Jackie Speier for Congress: News Articles

Mortgage crisis tops Speier's concerns

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Newly elected U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, marked her first 30 days in Congress with a town hall meeting and residents expressed their concerns about the mortgage crisis, health care and foreign affairs.

Speier who spent the last few months on the campaign trail listening to concerns from constituents was prepared with answers on a number of different issues Saturday at the Doelger Community Center in Daly City. At least 200 people turned up for Speier's first community meeting and it seemed as though there were as many questions for the junior delegate.

Speier, a longtime consumer rights advocate, told constituents she was most interested in working to solve the home mortgage crisis and reforming health care into a single payer system.

Speier is supporting a plan that would in part allow judges to help determine loan settlements and grant $15 billion in federal funding to help save people from defaulting on their loans, she said.

A number of residents asked Speier specific questions related to their loan situations. Those residents said they were frustrated by major lenders that would not work with them to re-negotiate loans as they worked to avoid the possibility of foreclosure.

Much of the room applauded Speier's call for a single-payer health care system.

"We've got to get serious about health care in this country. Fifty percent of people who file for bankruptcy do so because of a health situation. Of that, 70 percent have health care," Speier said.

Sparked by a personal experience obtaining her father's prescription at the hospital, Speier said she is also plans to introduce legislation that would require the origin of medicine be listed. She recently learned that the majority of this countries prescription medication is manufactured outside the United States. In her recent experience, she learned her father's medication was recalled because it was produced at double strength.

"Some things need regulation. It's important we have regulations about health and safety issues," she said.

Speier was also urged to continue in the footsteps of the late Tom Lantos, who previously held the seat, in terms of foreign affairs. She was urged to support Burma, Israel and prevent escalating tension between the United States and Iran.

Speier said she plans to hold another town hall meeting marking her 100th day in Congress.

Dana Yates can be reached by e-mail: dana@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.

Speier to talk about first month in Congress

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Rep. Jackie Speier will hold a town hall meeting this morning in Daly City to talk about her first 30 days in office since she won a special election last month that sent her to Washington.

Speier, D-San Mateo, was elected by a landslide April 8 to fill the term of Tom Lantos, who died in February. She received 77 percent of the vote in the 12th Congressional District, beating a fellow Democrat, two Republicans and a Green Party candidate.

On her first day in Congress two days later, Speier criticized President Bush's Iraq policies and called for an immediate troop withdrawal, prompting some Republicans to boo and walk out of the chambers.

Since then, she has voted for a bill that would ban private firms from collecting IRS debts and another, signed Wednesday by Bush, that guarantees federal student loans will continue to be issued despite a turbulent economy.

Speier also has co-sponsored 21 bills, among them measures to recognize the Armenian genocide, protect students' health coverage and hold China accountable for unsavory business practices, but has not yet authored any legislation.

"This is just going to be the first time she's gotten to talk to the public and her supporters about what the first month has been like," said Alex Tourk, her campaign manager.

Speier still is hiring staff and waiting for a committee assignment, said her spokesperson, Mike Larsen.

"We thought we were going to hear the second week but we haven't yet," Larsen said. "It's been kind of frustrating for her."

Speier still is in campaign mode, with less than a month until the June 3 primary to become the Democratic nominee for the 12th District in the November election. That's when voters will choose someone to serve a new two-year term beginning in January 2009.

The town hall meeting starts at 10:30 a.m. at the Doelger Center, 101 Lake Merced Blvd., Daly City. A luncheon at noon will follow.

Ex-Lawmaker Wins Race for Lantos' Seat

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Former state lawmaker Jackie Speier, a survivor of the Jonestown tragedy three decades ago, won a special congressional election to fill the seat of the late Rep. Tom Lantos.

With her win Tuesday, Speier avoided a runoff in the contest to replace the 14-term congressman, who died in February. Speier, a former state assemblywoman and senator, also plans to seek a full term in 12th Congressional District later this year.

Speier, 57, had nearly 78 percent of the vote in unofficial returns. She needed more than 50 percent to avoid a June 3 runoff election. Also on the special election ballot were a fellow Democrat, two Republicans and a member of the Green Party.

In 1978, Speier was an aide to Rep. Leo Ryan and accompanied him on a mission to Guyana. The purpose was to investigate claims that Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones was holding followers against their will at the California-based group's Jonestown compound in the South American country.

An ambush at the Jonestown airstrip left Ryan and four others dead and Speier severely wounded. Jones and his followers then committed mass murder-suicide, drinking cyanide-poisoned punch. More than 900 people died, including hundreds of children.

Speier lost a special election to fill Ryan's seat in 1979 but went on to represent the area as a San Mateo County supervisor and in the state Assembly and Senate. In 2006, she narrowly lost a campaign for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.

She had been endorsed by California's leading Democrats in Congress -- Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Her election Tuesday makes her a Democratic superdelegate; she told The Associated Press she supports Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Also Tuesday, an ex-Senate aide defeated a former city councilwoman in a runoff election in Texas as Houston-area Republicans chose a nominee for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's old congressional seat.

Pete Olsona former aide to U.S. Sens. Phil Gramm and John Cornyn, overpowered Shelley Sekula Gibbs with 68 percent of the vote to her 31 percent in unofficial, complete returns. The winner will face first-term Democratic Rep. Nick Lampson in November.

Sekula Gibbs, a former Houston City Council member, had been the top vote-getter in a 10-person Republican field in the March 4 primary.

In the race for district attorney of Harris County, which includes Houston, Pat Lykos, a former police officer and judge, defeated Kelly Siegler, a flamboyant prosecutor, with 53 percent of the vote to 47 percent to gain the Republican nomination.

Chuck Rosenthal resigned as district attorney amid a contempt of court charge and a scandal involving racist and sexual e-mails found on his county computer, as well as political campaign material that wasn't supposed to be on a government-owned machine.

Speier to Congress

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Former state senator Jackie Speier succeeded in her bid to represent the 12th Congressional District, fulfilling a goal she first set for herself 29 years ago.

Speier first ran for the seat as a young legislative legal council who survived gunfire in Guyana, which killed the U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan. She lost the campaign to fill her assassinated boss’s seat in 1979, but won last night with 79.9 percent of the vote in San Mateo County. The 12th Congressional District represents most of San Mateo County and a southern portion of San Francisco. Tom Lantos held the seat for27 years and was expected to defend the seat against Speier in November, but died Feb. 11 of esophageal cancer.

"Often times there are not many second chances and I feel grateful for this opportunity," Speier told a crowd of supporters at the Machinists Hall in Burlingame.

The 57-year-old Speier will board a plane tomorrow for Washington, D.C. where she will immediately begin working.

She told supporters that she will fight for issues citizens have discussed with her over the course of her campaign. Those issues include putting home buyers needs before those of "Wall Street speculators," quality health care, adequate college financing, an improved Environmental Protection Agency and the end to the war in Iraq.

Republican Candidate Greg Conlon received 9.6 percent of the vote, Republican Mike Maloney received 5.1 percent, Democrat Michelle McMurry received 3.7 percent and Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson received 1.7 percent, according to the San Mateo County Elections Office.

Speier began her political career as a staff member for U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan in the 1970s. She went with Ryan to Jonestown, Guyana to investigate Jim Jones and the People’s Temple cult in 1978. During that trip, Ryan was assassinated and Speier was shot and left for dead on a tarmac in Guyana. She survived and her career continued.

She ran an unsuccessful campaign to fill Ryan’s seat after his assassination. She was later elected to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in 1980 at the age of 30. She was elected to the state Assembly in 1986 and served until termed out. During that time, Speier’s husband Steven Sierra was killed in a car accident involving an uninsured driver. Speier was pregnant with her second child at the time.

Speier was elected to the state Senate in 1998. She made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2006.

Dana Yates can be reached by e-mail: dana@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.

Speier to fill Lantos's seat

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Former state Sen. Jackie Speier (D) won a resounding victory in the open special election for the seat of late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) seat on Tuesday night, taking 78 percent of the vote in a five-candidate field and stamping her ticket to Congress.

Speier was expected to win the race, but her opponents had hoped to force a runoff at least. In the end, they did not come close.

Lantos died of cancer in February but endorsed Speier before his death. The 57-year-old former congressional aide will likely be able to hold on to the heavily Democratic seat for as long as she wants.

Speier wins right to fulfill Lantos's term

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Longtime Peninsula lawmaker Jackie Speier breezed to an easy victory Tuesday in a five-candidate field to serve out the remainder of Tom Lantos's congressional term. The 12th Congressional District seat became open when Lantos succumbed to cancer earlier this year.

