Rep. Jackie Speier (D)

The congresswoman from the 12th is Jackie Speier (SPEER), a Democrat who won a special election in April 2008 to succeed Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who died during his 14th term in office. Born in San Francisco’s Sunset district, she graduated from the University of California at Davis and got her law degree at U.C.’s Hastings College of Law. While an undergraduate, she interned in Sacramento for Democratic Assemblyman Leo Ryan and later joined his staff after he was elected to Congress. In November 1978, Speier accompanied third-term Rep. Ryan on a trip to Jonestown, Guyana, to investigate claims that some of Ryan’s constituents, who were members of a church called the Peoples Temple, were being held against their will by the Rev. Jim Jones of San Francisco. Some defectors from the church joined Ryan’s entourage for the journey home, but the group made it only as far as the airport. Four assassins sent by Jones opened fire on the defenseless group. Ryan and four others, including two journalists, were killed. Speier was shot five times and left for dead on the airstrip, where she waited 15 hours before the Guyana police rescued her. In the meantime, Jones, back at his jungle camp, set in motion events that shocked the world. He forced his cult followers to commit “revolutionary suicide” by drinking poison-laced punch, which resulted in the deaths of more than 900 followers, some of them babies and children.

Once back in California, Speier underwent 10 surgeries, including skin grafts. Despite her injuries, she ran in the special election to succeed Ryan, but she got only 15% of the total vote and finished third among Democrats in the primary. She returned to the Bay Area and built her political career, starting on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and then serving 18 years in the Legislature. Her pinnacle achievement was legislation protecting consumers’ privacy from invasive practices by banks and insurance companies. In 2006, she unsuccessfully sought the nomination for lieutenant governor.

Before Lantos died, Speier explored running for his House seat in 2008, when Lantos would turn 80 years old. But Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, announced his retirement in early January, endorsed Speier as his successor, and died in February of complications from cancer of the esophagus. Speier immediately became the front-runner to succeed him. Stanford University law professor Larry Lessig, who has crusaded against the influence of money in politics, briefly considered a challenge, but decided not to run and candidly conceded that he would probably have lost to Speier. She won the all-party election with 75% of the vote against four little-known opponents.

In the House, Speier quickly established her mark as an ardent and sometimes outspoken liberal. Immediately after she took her oath of office, she caused an unusual ruckus when she launched a sharp partisan attack on President George W. Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. “History will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one,” she declared. Her remarks triggered a volley of boos among Republican members on the House floor and prompted Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California to walk out of the chamber. “Her conduct was inappropriate and violated House rules,” Issa later said. Speier responded that she had been “forthright,” and she called the Republicans’ reaction “childlike and inappropriate in their treatment of a new member.”

In September 2008, Speier got a bill passed renaming the San Mateo post office in honor of Leo Ryan. In other highlights of her first term, she called for a national speed limit of 60 miles per hour on freeways in urban areas to reduce gasoline consumption. As a member of the Financial Services Committee, she sponsored proposals to regulate credit agencies and to raise federal housing-loan limits in high-cost areas. Her opposition scuttled a bipartisan 2008 proposal to create an office of insurance information in the Treasury Department. She objected that the measure could pre-empt state laws that limit rate increases. In February 2009, Speier joined 20 mostly moderate House Democrats who voted against the omnibus spending bill. In particular, she criticized the approval of a slew of earmarks for individual lawmakers’ districts “without spending enough time to fully examine where the money is going.” She created her own citizens’ panel to review congressional earmarks and chose Lessig to chair it.