SAN FRANCISCO — Nancy Pelosi has made two very different, almost irreconcilable statements about her political future.
In 2018, she pledged that 2022 would be her last year as House Democratic leader, acceding to a term limit to quell an uprising and secure a second stint as speaker. In January, she announced she was running for another two-year term in the House.
With the House’s passage of the sweeping measure to address climate change and prescription drug prices on Friday — “a glorious day for us,” Ms. Pelosi beamed — and her China-defying trip to Taiwan serving as a diplomatic career capstone, the question of what comes next for Ms. Pelosi is only intensifying.
Will she press to stay on as speaker if Democrats somehow hold the House? Or, if Republicans take control, will she simply retire?
She could break her 2018 pledge and seek to remain Democratic leader in the minority. Those close to her describe only one option as inconceivable: a demotion to the backbench.
Ms. Pelosi, 82, has avoided discussing her plans past November and declined to be interviewed. A spokesman, Drew Hammill, issued the same, terse statement he has offered previously: “The speaker is not on a shift,” he said. “She’s on a mission.”
Some clues to Ms. Pelosi’s future may be found closer to her home in San Francisco — where the tantalizing possibility of the city’s first open congressional seat since the fall of the Soviet Union has become the political talk of the town.
Would-be candidates, labor leaders, political strategists, donors and activists are already busily plotting what a race to succeed her would look like — albeit almost entirely in secret, to avoid antagonizing Ms. Pelosi, who has made plain she wants to retire on her own terms.
“This is very much the campaign that shall not be named,” Dan Newman, a San Francisco-based Democratic operative, said of the early jostling. “Nancy Pelosi is a force of nature, and no one wants to appear in any way…