Speier took nearly 80 percent of the vote Tuesday. Her district includes parts of the Midcoast as well as southern sections of San Francisco and much of San Mateo County.

Speier had been an aide in the district for U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan in the 1970s. She has since served as a county supervisor and in the Assembly and state Senate.

Because she won more than 50 percent of the vote, there will be no runoff this time. But her tenure will be brief. She faces a June 3 primary and November election for a first full term after Lantos's 14th term expires later this year.

Survivor of Jonestown attack wins Californian election

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Jackie Speier, a former U.S. congressional aide who was attacked during a 1978 visit to the Guyana cult compound of Rev. Jim Jones, was elected on Tuesday to finish the term of the late Tom Lantos, a California lawmaker who died of cancer in February.

Speier, 57, won 78 percent of the vote in the special election in the U.S. congressional district that stretches from South San Francisco to Palo Alto, election officials reported.

Speier was shot five times and left for dead after the attack by followers of Jones at an airstrip in Jonestown, Guyana, while accompanying her boss, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan, who was killed in the raid.

Ryan and Speier were investigating allegations that members of his San Francisco-area district who had joined Jones' doomsday cult, the Peoples Temple, had been kidnapped and taken to his jungle compound known as Jonestown.

The shooting touched off the mass suicide by more than 900 cult members at the compound who, according to news reports at the time, drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide and sedatives.

Speier waited 22 hours for help to arrive, according to her Web site. She later was elected to the San Mateo County board of supervisors in California and served in both chambers of the California legislature.

Lantos, also a Democrat, had endorsed Speier two weeks before his death on February 11 at age 80 after 27 years in the House of Representatives. The Hungarian-born Lantos escaped from a forced-labor camp after the occupation of his country by the Nazis.

(Reporting by Philipp Gollner, editing by Philip Barbara)

Voters send Jackie Speier to Washington

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

(04-08) 21:35 PDT Burlingame -- It took 29 years, but Jackie Speier is on her way to Congress.

The former state senator took a huge early lead Tuesday night in the race to finish the term of the late Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos and never looked back, collecting more than the 50 percent plus one vote needed to put her on a flight to Washington this morning.

"I'm looking at this room at people I've known for my entire legislative life," Speier said as she waited to give her victory speech at the Machinists Union Hall in Burlingame. "This is one of those moments in my life."

With all the San Francisco precincts reporting and only a handful of precincts remaining to be counted in San Mateo County, Speier had captured more than 75 percent of the vote, far more than she needed to avoid a June 3 runoff. Her closest competitor was Republican Greg Conlon, far back with 9 percent of the vote.

In 1979, Speier was recovering from the near-fatal bullet wounds she received at an airstrip in Jonestown, Guyana, where she was shot and left for dead by followers of the Rev. Jim Jones. Those same attackers killed her boss, Rep. Leo Ryan.

Speier left the hospital still carrying a pair of the bullets in her body, and ran in the special election to replace Ryan. She finished third then, but on Tuesday she made the most of her second chance.

"Without a doubt, it means something special to replace (Ryan), since he was my political mentor," she said.

The contest to fill the few remaining months of Lantos' term had little suspense. Speier was the odds-on favorite to finish on top in the five-candidate race that listed everyone on the same ballot, regardless of party.

The night's only question was whether she would be able to grab the outright majority needed to win the congressional seat Tuesday. If that had not happened, the leading candidates from each party would have met in a June runoff election.

"With a lower-than-usual turnout expected, my opponents are hoping that they'll be able to get enough votes in today's election to try to deny us an outright majority," Speier said in an e-mail sent to supporters Tuesday.

That's probably the best that Republicans Conlon and Mike Moloney, Democrat Michelle McMurry and Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson could have hoped for. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district, 51 percent to 20 percent, and the 57-year-old Speier has represented much of the area for more than 20 years as a San Mateo County supervisor, assemblywoman and state senator.

The runoff question was settled in a hurry. Speier pulled 80 percent of the vote-by-mail ballots in San Mateo County and 69 percent in San Francisco. With mail ballots accounting for more than 60 percent of the total votes cast in each county, that ended any suspense.

About 17,000 ballots were cast in San Francisco, and more than 50,000 in San Mateo County.

Speier had been talking about challenging the aging Lantos in the Democratic primary when the 14-term congressman announced in January that he had cancer of the esophagus and would not be running for re-election.

Just two weeks before his death in February, Lantos endorsed Speier as his successor, calling her a "first-class public servant who has made the community's most pressing priorities her own."

By then, Speier had cleared the field of any prominent challengers. San Francisco state Sen. Leland Yee opted out of the race and Stanford Professor Larry Lessig, well-known in Bay Area progressive circles, decided not to run in a district that stretches from San Francisco's Sunset District south to the outer edges of Redwood City.

More than 40 local elected officials joined Speier when she opened her campaign Jan. 13 in Foster City at Leo J. Ryan Park, named for her murdered boss.

Tuesday's special election marked a full circle for Speier, no longer the 28-year-old congressional aide but a veteran politician with a decades-long track record.

Speier will fly to Washington today and be sworn into office Thursday. She will immediately take her seat in Congress.

Speier and the other contenders will be back on the ballot in their respective party primaries on June 3. The primary winners will meet Nov. 4 to decide who will win the full two-year term in Congress that begins in January.

E-mail John Wildermuth at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com.

California Dem Speier Wins Special Election to Succeed Lantos

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Democratic attorney Jackie Speier, a former state senator who survived a cult massacre early in her long career in the public sphere, won election Tuesday in California's 12th District to fill the seat left vacant by the Feb. 11 death of 14-term Democratic incumbent Tom Lantos.

Returns posted on the election sites of California's Secretary of State and the counties that make up the district showed Speier easily exceeding the majority-vote threshold needed to win the seat outright in what was technically a special election primary. By far the best known of the five candidates who ran in the single-ballot, all-party contest, Speier led with 78 percent of the overall vote with nearly three-quarters of all precincts reporting. She was way ahead in both major jurisdictions that make up the 12th District, with 80 percent in San Mateo County and 71 percent of the total vote in San Francisco County.

Speier, despite her easy special election win, is not yet free of campaign concerns. The regularly scheduled primary for the district's November general election for a full House term will be held on June 3, less than two months away. But Speier will be heavily favored to win the Democratic nomination over three opponents, including health policy director Michelle T. McMurry, who trailed by a wide margin in Tuesday's early special primary returns.

Two Republicans and three third-party candidates also filed for the June 3 primary, according to the roster posted by California's Secretary of State. But none of them has more than a remote chance of victory this November in a district that gave 72 percent of its votes to 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and 76 percent to Lantos when he ran his final House race in 2006. CQ Politics rates the district as Safe Democrat.

The special election victory will make Speier the new member from a Democratic-stronghold district that includes part of San Francisco and southern suburbs such as Daly City and San Mateo -- and covers territory where Speier three decades ago broke into politics as an aide to Democratic Rep. Leo J. Ryan.

In 1978, at age 28, Speier accompanied Ryan to Guyana to investigate complaints from constituents that their relatives were being mistreated at a “People's Temple” compound run by cult leader Jim Jones. She was seriously wounded by gunfire during an airport attack by cult members in which Ryan and four other members of the traveling party were killed. Authorities subsequently arrived at the “Jonestown” compound to find Jones dead along with hundreds of his followers, most of whom had swallowed a poison-laced soft drink.

Speier made an initial House bid in the wake of that tragedy but lost a special election primary to fill the remainder of Ryan's unexpired term. Republican Bill Royer, who won that 1979 contest, was ousted in 1980 by Lantos, a Hungarian immigrant who had fought in the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II, and his long political domination long foreclosed the House as a option for Speier. But she built a parallel political career, serving as a county supervisor, state assemblywoman and state senator, and running a strong but narrowly unsuccessful bid in 2006 to be the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.

That track record left her well-positioned to emerge as the favorite to succeed Lantos after he announced in January that he had esophageal cancer and would not seek re-election. Lantos endorsed Speier for his House seat shortly before he died in February at age 80.

That endorsement came even though the liberal Speier had originally explored a campaign to challenge Lantos from the left. Lantos, who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time of his death, was a fervent advocate of human rights around the world, a posture that spurred him to initially give strong support to President Bush's decision to use military force to oust Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein. That Iraq stance alienated many liberal activists from Lantos.

After receiving Lantos' blessing, Speier quickly amassed support from major Democrats in the area, including California's two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer ; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents the neighboring 8th District that covers most of San Francisco; Northern California Democratic Reps. Anna G. Eshoo of the 14th District and Mike Thompson of the 1st District; and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. The powerful political action committee EMILY's List, which supports Democratic women candidates who favor abortion rights, assisted her campaign.

