Jackie Speier

Karen Lorraine Jacqueline Speier (born May 14, 1950) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for CA's 14th congressional district, serving in Congress from 2008 to 2023.

A member of the Democratic Party, Speier represented much of the territory that her political mentor, Leo Ryan, represented.

Speier was born in 1950 in San Francisco, and grew up in an apolitical family, the daughter of Nancy (née Kanchelian) and Manfred "Fred" Speier.

Her mother, who was born in Fresno of Armenian descent, lost most of her extended family in the Armenian genocide, while her father was an immigrant from Germany.

He was the son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother.

Speier took Jacqueline as her confirmation name after Jackie Kennedy.

She is a graduate of Mercy High School in Burlingame.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Davis, and a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1976.

In 1978, while working as his aide, Speier survived five gunshot wounds when Ryan was assassinated during the Jonestown massacre.

Speier was a member of the California State Senate, representing parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

Speier was part of his November 1978 fact-finding mission organized to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple followers, almost all of whom were American citizens who had moved to Jonestown, Guyana, with Jones in 1977 and 1978.

Several Peoples Temple members ambushed the investigative team and others boarding the plane to leave Jonestown on November 18.

Five people were killed, including Ryan.

While trying to shield herself from rifle and shotgun fire behind small airplane wheels with other team members, Speier was shot five times and waited 22 hours before help arrived.

The same day, over 900 remaining members of the Peoples Temple died in Jonestown and Georgetown in a mass murder-suicide.

Speier's political career began with an unsuccessful run to fill the vacancy caused by Ryan's death (the seat she held later).

She lost the Democratic primary to Ryan's former chief of staff, G. W. "Joe" Holsinger.

He lost the special election to the Republican nominee, San Mateo County Supervisor Bill Royer, who served the remaining 21 months of the term before losing to Tom Lantos.

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.

In September 2023 Speier announced that she will run for the San Mateo County Board of supervisors in 2024, more than 40 years after she was first elected to the same board.

In 1986, midway through her second term on the Board of Supervisors, Speier ran for the California State Assembly from a district in northern San Mateo County.

She won by a few hundred votes.

She was reelected four more times, the last time as the nominee of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Speier's first marriage was to Steven Sierra, an emergency-room doctor, in 1987.

In 1988, they had a son, Jackson Kent, while she was a member of the California State Assembly.

Sierra died in a car crash in 1994 at age 53.

At the time, Speier was two months pregnant with their second child, a daughter named Stephanie.

Stephanie is now a reporter for ABC's local affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area.

State law prevented Speier from running for reelection to the Assembly in 1996, but in 1998 she was elected to the California State Senate.

In 2001, Speier married Barry Dennis, an investment consultant.

Speier entered politics by serving as a congressional staffer for Congressman Leo Ryan.

In 2002, she was elected to a second term with 78.2% of the vote.

As a state senator, Speier was instrumental in securing $127 million to start the "Baby Bullet" express service for Caltrain, for which the commuter rail agency named a new locomotive (no. 925) after her.

Speier also focused on representing consumer rights.

She was termed out of the California State Senate in 2006.

During her last term, she served as assistant president pro tempore of the State Senate.

On April 8, 2008, she won the special election for the vacated United States House of Representatives seat of the late Congressman Tom Lantos.

In 2021, she announced that she would not seek reelection in the 2022 midterm elections.