House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday that she was motivated to stay on as the leader of the Democratic caucus in the House because she wanted to change “the role of money in politics.” She also called President Obama “the most respected person on the planet.”
“What I talked about here about changing the role of money in politics is really a very important motivator for me to stay in the leader’s office. I think it must be done. When people say that — ‘oh, and I’ve read in the course of this week, money didn’t make any difference in the campaign; they all wasted their money’ — well, that really wasn’t true,” Pelosi said during a press conference at the Capitol.
“The president of the United States, the most well-known, famous, respected person on the planet, had to spend about a billion dollars to set the record straight from what that other big money was putting out there. Senate races, House races — [Congresswoman-elect] Tammy Duckworth had 4 and-a-half — 4.6 million? Seven million dollars spent against her.”
Pelosi said she made her “final” decision to run for minority leader again yesterday.
“I called my brother Tommy this morning to tell him my final decision, because really, being actively in politics at this level is really insatiable,” she said.
“There’s no — what I said to him is there are not enough hours in the day for me. There’s so much more I want to do. I don’t know how to get any more hours in the day. You can only sleep so less, right?”