Speier reported raising a whopping $874,000 through March 19 despite having formed her campaign committee just two months prior. None of her opponents reported more than $25,000 raised through March 19.

Speier positioned herself in the House race as a liberal reformer who hoped to shift priorities in Washington from "partisan bickering" to legislative action. She expressed her support for redeploying troops from Iraq as soon as it is feasible and argued that the economy requires significant repair because of actions taken by the Bush administration and costs tied to the war.

The expansion of health care and financial privacy rights, two issues on which she focused in the legislature, also were prominent in her campaign messages.

In addition, Speier championed a pro-environmental platform that earned her the endorsement of a local chapter of the Sierra Club.

Elect Speier for Congress

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Editorial

For the vacant 12th congressional district seat up for grabs Tuesday, we recommend Jackie Speier, a candidate so well-suited for the post that no Democrats with name recognition in the heavily Democratic district bothered to challenge her.

Speier seems fated to take the post. She served as an aide to Rep. Leo J. Ryan when he was assassinated in 1978 while in Jonestown, Guyana, investigating the People's Temple, and she miraculously survived despite being shot five times. Not one to shirk a challenge, she made an unlikely bid to replace him in Congress the following year.

Though unsuccessful, the effort launched a distinguished political career that helped her pay her dues for this latest bid for Congress. That included six years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and 18 in the state Legislature, where she earned a reputation as an advocate for consumers and women, among other things. In an interview with the Daily News editorial board, Speier reminded us that she isn't afraid to tackle difficult but important jobs, noting she has challenged the powerful state prison guard union.

She narrowly lost a bid to become lieutenant governor in 2006, but that seems to have merely freed her up for this run for Congress. By the time she announced her candidacy, Speier claimed the endorsements of about a third of all elected officials in the district, which stretches from Redwood City to San Francisco. Her five-page list of endorsements includes U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and the late Rep. Tom Lantos, the man she seems poised to replace.

If elected, Speier promises to press for an end to the war in Iraq and creation of a universal health care system, popular positions in the Bay Area.

Were we to quibble, we might cite her tendency to qualify her positions on some issues, a common political practice. She argued the state is getting far from its fair share of federal tax dollars but also indicated she might consider not going after the controversial federal budget earmarks, discretionary expenses that nonetheless help bring those federal dollars back to the state. It's a noncommittal remark she can, and probably should, ignore for now. Better to seek comprehensive reform and work within the flawed system we have in the meantime.

While Speier seems uniquely suited for the congressional seat, we are also impressed by a Democratic rival, health policy expert Michelle McMurry. Like Speier 29 years ago, McMurry is a young political novice launching a long-shot bid who also has served as a congressional aide. She needs a bit more experience in elected office but McMurry is bright and articulate and may have a future in politics if she chooses.

For now, Speier is the candidate with experience and political savvy we need to represent the Peninsula in Congress. We urge voters to select Speier for the 12th congressional district.

Foes' goal: Stop Speier gaining majority

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In Tuesday's special election to replace the late Rep. Tom Lantos, four of the five candidates have a single goal: stop Jackie Speier.

In the unusual open primary, all the candidates for the Peninsula/San Francisco congressional seat will appear on the same ballot and voters can pick anyone, regardless of party.

If someone gets more than half the votes, he or she jets off to Washington on Wednesday to finish the final nine months of Democrat Lantos' term. If no one collects a majority, the top candidates in each party face off again in a June 3 runoff.

Speier, who has represented much of the congressional district as a San Mateo County supervisor, assemblywoman and state senator, is the odds-on favorite to finish on top Tuesday. But her opponents are scrambling to keep her under 50 percent and extend the campaign another eight weeks.

"I'm running against inertia," Speier, 57, said Sunday at a community pancake breakfast in South San Francisco. "If at least 57 percent of those voting Tuesday aren't Democrats, we may have to do this all over again in June, which means the district will go longer without representation."

That's no problem for her opponents.

"It's just fine if the people in the district are not represented for another two months," said Barry Hermanson, the Green Party candidate. "It's more important to have this debate continue."

Speier's opponents know it's a longshot to think they can beat the veteran Democrat, who's far better known, much better financed and running in an overwhelmingly Democratic district.

Local Republican leaders "asked me to take a bullet for the party," said 75-year-old Greg Conlon, an Atherton accountant who lost the state treasurer's race to Democrat Phil Angelides in 2002. "But I think I could steal it with a low (voter) turnout next Tuesday."

Beating Speier is about the only thing many of the candidates agree on.

Michael Moloney, for example, is anything but a typical Republican. The retired businessman ran unsuccessfully against Lantos as a Libertarian in 1998 and as a Republican in 2002 and has far harsher words for President Bush than even the Democratic candidates.

Bush is an international terrorist, far worse than Osama bin Laden, Moloney said in an interview last week. A longtime peace activist, he wants the country to immediately pull its military forces from Iraq, and he believes Congress should impeach Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

"I'm running because I want to save the country," said Moloney, 67, of Foster City. "If someone doesn't stop Bush and Cheney, they'll bomb Iran back into the Stone Age and start World War III."

Conlon joined the race because local GOP leaders "wanted a respectable candidate to run against Jackie Speier," he said. While he's no fan of the Iraq war, he wants "to leave with honor, not haste."

Leaving Iraq too quickly could open the way for Iran to take control of its neighbor and send the price of gasoline soaring, Conlon added.

"There are economic consequences for leaving Iraq too soon," he said. "Six-dollar-a gallon gasoline would change our economic picture and send unemployment soaring."

Hermanson's single issue is the growing economic problem caused by the military budget, including the cost of the war in Iraq.

"My goal in this campaign is to draw attention to the obscene amounts of money we're spending on the military," the 57-year-old San Francisco resident said. "I want (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi held accountable for the direction she's taking this country. It's bankrupting the country, morally and financially."

Even if Speier ultimately goes to Congress, the campaign could have an effect on her, Hermanson said. "I'm asking Jackie Speier to do a very difficult thing: to speak out against the leadership of her own party."

Michelle McMurry, 38, is the lone Democrat challenging Speier. A physician and health policy director, her only political experience is a stint as an adviser to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, a conservative Democrat turned independent.

A former fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, the San Francisco resident touts her lack of political background as a plus, arguing that she will bring a new perspective to Congress.

On Sunday, Speier promised backers she would go to Washington and work to stop the war in Iraq and fight for the same consumer protection measures she pushed in Sacramento.

"After 44 neighborhood meetings, I feel I know what's on your minds," she said. "But we have to get everyone out to vote."

Whatever happens Tuesday, this is just round one of the fight for Lantos' seat. Even if the special election goes to a runoff, the same candidates still will be on that same June 3 ballot in the separate party primaries for the full, two-year congressional term that will be decided in November.

E-mail John Wildermuth at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com.

From tragedy, Jackie Speier closes in on election triumph

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Twenty-nine years ago, Jackie Speier fell short in a bid for Congress as a young, underfunded candidate with a harrowing story and five fresh bullet wounds.

On Tuesday, the former state lawmaker is expected to dominate a five-candidate field in a special election to fill the Bay Area's 12th Congressional District seat of the late Rep. Tom Lantos.

If Speier wins more than 50 percent of the vote, she will complete a poignant journey to Congress that began in 1978 as she was clinging to life on an airport tarmac in Guyana.

Speier, then a 28-year-old congressional lawyer, was riddled by gunfire that killed her boss, Rep. Leo Ryan. She overcame the trauma of the Jonestown mass murder-suicide, orchestrated by tyrannical cult leader Jim Jones, that left 900 people dead.

She ran for Congress in memory of Ryan but finished third in a 12-candidate 1979 special election field. Yet she said recently, "It was therapy. I didn't want to be a victim the rest of my life."

Now Speier is running for Congress on her own record -- as a longtime Sacramento lawmaker who championed protections for consumers and victims of violence. Competing in a redrawn district that heavily overlaps Ryan's former 11th District, Speier said she feels "a synergy" to a political life coming "full circle."

Speier, whose story and legislative record have made her one of the Bay Area's best-known political figures, is running against a field of comparable unknowns.

The one other Democratic candidate, physician and health care advocate Michelle McMurry, is founder of a biomedical science and social policy think tank. Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson is a past co-chair of the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition.

In a district where voter registration is 51 percent Democratic to 20 percent Republican, the two GOP hopefuls are former California Public Utilities Commission member Greg Conlon and Mike Maloney, an anti-Iraq war candidate and disciple of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.

The winner Tuesday -- or June 3 if Speier is forced into a runoff -- will serve the remainder of Lantos' term. She's also on the ballot June 3 to serve a full two-year term that would begin next year.

