Fri Nov 19, 2021 – 1:00 pm ESTFri Nov 19, 2021 – 1:00 pm EST
(LifeSiteNews) — Jackie Speier has been a fixture of the California political scene for more than 40 years.
So much so that in the three decades preceding her first election to Congress in a special race to replace the late Tom Lantos in 2008, there was seldom a cycle that didn’t feature Speier’s name on the ballot in the San Francisco/San Mateo County area.
Before making a name for herself, though, Speier was an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan, a fellow Democrat often identified as her mentor, who infamously led a delegation to “Jonestown” in Guyana to investigate the Peoples Temple, the notorious religious cult led by Jim Jones, in 1978. Ryan, along with five others, was tragically shot and killed upon attempting to flee the commune.
Speier was a member of Ryan’s team on that fateful trip, and sustained five gunshot wounds herself, living to tell the tale and pursue her own career in politics thereafter, serving first on the San Mateo Board of Supervisors, then in the State Assembly as both an assemblywoman and senator.
The U.S. House district
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