Capitol for everybody," she says. "I had expected to have a tough race when I ran for this. I wanted a tough race and a hard-fought victory so nobody could ever say that I got it because people thought we should have a woman." 

Indeed, it did not hurt that she was a woman. Many Democratic members openly said it was past time that a woman held a top leadership position while she was campaigning against Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland for the whip's job. Her gender, California base and three years of non-stop campaigning for the job and for Democratic candidates contributed to a decisive secret ballot victory, 118 to 95. 

Money helped too. She raised more than $4 million for Democratic House candidates in the last election, about three times more than Hoyer did. 

While she clearly is enjoying what she also disparages as "all this whoop-dee-do about me being the first woman," the real work has just begun. The whip is the quintessential insider's job, the leader assigned to line up votes on legislation, a particularly tough job for the minority party. The name whip comes from the whippet, a sleek English dog bred to round up the hounds during the hunt, though Pelosi admits that lining up Democratic House votes is more like herding cats. 

During the Shays-Meehan debate, she headed up an elaborate communications network. Rep. Meehan says she knew at any moment on every vote who was sure and who was shaky. She designated as many as three handlers to baby-sit the particularly woozy Democrats to keep them from losing nerve. One controversial amendment would have exempted the National Rifle Association and its allies from the law. A vote against it could easily cost a Democrat from a swing district his congressional seat. 

Instead of ending the vote as usual after 15 minutes, GOP leaders, who control the gavel, kept the vote open, convinced they could persuade a few more members to back the NRA proposal. But Pelosi's whip count was so precise and she was so certain the amendment would lose, her staff confirms she allowed several Democrats to vote for the amendment to spare them the political grief of snubbing the NRA. 

Her allowance for those shades of gray is part of what won her the position in the first place. 

"Unanimity is a word that practically does not exist in the Democratic Party," she says. 

Started as stay-at-home mom 

Pelosi herself is a little more complicated than a stereotypical San Francisco lefty. 

She is a 61-year-old grandmother of five but she bears no resemblance to the gray-haired Italian grandmas of her native Little Italy neighborhood in Baltimore. She has the well-cared-for look of someone who has taken advantage of good genes and a lot of money. 

Pelosi has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress but she cuts deals on the House Appropriations Committee like a seasoned ward boss. She is now on the career track to be the first female speaker, but she was a traditional stay-at-home mom and refused to run for public office until her kids were grown and she was 47. 

Pelosi may not be well known outside of Democratic Party circles, but the San Francisco congresswoman is not exactly an overnight success story. She was born to politics. At the time of her birth in 1940, her father, Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr., represented a Maryland district in the U.S. House. Pelosi is the youngest of D'Alesandro's seven children and the only girl. By her own admission, she was a princess who grew up coddled by her father and brothers. She says this gave her a comfort level with boys and men, an advantage, she says, in navigating the male-dominated political seas. 

When she started 1st grade, her father was elected mayor of Baltimore. (Her brother Thomas J. D'Alesandro III also has served as mayor of Baltimore.) When she left home to attend Trinity College, a Catholic women's school in Washington, her father was still mayor. 

"We always thought our parents were on the side of the angels. We were Democrats. They were helping people and we thought that was God's work," she says. 

But it was not her work, at least not at first. She moved to the Bay Area with her husband, San Francisco native Paul Pelosi, the son of Italian immigrants who has made a fortune as an investment banker. And she had five children in six years, four girls and one boy. 

She was always an active Democrat and held top party positions but she stayed largely behind the scenes. For example, she played a pivotal role in persuading Gov. Jerry Brown to challenge President Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential primary in Maryland. But she repeatedly declined opportunities to run for office. 

"I said, 'I have five teenagers. I don't think so,' " remembers Pelosi. 

The situation changed when her youngest child, Alexandra, was a senior in high school in 1987. Rep. Sala Burton had cancer and on her deathbed picked Pelosi to be her successor. Burton had taken the place of her husband, Rep. Phil Burton, a legendary congressional power broker who was a mentor to Pelosi before his death in 1983. She couldn't let the opportunity pass. 

Fifteen years later, Pelosi still says, with a genuine pang of regret, it would have been better if she could have waited one more year until her daughter had gone off to college. 

A few weeks ago, she moved into the Democratic whip's office, a suite of tiny rooms wedged into the third floor of the U.S. Capitol. 

On her non-stop 18-hour days she is now trailed by a security detail, assigned to the whip's office after Sept. 11. She began one recent day with a breakfast meeting at the State Department between appropriators and Secretary of State Colin Powell. She spoke to the United Auto Workers at a downtown hotel and was interviewed by Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory on the ride back to the Capitol. 

McGrory, wearing sensible flat shoes, marveled at how Pelosi teetered around on very high pale blue and taupe suede heels, an exact match to her jacket and trousers and a bargain purchased at 80 percent off retail at a Taiwan shoe store. 

Pelosi met with United Farm Workers representatives on how she could shake loose some federal training money, spoke at the staff retreat of Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, then huddled with academics from Pittsburgh about getting the feds to support a scholarship program for students from areas of conflict like Bosnia. 

An intelligence insider 

She kept fretting that she needed time for her legislative work. She is not only a longtime member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which decides who gets federal dollars, but has served on the House Intelligence Committee for 10 years. As the top Democrat on that panel, she is one of the "gang of four," the four members of Congress who must by law be informed by the administration of relevant secrets. 

At one point, the most powerful woman in the U.S. House was hungry but had no time for lunch. Rep. Holt pointed her toward the buffet set out for his staff. She grabbed half a ham sandwich and ate it carefully as she walked briskly back to the Capitol office. 

Pelosi says her passion is issues. In that respect, she is a classic liberal lawmaker. "In my view, it is all about children. It is all about the future. If we are just here refereeing the battles of the titans on economic issues, we are just doing a very small part of our job," she says. "The main part of our job is what are we doing about these children's future. How are we thinking ahead." 

While her counterpart, House Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, is known as "the Hammer," a disciplinarian who threatens his Republicans with loss of committee assignments and chairmanships if they fail to toe the party line, Pelosi is still the polished hostess from Pacific Heights. She's not given to showing a fist. 

"I want to have the same result [as DeLay] but I'm not sure I will get there the same way," she said during an interview before the Shays-Meehan vote. 

On the eve of Pelosi's swearing-in ceremony, a Democratic congresswoman from Evanston, Jan Schakowsky, subsequently named chief deputy whip, went to the House floor to hail Pelosi's election as a "historic landmark in the evolution of our great democracy. ... Women do not want to just be at the table, we want to be at the head of the table. Because of the gentlewoman from California, we are energized and empowered." 

What her new role means for women 

More than 12,000 people have served in Congress since the beginning of the republic, and only 215 have been women. The election of Rep. Nancy Pelosi as Democratic whip is a first for women in Congress. 

By holding the No. 2 job in the Democratic Party in the House, Pelosi is now in line to be the first female speaker if Democrats retake control of the House. 

While polls show the public trusts women in legislatures and other collective bodies where women share responsibility, there is still a reluctance among some to trust women in executive jobs and other positions with genuine power. 

As House Democratic whip, Pelosi has direct influence over the shape of the Democratic Party message and performance in Congress. 

-- Chris Black