Speier drew criticism for openly contemplating a run for Lantos' seat before the 79-year-old House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman announced his retirement in January. But Lantos endorsed her soon afterward. The 27-year congressman died of cancer in February.

Speier said she still looks back on her '79 run for Congress "as a pivotal moment in my life" -- one that "taught me that a lot of people supported me, and I had a lot to contribute."

She went on to get elected to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and then to an 18-year career in the state Assembly and Senate.

From the time she traveled to Guyana with Ryan to investigate reports that Jones' Peoples Temple was effectively holding hundreds of followers hostage in the jungle, "she developed an incredible passion for her work," said San Mateo Supervisor Adrienne Tissier, a longtime friend.

"She has carried on the passion that he (Ryan) had for his district -- that people come first," Tissier said. "Jackie is very tenacious."

Speier has faced tragedy more than once. In 1994, her then-husband, physician Steven Sierra, died in a car accident. At the time, Speier was pregnant with her second child, daughter Stephanie.

"She lost her house because her husband had let his life insurance go," Tissier said. "But she was strong and determined. She had children to take care of."

In 2001, Speier married investment consultant Barry Dennis. Her oldest son, Jackson, is now a sophomore at Stanford University. Stephanie is class president at her middle school.

Speier's election will likely mean a presidential superdelegate vote for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who previously had been backed by Lantos. "I have endorsed Hillary," Speier said.

She is running for Congress on pledges to draw down the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, pass a national health care plan and protect homeowners from predatory lenders. Meanwhile, she is touting her statehouse career, in which she passed laws to recover delinquent child support, increase penalties for domestic violence and bar lending institutions from selling personal financial data.

Speier ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2006 -- an attempt seen as a step toward eventually running for governor. Now, she hopes Tuesday's vote will take her to Congress -- and full circle -- for the duration of her political career.

"I realized the power to change things in the legislative branch. I think this is where I'll be as long as the voters want me," Speier said. "I'm absolutely convinced there was a plan. There was a reason I didn't win (the lieutenant governor's election). This is what I was supposed to do."

Former Lawmaker Favored for Calif. Seat

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A former congressional aide may be heading back to Washington, nearly 30 years after she was shot and left for dead on a Guyana airstrip while on a fact-finding trip into the Jim Jones cult.

Democrat Jackie Speier is the favorite to win a special election Tuesday to fill the House seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Tom Lantos, a San Mateo Democrat.

It is her second try for the seat once held by her boss, Rep. Leo Ryan, who was killed by Jones' henchmen in the same 1978 attack that seriously wounded Speier.

Ryan had gone to Guyana to investigate reports that Jones was holding followers against their will at his Jonestown compound in the small South American nation. Four other people died at the air strip with Ryan, and that same night Jones and 912 of his followers died in a mass murder-suicide, most by drinking cyanide-laced grape punch.

Speier's first run for Ryan's seat was a last-minute decision made just months after the deaths. She placed third.

This time, Speier's campaign has been building since last fall.

Lantos, the 79-year-old former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had intended to seek a 15th term but in January he announced he had cancer of the esophagus and would not run again. He endorsed Speier before he died in February.

Speier also has the backing of U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents a neighboring San Francisco area district.

As of March 19, Speier had raised more than $873,000 - 40 times as much as her nearest competitor.

Speier is facing fellow Democrat Michelle McMurry, Republicans Greg Conlon and Mike Moloney, and Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson.

All five are on the same ballot. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, there will be a June 3 runoff among the top vote-getters in each party. The winner will hold the seat for the rest of the year.

Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, which analyzes legislative and congressional races, jokes that Tuesday's election will be "the Jackie Speier coronation."

"The worst that could happen to her would be the embarrassment to have a runoff against a Republican before going on to Congress," he said. "That's not likely to happen."

Speier, 57, said she is not taking anything for granted. She has been holding neighborhood meetings and running a phone bank to encourage voters to vote by mail in what is expected to be a low-turnout election.

The 12th District, which Lantos represented for more than 27 years, includes southwestern San Francisco and most of neighboring San Mateo County. Democrats make up more than half the district's voters, and there are more independents than Republicans.

After losing her first congressional race, Speier served six years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, then spent 18 years in the California Legislature, including eight in the state Senate representing generally the same area covered by the congressional seat. She developed a reputation as a consumer advocate and leading critic of the state's troubled prison system.

Her interest in running for Congress was rekindled by a narrow loss in a campaign for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 2006 and a return to Washington to witness Pelosi's swearing in as speaker last year.

"I finally realized that the power to change things happens in the legislative branch. ... That's where I do my best work; that's where I belong," she said.

Speier said she wants to start pulling American troops out of Iraq immediately and would not vote to continue funding for the increase in troop levels that Bush ordered last year.

"I am no one's puppet," she said.

Top of the Hill

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

If not for term limits, Jackie Speier would still be serving in the California Legislature, where she applied her considerable skills to making life better for consumers and making life hell for recalcitrant bureaucrats and special interests that got in the way of the public good.

Speier left the Senate in 2006, after 18 years as a legislator. Even though she lost the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor to John Garamendi that year, it seemed only a matter of time before opportunity would knock again.

Her time should come Tuesday, when voters on the Peninsula will go to the polls for a special election to succeed Rep. Tom Lantos, who died in February after a 27-year tenure in Congress.

Speier is far and away the most qualified of the five candidates on the ballot. If she wins a majority of the vote, she could be sworn into office as early as Wednesday.

As a state legislator, Speier achieved an impressive succession of victories for consumers, most notably her determined three-year push to overcome the resistance of the banking industry to produce the nation's strongest financial privacy law. In retrospect, one of her bills that did not pass demonstrates her foresight: a 2006 bill that would have strengthened consumer protections against subprime loans.

"I think it speaks volume about the power of the special interests," Speier said. "Even when we see something coming, we don't act."

Speier, as much as anyone in the State Capitol, showed a willingness to take on entrenched interests. Her targets included the powerful prison guards' union and the University of California administration. There is every reason to believe Speier will be every bit as vigorous in challenging the Washington establishment on issues such as the war in Iraq and consumer concerns - including health care.

The rest of the field includes Democrat Michelle McMurry, a pediatrician who has an impressive public-policy resume but no legislative experience; Republican Greg Conlon, a former president of the California Public Utilities Commission whose conservative views make him a longshot in this district; Republican Mike Moloney, a brash libertarian who calls President Bush "an international terrorist"; and the Green Party's Barry Hermanson, who views his role as pushing the inevitable nominee Speier to dramatically reduce defense spending.

Jackie Speier is the clear choice in Tuesday's special election for the 12th Congressional District.

Editorial Page Editor John Diaz provides a behind-the-scenes look at the endorsement process on the "Opinion Shop" blog at sfgate.com.

Speier courts gay vote

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

During her nearly two decades as a state legislator, first as an assemblywoman and then as a senator, Jackie Speier proved to be a strong backer of LGBT rights. During San Francisco's "Winter of Love" in 2004, Speier could be found inside City Hall marrying same-sex couples.

Now running for the congressional seat left vacant after the death of Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), Speier, 57, is counting on the 12th District's LGBT voters as she runs in a special election April 8 to serve out the remainder of Lantos's term through next January. Lantos died in February from esophageal cancer.

"I married somewhere between 18 to 20 couples [that] February. I really established that I am not a person of words but a person of action," said Speier during a meeting with the Bay Area Reporter 's editorial board last week. "I believe in equal rights for all people."

The 12th Congressional District stretches into parts of San Francisco that are heavily concentrated with LGBT voters, including portions of Noe Valley, Diamond Heights, and Twin Peaks. It also covers the city's West Portal, Forest Hills, and inner Sunset neighborhoods, as well as the University of California, San Francisco's Parnassus location and San Francisco State University's sprawling main campus.

Speier has the backing of gay politicians Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco); San Francisco Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Bevan Dufty; and San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon. Both the Harvey Milk and the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic clubs have endorsed her in the race.

Openly gay South San Francisco commissioner Robert Bernardo said he is "totally supportive" of Speier in the race.

"She's been a longtime ally for LGBT people," said Bernardo.

Speier supports repealing the anti-gay Defense on Marriage Act as well as allowing gay members of the military to serve openly. She said the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was "flawed from the beginning. We should get rid of it."

On the controversial stance congressional Democrats have taken with pushing an Employment Non-Discrimination Act stripped of gender identity protections, Speier hues to the party line. She said she supports passing the gay-only ENDA now while pushing to add transgender protections to the bill later.

