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Karen Lorraine Jacqueline "Jackie" Speier[2] (; born May 14, 1950) is the U.S. Representative for California's 14th congressional district, serving in Congress since 2008. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district, numbered as the 12th District from 2008 to 2013, includes the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and the southwest quarter of San Francisco. She represents much of the territory that had been represented by her political mentor, Leo Ryan.
She is also a former member of the California State Senate who represented parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties. On April 8, 2008, she won the special election for the vacated United States House of Representatives seat of late Congressman Tom Lantos.[3]
Speier was born in 1950 in San Francisco, and grew up in an apolitical, working-class family, the daughter of Nancy (née Kanchelian) and Manfred "Fred" Speier.[4] Her mother was of Armenian descent, while her father was an immigrant from Germany. Speier took Jacqueline as her confirmation name after Jackie Kennedy.[5] She is a graduate of Mercy High School in Burlingame. (Her daughter graduated from there in 2012.) She earned a B.A. from the University of California, Davis, and a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of the Law in 1976.[6]
She married Dr. Steven Sierra, an emergency room doctor, in 1987.[7][8] They had a son Jackson Kent, born in 1988 while she was serving as a member of the California State Assembly.[9] Her husband died in a car accident in 1994 at the age of 53.[7] At the time, Jackie was two months pregnant with their second child, a daughter she named Stephanie.[9]
In 2001 Speier married Barry Dennis, an investment consultant.[7][10]
Speier entered politics by serving as a congressional staffer for Congressman Georgetown in a mass murder-suicide.
Speier's own political career began with an unsuccessful run to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Congressman Ryan (the seat she holds now).[5] She lost the Democratic primary to another former Ryan staffer, G. W. "Joe" Holsinger. He lost to the Republican candidate Bill Royer, San Mateo County Supervisor.
Speier won her first election in 1980, when she ran for the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and defeated a 20-year incumbent. At the time, she was the youngest person ever elected to the board. She was reelected in 1984, and was later selected as chairwoman.[12]
In 1986, midway through her second term on the Board of Supervisors, she ran for the California State Assembly from a district in northern San Mateo County. She won by a few hundred votes. She was reelected five more times, the last as the nominee of both the Democratic and Republican parties.[13]
California state term limits forced Speier to give up her Assembly seat in 1996, but in 1998 she was elected to the California State Senate. In 2002, she was elected to a second term with 78.2% of the vote.[14] As a state senator, Speier was instrumental in securing $127 million funding for major service improvements to Caltrain, for which the commuter rail agency named a new locomotive (no. 925) for her. Speier also focused on representing consumer rights.[15] Senator Speier was termed out of the California State Senate in 2006. Speier served as assistant president pro tempore of the California State Senate during her last term.
In 2006, Speier ran in the Democratic primary for Lieutenant governor of California against insurance commissioner John Garamendi and state senator Liz Figueroa. At the June 6, 2006, elections, Speier was defeated by Garamendi in a close race. Garamendi received 42.9%, Speier received 39.3%, and Figueroa received the remaining 17.8% of the vote.
Speier endorsed Hillary Clinton's bid for president.[16]
On January 13, 2008, Speier announced she was running in the Democratic primary for the 12th District, Ryan's old district. The seat was being vacated by 14-term incumbent and fellow Democrat Tom Lantos, who announced on January 2, 2008, that he was not seeking re-election. Speier had spent much of 2007 building support to challenge Lantos in the Democratic primary.[17]
On January 17, 2008, Lantos endorsed Speier as his successor. She also picked up endorsements from Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, Congressman Mike Thompson and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Lantos died February 11, 2008. Speier won a special primary election on April 8, 2008, to fill the remainder of his term, which ended in January 2009. She won an outright majority, avoiding a runoff that would have been held on June 3, coinciding with the regular primary election.[18] Speier easily won the Democratic primary on June 3. The then-12th, now-14th was so heavily Democratic that this virtually assured her of a full term.[19] She was elected to a full term in November with 75 percent of the vote, and has been reelected two more times with no substantive opposition.
On July 11, 2008, Speier introduced her first bill, the Gasoline Savings and Speed Limit Reduction Act, which would set a national speed limit of 60 mph in urban areas and 65 mph on less-populated stretches of highway.
Speier supports legal abortion. When she took the National Political Awareness Test in 2002, she answered, “Abortions should always be legally available”.[20] The organization [20] In a speech on the House floor on February 17, 2011, Speier said that she herself had undergone an emergency D&E procedure when complications developed in a wanted pregnancy.[22][23]
Speier believes in a stricter view of [20]
Speier is concerned for the protection of the environment and wants to preserve the health of this planet. She lists as evidence the decline of salmon on the West Coast as proof of [27]
Speier introduced legislation to enhance information sharing between the Transportation Security Administration and participating mass transit agencies in high-risk jurisdictions. The goal of this expanded relationship would be to thwart terrorist attacks against high-profile transit targets.[28] [29]
Speier supports same-sex marriage. She is a member of the LGBT Equality Caucus.[30]
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