Dick Spotswood: 2019 was a good year for Pelosi, Huffman, Phillips

December 24, 2019

It’s been a good year for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. At the start of 2019, the San Francisco Democrat was in a defensive mode with even a few Democratic members pledging not to vote for her election as speaker. It seemed her time had passed and younger, more progressive leadership was likely to take over.

Fast forward 12 months and Pelosi is at the apex of Congressional power. Only fools claim the 79-year-old San Francisco Democrat is too old for the job. She enters 2020 as the most powerful House leader since Speaker Sam Rayburn and is the undisputed leader of the Democratic Party. The Iron Lady with the velvet touch is the only person in Washington, D.C., with the guts to bring fear to the heart of Donald Trump, an accomplishment which caused her blue state popularity to skyrocket.

Congressman Jared Huffman experienced a successful 2019. He’s one of those Democrats nimble enough to balance the more doable expectations of far left progressives with the more achievable goals of consistently pragmatic left-of-center liberals like Pelosi. Huffman supported impeachment but successfully advocated it be accomplished in a lawyer-like less flashy manner than some of his colleagues preferred.

Huffman is a shoe-in for reelection from his district which stretches 350 miles from the Golden Gate to the Oregon state line. The San Rafael resident has his eye firmly fixed on the House. He’s not going to make a long-shot try of the U.S. Senate. A lifelong environmentalist, Huffman is now chair of the House Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife. His long-term goal is to chair the powerful House Natural Resources Committee.

San Rafael Mayor Gary Phillips had a good run in 2019. The Mission City enjoys the only directly elected mayor among Marin’s 11 municipalities. While the post has limited direct powers, over decades strong and focused mayors made the post one of significance. Phillips played a key role in selecting and electing first-rate council members, city commissioners and assembling a top-notch staff that together constitutes Marin’s best-run city.

The mayor successfully advocated enactment of the city’s bold vegetation management plan designed to make San Rafael’s landscape more fire resilient. The city is Marin’s center of chronic homelessness. Due to cooperation between San Rafael police and Marin’s nonprofits, the innovative Housing First program resulted in Marin becoming California’s only county to experience an absolute decline in the number of chronic homeless.

The city’s dark spot remains underfunded public employee pension obligations hobbling the city’s ability to fully fund public services. If Phillips can move the needle on that dilemma during his last year before retirement, he will leave an indelible positive mark.


By:  Dick Spotwood
Source: Marin Independent Journal