"I do support an inclusive version but the question becomes would you not support one for gays and lesbians. I would not throw the baby out with the bath water," said Speier. "I would support a fully inclusive ENDA but also vote on the gay and lesbian only ENDA."

Speier is facing off against four other candidates in next week's open primary: Republicans Mike Moloney, a retired businessman from Foster City, and Atherton businessman and accountant Greg Conlon, who lost his 2002 state treasurer bid against Phil Angelides; Green Party member and former Castro merchant Barry Hermanson; and fellow Democrat Michelle McMurry, a San Francisco physician and health policy analyst.

According to election rules, should any of the five win more than half the votes they will be declared the winner. If no one garners a majority of the votes, then the top two vote getters will face off on the June 3 primary ballot.

Should that happen, they would find themselves on the same ballot with the primary races to compete for the full 2009-2010 term on the November ballot. In those party-based contests, Speier is matched up against not only McMurry, but also businessman Robert Barrows of San Mateo County and San Francisco accountant Frank Henry Wade.

Due to the district's heavy Democratic makeup, Speier is considered the odds-on favorite to replace Lantos, who endorsed her candidacy prior to his death. But Speier said she is not taking anything for granted, especially with Conlon rallying Republicans with the message that the special election gives them a rare opportunity to capture the seat.

Should his strategy be successful, he would then be able to run as the incumbent in the June election.

"I am running like it is a very serious race," said Speier. "I am not taking anything for granted."

Speier said she has raised about $600,000 for the race so far.

She previously ran for the seat during a special election in 1979 to replace her boss Congressman Leo Ryan. Ryan was killed at the airport in Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978 as he was leading a fact-finding mission to investigate the People's Temple. Speier was shot five times and left for dead on the tarmac.

As she lay in an iron lung-like contraption to rid her body of a life-threatening bacterial infection in a Baltimore hospital, Speier learned from a doctor of the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk.

"I was struggling for my life. I thought the world was coming to an end," recalled Speier, who pulled through and filed to run in the election, in which she finished in third.

She went on to win election to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and then to the statehouse. Termed out of the Senate in 2006, she lost her bid for lieutenant governor to John Garamendi in the Democratic primary. Since then she co-authored the book This Is Not the Life I Ordered: 50 Ways to Keep Your Head Above Water When Life Keeps Dragging You Down and joined the law firm of Hanson Bridgett LLP, in San Francisco.

Now she is ready to bring her California values to Washington.

"I think we are in deeply troubling times, not only internationally but nationally," said Speier. "We can't have people in Congress asleep at the switch or paralyzed to flip the switch when there are signs of deep, troubling waters. I have a reputation of being strong and tough on issues. I am willing and ready to take on the strong and tough issues."

Speier for Congress

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Voters in portions of San Francisco and San Mateo counties head to the polls Tuesday, April 8 for a special election to fill the term of the late Congressman Tom Lantos, who died earlier this year. The longtime Democratic lawmaker was a champion of human rights, and leaves some big shoes to fill. But there is a candidate who stands above the rest -- former state Senator Jackie Speier.

Speier, who had planned to run for Lantos's seat after he announced his retirement, will face several lesser-known opponents Tuesday. Should she receive a majority of votes, she would be sworn in immediately and finish the term. She would also be on the ballot in the June 3 primary in the race for a full two-year term, with that contest ultimately being decided in November. The district is nearly 60 percent Democratic.

We met with Speier last week; she is an experienced legislator who effectively served for many years in Sacramento. Her legislative accomplishments include a landmark privacy rights law, prescription discounts for seniors, and clinical trial access for cancer patients.

In terms of support for the LGBT community, Speier is a staunch ally. She supports marriage equality, and in fact told us that she married nearly 20 same-sex couples during San Francisco's "Winter of Love" in 2004. She opposes the federal Defense of Marriage Act and during the same-sex marriage debate in Sacramento a few years ago, told her colleagues that marriage equality "is the civil rights issue of our lifetime."

Speier said that she is supportive of a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, though she noted that she would vote for a version of the bill if it only included gays and lesbians, in an effort to provide some protections for the community. If that were the case, she would then push for a bill that included gender identity, she said.

On other issues of concern to the community, Speier is on board with fighting for increased HIV/AIDS funding and advocating for human rights around the world. She has been endorsed by both the Harvey Milk and Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic clubs.

Many readers are familiar with Speier's own life-threatening experience in 1978, after her boss, Congressman Leo Ryan, was assassinated in Jonestown, Guyana. Speier, who had accompanied him, was shot five times and left for dead on the tarmac. Help arrived some 22 hours later. And it was while she was being treated back in the United States just days later that she learned that San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were gunned down in their City Hall offices.

While the passing of Lantos has left a void in Congress, voters in the 12th District have an opportunity to send another trailblazer to Washington, D.C. We urge them to cast their ballots for Jackie Speier on Tuesday.

5 vying to finish term of late Rep. Lantos

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

It was 29 years ago that Jackie Speier, a 28-year-old aide to murdered Peninsula Rep. Leo Ryan, left her sickbed to run in the special election for her boss' seat in Congress.

"I made the decision over a weekend, when I decided to stop being a victim," said Speier, who spent nearly a full day lying critically wounded near the same Jonestown, Guyana, airstrip where Ryan was killed. "I turned in my papers on the last possible day, raised $20,000 in six weeks and finished third."

It's a different story today, with Speier the odds-on favorite to win that same Peninsula-San Francisco congressional seat in the April 8 special election to succeed Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos, who died in February of cancer.

"Success is never final, and defeat is never failure," Speier told a group of small businessmen at a campaign event in San Francisco's Sunset District on Thursday evening.

Speier is a long way from the political novice who lost that 1979 campaign. Since then, she's spent two terms as a San Mateo County supervisor, 10 years as a Peninsula assemblywoman and eight more years as a state senator in a district that nearly mirrors the 12th Congressional District she's running for today.

In 2006, termed out of her state Senate seat, she lost a tight Democratic primary race for lieutenant governor to John Garamendi, who won the job that November.

A twofold campaign

Now she's in an unusual double contest for the seat Lantos held for 27 years. Speier is running in the June 3 Democratic primary for the congressional seat, but first she's in the April 8 scramble to finish the remaining few months of Lantos' term, which expires in January.

Speier and Michelle McMurry of San Francisco, a physician and health policy director, are the two Democrats in next week's open primary. They're joined by Republicans Greg Conlon of Atherton, a businessman and accountant, and Mike Moloney of Foster City, a retired businessman. San Francisco's Barry Hermanson, the Green Party candidate, rounds out the field.

Under the rules of the special election, all five candidates will appear on the same ballot. If anyone collects more than half the votes, he or she wins the congressional seat outright. If no one pulls a majority, the top vote-getters from each party square off in a runoff June 3 - the same day as the primary vote for the two-year term that begins in January.

For Speier's opponents, the goal isn't so much to win as to keep the front-runner from grabbing the 50 percent plus one vote she needs to be instantly elected, Conlon said.

"My goal is to get her into a runoff," said Conlon, a former president of the state Public Utilities Commission and losing GOP candidate for state treasurer in 2002. "But I need to get the Republicans and the decline-to-states out to vote."

That's also the plan for Moloney, an anti-war Republican who lost badly to Lantos in 2002. If he can keep Speier under 50 percent and outpoll Conlon, he'll have another shot in the June runoff.

District votes Democratic

But the Republicans, along with Hermanson of the Green Party, have virtually no chance of winning a general election in an overwhelmingly Democratic district where Lantos typically pulled close to 70 percent of the vote.

McMurry, making her first run for elective office, is challenging Speier to give Democratic voters a choice.

"I believe in the citizen-politician model," she said. "We need a new approach to old problems, one not wedded to party politics."

Speier, however, has the backing of the big three in California Democratic politics: U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. She also was the choice of Lantos, who endorsed her shortly before his death.

She has more than $600,000 in the bank for her campaign, according to federal election reports released Friday. No one else in the race has raised close to that amount.

But it's Speier's years of visibility and easygoing manner that serve her best, along with a reputation as a tenacious politician who works long and hard to get things done.

Speier meets supporters

A seat in Congress "will be a chance to do what I do best: look at a problem, prepare legislation and then convince my colleagues to pass it," Speier told about 60 people at the San Francisco event last week.

She called for an end to the war in Iraq and more money for higher education, and warned that the nation "can't be afraid of looking at a single-payer system" when it comes to health care.

As for global warming, she said, "I don't think anything we've proposed so far is enough. We're going to have to live differently. We're going to have to get out of our cars."

Before and after her brief talk, she chatted with supporters, signed some autographs and posed for pictures. She was among friends and longtime supporters, people comfortable calling her "Jackie," not "senator."

"I've known her for years, and she's been an effective advocate for small business," said Scott Hauge, a San Francisco insurance man who hosted the event for Speier. "She's someone who will listen to us."

Speier and her political consultant, Alex Tourk, insist they aren't taking the election for granted, but it's clear they are confident she can avoid the runoff and catch an April 9 flight to Washington to take her seat in Congress.

It's a daunting prospect, Speier said.

"If I win, I'll be in Washington the next day to be sworn in and start voting right away, ready or not," she said.

[...]

Interview: Jackie Speier, Former Red Cross Youth

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Interview: Jackie Speier, Former Red Cross Youth

Last fall, I had the exciting opportunity to interview Jackie Speier, a longtime public servant and current congressional candidate. Ms. Speier is also a Red Cross volunteer -- and she started her career as a youth.

I was inspired by this interview since I share many of the same experiences with Ms. Speier. It is remarkable to see how volunteering for the Red Cross literally changes lives.

How did you get started as a Red Cross youth?

I started out stuffing monkeys at my youth club at Mercy High School in Burlingame. I later became president of the club. Then I was on the regional board for the Bay Area Chapter, and I became president of that, too. I also attended the Bay Area’s Leadership Development Center (LDC) as a delegate and then as a counselor. Attending LDC had a profound effect on me; it is the reason I decided to go into public service and seek public office. The Bay Area Chapter sent me to another camp and I was a delegate and then a counselor there, too. I also took my first airplane trip with the Red Cross; when I was 17 I went to National Convention in Denver.

What skills did you gain? How do you use these skills today?

Leadership development training created confidence in me and showed me that I had leadership skills. That is how it works -- someone takes notice of your innate skills and helps you build on them.

What message do you have for a young person just starting as a Red Cross volunteer?

I would tell him or her to take full advantage of the opportunities the Red Cross has because they are experiences you will use for the rest of your life. Your personal and professional development will be greatly enhanced. Plus, the American Red Cross is the greatest non-profit in the history of the world.

Sandy Tesch, California

Run, Mama, Run: Jackie Speier Running for Congress in Special Election Next Week

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Imagine a great person, a principled woman, a dedicated mom in congress. Yes, there are already a few of those, but we're very close to electing one more. On April 8th, former California State Senator Jackie Speier may succeed to where she aimed nearly three decades ago, U.S. Congress. Speier, shown left with me and my daughter, a resident of Hillsborough, California, the youngest woman elected to the San Mateo County supervisors, reportedly the first mom to breast feed in the California State Assembly (as a new widow), and a well--respected two--term state senator first ran for congress after a terrifying experience where her boss, then U.S. Congressman, Leo Ryan, was killed in front of her eyes.

This is a woman who I've had the privilege of seeing in action firsthand and whom I have admired for many years. (Photo is from last year, taken on my phone of me, my daughter, and Senator Speier.) People like her are rare, and our nation would be incredibly lucky to have her legislating on our behalf. Due to a sad twist of fate, Senator Speier may become Congresswoman Speier in a special election next week.

For those not following this race, here's a great article that sums up much of what's going on, although the latest news is that Larry Lessig decided not to jump in. I'm glad. I've met him, I have friends who have worked with him, and I think he's an incredible person with a valiant mission, but he can make a difference in a variety of ways. You couldn't interview a thousand people and find one better qualified for this role than Jackie Speier. She's worked her whole life to get to this point. She could do other jobs too or come at her work from another angle, but this is the best vehicle for her to serve the public good.

Speier has written about the traumatic experiences she suffered through that led her to running for office in This is Not the Life I Ordered, along with three of her close friends. (Here's my review.) Essentially the story she tells is that she was shot and left for dead in Guyana in 1978 after her boss, Congressman Ryan, was killed on a diplomatic trip exploring the Peoples Temple cult. After her recovery, Jackie decided to follow in his footsteps. When she lost that election, she started at the ground level locally and worked her way up, tirelessly supporting women and families along the way. While pregnant with her second child, her husband was killed in a car accident -- without insurance -- and she was left to support her family as a public servant. Someday someone should make a movie about this woman, because her story is almost unbelievable.

Jackie Speier is not the first mom to run for congress, and she certainly won't be the last, but I highlight her candidacy here because she has taken on a lot of issues that I feel strongly about, such as privacy protections and public transportation support. Her "Top Ten Legislative Accomplishments" are listed on her site, but essentially here you have a woman who is well--loved, well--qualified, and well--prepared for the role she's running for... just days before she announced her intention to run, I was telling my mother how much I hoped Jackie would run for congress next. She tried for Lieutenant Governor a few years ago and lost the state party nomination by a fairly small margin. I helped with that campaign early on and got to know many of the people who work with her well.

Tom Lantos, the only member of congress to survive the holocaust, was formerly in the post that the special election is for next week. He became suddenly ill with cancer and withdrew from running for reelection, quickly endorsing Senator Speier's candidacy. He then died and he has big shoes to fill. One MOMocrat wrote to me that she hopes Jackie will carry on his human rights work if she's elected. It's not often we get to know candidates as people and see them for their core values and what really motivates them, but I've gotten the distinct sense from my limited time with Jackie that she's as principled as they come. She knows how to play the game, but she plays it for the people. (And have I mentioned how great her kids are? From what I can tell, she's an excellent mom too.)

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir at this point, but here's something extraordinary -- look at this list of endorsements -- it reads like a who's who of the California Democratic Party. I don't know if I've ever seen so many strong endorsements for one candidate. I have to go take care of my own daughter now who just woke up, but I will say it makes me sleep better at night thinking of more moms in public office and I expect great things from who I hope will be future Congresswoman Jackie Speier.

...
Sarah Granger worked briefly for Jackie Speier's 2006 campaign for Lieutenant Governor (before going on extended bed rest). She is also graduate of the Emerge California pro--choice Democratic political leadership program, where Speier is a member of the Advisory Board.

Jackie Speier for Congress

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Jackie Speier for Congress

Whoever fills the seat of the late Tom Lantos in the 12th Congressional District has a tremendous legacy to continue. Lantos had a unique perspective on the world, understood the importance of a strong America and appreciated what opportunity he had here.

But there is one candidate who deserves a shot at trying. The choice is clear.

For nearly 25 years, former state senator Jackie Speier has authored diverse legislation that protects and assists the average Californian. She spent six years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, 10 years in the Assembly and eight years in the state Senate. She was just a few percentage points from winning the Democratic candidacy for lieutenant governor. Her statewide popularity is apparent for a reason, just as she is popular in San Mateo County.

Throughout the years, Speier authored important and successful legislation that helps thousands of people every day. Among her legislative accomplishments are laws that require medical professionals report suspected domestic violence to appropriate authorities, force deadbeat parents to pay delinquent child support, or lose their license, and require health plans to cover the cost of contraception and osteoporosis screening while banning maternity surcharges. Her most significant piece of legislation, however, is on financial privacy. Speier fought legislative battle after battle to have her legislation signed that requires financial institutions to obtain permission before it markets personal information to other companies. It was through her sheer tenacity that the legislation made its way through the halls of the state Capitol to the governor’s desk five years ago.

As long as Speier keeps in mind who exactly she serves and remains communicative and accessible to her constituents her tenacity will serve our district well in Washington, D.C.

Her opponents in this special election deserve commendation for ensuring a proper dialogue about the district’s issues and interests. Republicans Gene Conlon and Mike Maloney, Green Party member Barry Hermanson and Democrat Michelle McMurry should all be thanked for participating in this race.

At a recent candidate forum in South San Francisco, however, none seemed to differentiate themselves enough from Speier to warrant our endorsement. In fact, there were more agreement on issues rather than disagreement.

The choice is clear. Speier has the legislative experience, the knowledge of the district and the ability to constantly think on her feet. Lantos left a legacy of foreign policy mastery and a strong emphasis on human rights. Filling his seat is a tremendous task, but Speier has the ability to be given the opportunity.

Jackie Speier Campaigns at SF State

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Barry Hermanson called former state senator Jackie Speier one of the most powerful women in America and predicted that she would win the house seat in the April 8 election, even though he’s running for the same seat.

Students who wanted to learn about Jackie Speier got a chance on March 12, when she made a campaign stop at SF State.

She told students that she wanted to stop the war on Iraq, create universal health care, protect the environment and increase need-based financial aid.

Stanford University law professor Larry Lessig announced on his Web site that he would not run for congress because he didn’t feel like he could compete against Speier. Lessig's statement said that while he was relatively unknown, Speier's approval ratings were higher than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

A third opponent, Mike Maloney, wrote on his Web site, "I feel very strongly that we should call off the special election of April 8 to replace the late Tom Lantos, and concede the seat to the princess Ms. Jackie Speier."

If her opponents' predictions are right, Jackie Speier will become SF State’s next representative in Congress. After all, she’s running for the 12th congressional district, an area which stretches from San Francisco’s Sunset district to Redwood city and also encompasses SF State.

Speaking on the war, Speier said she wanted troop withdrawal to be "immediate but responsible."

When a student asked her to explain, she said that withdrawal would take time simply due to the logistics of transporting troops and their equipment back home. She did not specify a date for withdrawal. She said that she would vote for some bills that would increase military spending in order to ensure that soldiers stationed in Iraq were safe. She also said that she wanted to make sure that returning veterans obtained health care, which included mental health benefits.

On the home front, Speier wanted to reform health care by creating a single payer system like Medicare or Medicaid.

As for the environment, Speier joked that she wanted to make the "EPA protect the environment rather than the polluter." This was a critique of EPA’s recent ruling against California’s bid to set its own fuel emissions standards.

As for education, Speier said she supported the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which was passed by Congress last year. She said that she wanted to increase financial aid grants.

Towards the end of event, a member of the audience asked Speier, "What advice would you give to young people who want to run for office?"

"Do it!" Speier said.

After the event, students took pictures with Speier. One student asked her to sign a campaign poster, which she did.

Mary Watts, 20, a political science major said, "[Jackie Speier] seems like a real person, which is different than a lot of candidates. I felt like she was answering very honestly in how she really feels, whether we agreed with it or not, most of which I did, so I guess that was good."

SRO crowd greets Democratic Congressional candidate Jackie Speier

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Close to 100 Democrats turned out to meet and greet the very popular Democratic Congressional candidate from the 12th Congressional District, former State Senator Jackie Speier this past Saturday, Feb. 16 at the Sharp Park Golf Course.

Very quickly it became a matter of standing room only as dozens of Pacificans poured through the doors. At one point, several would-be-attendees, who were turned away for lack of room, openly admitted that they had only themselves to blame for failing to RSVP for Speier's presentation.

Excitement abounded in the banquet room from the very minute the doors opened. Folks came from near and far to see the recently declared candidate. Some came from as far away as Vermont, while others traveled from Washington, D.C. One young attendee, a cadet at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, came with his family to hear Speier speak.

Before Speier gave her speech, Chris Ranken, president of the Pacifica Democrats, introduced many notable Pacificans in attendance, which included: Mayor Pro Tem Julie Lancelle, Councilmember Sue Digre, former Planning Commissioner May Gee, SAMCAR Director Suzan Getchell-Wallace, former Mayor Peter Loeb, President of the Chamber of Commerce Mildred Owens, 19th Assembly District candidate and Millbrae's Mayor Gina Papan, San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee candidate and Citizen Advisor to the SMCTA Executive Board Barbara Arietta, former Mayor Ginny Jaquith, San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer, Field Representative to recently deceased Congressman Tom Lantos, Chris Hunter, Jefferson High School District Trustee Jean Brink, Pacifica School District Trustees Connie Menefee and Laurie Frater.

After an entertaining introduction by Program Chair Frank Winston, Speier captured the audience's attention immediately by paying tribute to the late, great Congressman Tom Lantos. After asking the Pacifica Democrats to take a moment of silence in memory of the great Statesman, Speier proceeded to communicate the comments of a few notable people, upon hearing the news of the Congressman's death.

"Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice called him the "epitome of a true American" and an irreplaceable mentor...The Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon called him a "champion of our common humanity". Nobel Laureate, Elie Weisel, referred to him by saying, 'When prisoners of destiny felt defenseless, neglected, humiliated and desperate, they had, in Tom Lantos, a defender," Speier said.

After speaking eloquently about her own personal memories of Lantos, she concluded her tribute to him by revealing his dying words to his grieving family at his bedside: "You wouldn't be crying if you knew how happy I am," said Speier. "It was a remarkable dignity with which he led his life and with which he died."

Speier quickly transitioned her speech about Lantos into one about the former Congressman Leo J. Ryan, who had been assassinated before her eyes, as she lay shot five times and fighting for her life on a steamy tarmac of a remote Jonestown airstrip, in the jungles of Guyana, so many years ago in 1978. "As I embark on this road to Congress, those are big, big shoes to fill," she said.

Before Speier proceeded to discuss other issues, she reminded the assembled diners that it was Pacifica who, so many years ago, voted for her more than any other candidate to replace Ryan's seat. Although she lost the bid at that time, she said that she never forgot Pacifica's support of her. "Pacifica has always been there for me and I will never, ever forget it," she said. "I hope that if I am elected to Congress, I shall continue to provide the kind of leadership that you have been accustomed to and that you definitely deserve."

With that, she announced that earlier that morning she had a chance to meet with Mayor Pro Tem Julie Lancelle and former Mayor Ginny Jaquith concerning the Sharp Park Golf Course issue. Pledging to look at ways that they can find resolution about the golf course's maintenance, keeping the fees low and the actual future operation of the golf course itself in remaining a golf course, appeared to be an important new goal on her list of issues to help with, as not only a local challenge, but as a regional one as well, as Sharp Park Golf Course is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco.

She also praised the Pacifica Democrats for being in existence for over 40 years and still going strong.

"This is an incredibly vibrant Democratic club in this county. Even during those tough years when being a Democrat wasn't a very popular thing to be, you were still meeting and fighting the great fight. I think that's a tribute to your commitment to the principles that we all embrace as Democrats,"she said. "As I walk around the room, there are so many faces that I have known for thirty years, and there are so many new faces from near and far." Speier said it was great to see them all come to meet each month with the Pacifica Democrats.

Advising the audience that she had made a change from her initial speech, which was to have covered her reactions to the election results of Super Tuesday, to her new Congressional bid for office this coming April, she informed the group that there will be a Special General Election on April 8 for the 12th Congressional seat, that has recently been vacated by the death of Congressman Lantos.

"In this coming special election, anyone can vote for anyone they want. Republicans do not have to vote for Republicans. Democrats do not have to vote for Democrats, although I highly recommend that Democrats do," Speier said. "If one candidate gets 50 percent plus 1 vote from the number of voters who voted in the special election, they will obtain the Congressional seat for the remainder of Tom Lantos' term in office. If not, there will be a 'run-off' in June," advised Speier.

"I think that it is appropriate for me, in what appears to be a very short campaign,to, at least, address the issues that I am going to fight for, if I get elected to Congress. As you know, I am running for this seat after serving 24 years in elective office...18 years in the state legislature and six years on the San Mateo County Board of Supevisors. I come, having run for this office before and losing, but I think, I come optimally prepared to serve you."

Having said that, she proceeded to cover a host of issues that she plans on addressing once in office."These are issues that are typically tough, these are issues that have lots of special interest on one side and me on the other," said Speier. And what are these issues? One of the first examples given was the Financial Privacy Law that she finally got passed after four years in the Legislature, wherein she had to go up against people in her own party to make sure that people had control over their own financial information.

According to Speier, since she got that law passed, the American Banking Association has subsequently unraveled 1/3rd of that law and Speier is anxious to address that industry once again, if put into office. "They are scared and they have a right to be scared!" said Speier.

Another interest of hers is education and the discretionary dollars that are spent on the prison system as opposed to the discretionary dollars that are spent on higher education.

"There are 170,000 inmates in the state prison system and there are 170,000 students in the UC system. Five times as much money is being spent on the prisoners in the state prison system, as is being spent on the students in the University of California system," said Speier.

She advised that during the course of five years the prison guards got a 37 percent increase in their pay. They are making over $100,000 now. She also pointed out that the University Professors during that same timeframe only received a 3 percent increase in their remuneration.

Speier is all for putting more programs into the prison system with more counselors and having less guards to cut down the occurrence of recidivism.

According to Speier, it is costing the public extraordinary sums of money to continue the system as it now is operated. "It has gone from $6 billion dollars to $13 billion dollars over the course of four years," she said. She cited the prison issue as one of the interests that she took on in the past at the state level, but she told the audience that she doesn't know what issues exactly she will be taking on for the most part at the federal level, if she should be elected to office this time around.

She also spoke of what she sees as a serious problem that the United States now has is the Iraq War. "'The wrong war, at the wrong time, for the wrong purpose, we have got to get out and the sooner the better. I am of the opinion that we must be out of Iraq within two years, any attempt to get out of Iraq before then is just not being realistic," she said.

Another issue that Speier is concerned with is adequate healthcare for all citizens. She pointed out that the United States spends more money on healthcare than any other industrialized nation in the world, per capita. She believes there is a solution that will work. She believes that "Single Payor" health insurance is the way to go and that there is still an opportunity for various healthcare plans to engage, as they engage in the medicare system.

It was very clear during Speier's speech that she touched upon several issues that resonated with the audience. After her presentation, a brief question and answer period followed, which covered several issues including school funding problems, the American Rifle Association, campaign finance reform, problems with the Patriot Act, lack of adequate mental health services, lack of adequate veteran's health and welfare benefits, special education needs and government reform, in general.

On an ending note, Pacifican Helen James said to Speier, "We need a Department of Peace!" To which Jackie replied, "That statement reminds me of a woman who once said that she would not be happy until the Security Council of the United Nations was made up of grandmothers..."

http://www.pacificatribune.com/localnews/ci_8314934

Jackie Speier, shot by cult members in 1978, seeks return to Capitol Hill

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Jackie Speier has waited a long time to make another run for Congress.

Speier, the leading candidate to replace former Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), first ran for Congress in 1979 in a special election to succeed her boss, Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.). Ryan was the only House member to be murdered while performing his responsibilities as a congressman.

Now running with the backing of most local and state Democrats, Speier has the inside track to replace Lantos, who passed away last week. She’s the only prominent Democrat to announce her campaign so far, which is surprising since Lantos had safely held the San Francisco-area seat since 1981. And like Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, Speier has a harrowing story of her own. As a congressional aide, Speier accompanied Ryan on an investigation into Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple cult in Guyana. On that trip, cult members shot and killed Ryan, three journalists and a Jones follower looking to escape. Speier, hit by five bullets, was among the nine injured.

“I think people connect with me because of that and because my husband was killed when I was pregnant with my second child,” said Speier, 57. “Those people hope they can overcome anything that comes in their way because they see I’m still standing.”

Though she lost the special election to fill Ryan’s seat, Speier threw herself into public life. She served as a San Mateo County supervisor, state assemblywoman and state senator, compiling a record as a fighter for consumer rights.

“She’s nailed down every endorsement. The left has loved her. She has a high profile from running as a state senator and running for lieutenant governor,” said Steven Maviglio, a publisher of the liberal blog California Majority Report.

“It’s all but over.”

If she gets to Congress, Speier said she will work on increasing access to healthcare and ending the Iraq war.

Speier announced her campaign to replace Lantos in January, two weeks after he announced his retirement due to his battle with cancer. Though Speier last year was considering challenging him in a primary, the 12-term congressman endorsed her after she officially launched her bid.

“She works very, very hard,” Maviglio said. “And the press loves her; they have a long history with her going back to her Jonestown days.”

A special primary election will be held April 8. If no candidate receives a majority of votes, a special general election contested by the top vote-getters from each party will be held June 3, the same day as the primary for the regular general election in November.

Unlike other candidates looking to succeed departing House Democrats, Speier is virtually alone in seeking her party’s nomination. Whoever wins it will be heavily favored to defeat the Republican candidate. Lantos defeated his GOP opponent in 2006 by a 3-to-1 margin. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) won the district in the 2004 presidential race by nearly as large a margin.

In races for open Democratic seats this cycle, several candidates were prompted to run by the promise of serving in safe Democratic districts, said David Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report. Rep. Niki Tsongas (Mass.) defeated four other Democrats in a primary before going on to win the seat left by Rep. Marty Meehan (D).

Rep. Laura Richardson (Calif.) beat nine Democrats in a primary before she won a general election to succeed the late Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D).

Should Speier win, she could serve on Capitol Hill for many terms. “Jackie Speier has been angling for this for quite a while,” Wasserman said. “The fact that she started running before Lantos announced his retirement in the House gave her a huge leg up.”

Some Democrats, however, want a competitive primary race. They’ve started an effort to draft Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, hoping to further stoke grassroots activity in California.

Lessig has been a strong critic of the Iraq war and the influence of lobbyists’ money in politics, and he’s been a vocal supporter of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.

If he got to Congress, he said he would seek to work with members of both parties on issues like campaign finance.

Lessig said that he would pledge to refuse money from lobbyists and their political action committees, and noted that Speier had accepted donations from insurance companies in a previous race.

“My view is that the system is broken when it produces a world where incumbents have a 99 percent election rate,” Lessig said. “That’s just a broken system. It’s not broken by accident; it’s designed that way. I do think it’s extremely important to think about who we’re coronating.”

Lessig, who has started a campaign committee, said he will decide this week whether to run.

Any serious challenge to Speier would require boatloads of money to pay for advertising in the expensive Bay Area, Wasserman said. Lessig, however, is poised to draw on donations from the Internet. A hero among bloggers for arguing the Supreme Court case against the constitutionality of a law extending copyright restrictions, Lessig has already been urged to run by bloggers on Open Left, The Atlantic and DailyKos.

“I like both of these individuals very much, and I would love to see Lessig jump in,” wrote Matt Stoller on Open Left, a leading liberal blog. “The Silicon Valley area is seeing a surge in local Democratic activity and organizing, as it is a blue area that had let its grass roots atrophy.”

http://thehill.com

Congressional candidate Jackie Speier guest speaker at Democrats meeting

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

From the steamy tarmacs of a remote airstrip in Guyana to the steamy debates in the halls of governance in California, former State Senator and current Congressional candidate Jackie Speier's life has been one of remarkable destiny.

It is a life that has seen great ups and tragic"downs, but, one that has molded her philosophy, her zest for work and life, and, in the final analysis, has proved to her that no one is guaranteed a tomorrow.

On Saturday, Feb.16, Speier will be the featured guest speaker at the Pacifica Democrat's 9:30 a.m. monthly breakfast meeting, which is held in the rear meeting room of the Sharp Park Golf Course Restaurant (Sharp Park and Francisco Blvds) in Pacifica.

Former State Senator Speier has recently announced her candidacy to run for the 12th Congressional seat, a seat that is currently held by soon-to-be retired Congressman Tom Lantos and the same seat that was once held by a former friend and boss of Speier's, Congressman Leo J. Ryan, whose assassination she witnessed on Nov. 18, 1978 as she laid, shot five times and fighting for her life, on a tarmac in the jungles of Guyana.

After surviving such a life-altering experience, Speier returned to California and became the youngest person ever elected to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. Having spent six years in that office, Speier went on to serve 10 years in the California State Assembly.

In 1998, she was elected to the State Senate, where she represented San Francisco and San Mateo County for eight years. During her tenure in the legislature, Speier achieved an impressive record with over 300 pieces of legislation signed into law by both Democratic and Republican Governors.

She has authored groundbreaking legislation on privacy and consumer protection, child welfare and healthcare. Many of her bills have become templates for other state and national legislation.

Speier received "Legislator of the Year" honors from many groups throughout the years, including the League of California Cities and the California School Board Association. The American Medical Association gave her their national award for outstanding government service.

Vote the Coast recognized her with their Coastal Steward Award. Other accolades have come from groups as diverse as the Professional Association for Childhood Education, California Certified Organic Farmers, the San Mateo Business and Development Group, the California National Organization for Women and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

But perhaps the most unusual "award" that Speier has ever received down through the years is the fact that she has the unique distinction of having had a Caltrain bullet train named "Jackie Speier", in her honor. And on any given day, if you go down to where the Caltrain is running, you can see the "Jackie Speier" whiz by, as it makes it's way down the tracks of San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties.

All are welcome to hear the former State Senator share her ideas with the Pacifica Democrats on a variety of issues, including the political implications of the "Super Tuesday" primary election results, both in California and the nation.

One need not be a member of the Pacifica Democrats, nor even a Democrat to attend the breakfast meeting. It is opened to all.

Doors open at 9 a.m. The meeting begins promptly at 9:30 a.m. A full breakfast is offered for $12; continental breakfast - $6; coffee only - $3. No purchase is necessary to attend. Reservations are recommended for Speier's presentation. To RSVP, please contact Barbara Arietta V/P Publicity and Membership at 415-246-0775 or Frank Winston V/P Programs at 738-9400.

http://www.pacificatribune.com/localnews/ci_8178733

Speier gathers endorsements

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Former state Sen. Jackie Speier's candidacy for Congress got another boost Thursday with endorsements from U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

They join a long list of elected officials supporting Speier in her bid to replace U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, when he steps down at the end of this year. Others include Lantos himself, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The endorsements add to Speier's already formidable credentials in a June Democratic primary race that no other major candidate has yet entered.

Speier launched her campaign after Lantos announced he had cancer and would not seek a 15th term in office.

"Sen. Feinstein and Sen. Boxer have been mentors of mine for many years, and I am honored to have their support," Speier said in a statement.

E-mail Will Oremus at woremus@dailynewsgroup.com.