With Obama and Clinton gone, GOP revives Pelosi as boogeyman

Move over Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Republicans have a new campaign boogeyman. Well, sort of new.

It's more of an encore for Nancy Pelosi, the 77-year-old House Democratic leader who spent four years as the nation's first female speaker, lost her majority in 2010 and now wants the gavel again. In that quest, the California lawmaker and fundraiser extraordinaire finds herself as the GOP's preferred face of a Democratic Party trying to upend Republicans' monopoly control in Washington.

Republicans are testing their approach in a pair of special House races where the specter of a second Pelosi speakership is intended to excite - or scare - Republican voters and sway independents enough to counter surging opposition to President Donald Trump. And the strategy could be a defining theme of the 2018 midterm elections.

"Nancy Pelosi and liberal politicians are flooding into Georgia to try and stop our Republican majority," a national GOP television spot blares in a suburban Atlanta congressional district where 30-year-old Democrat Jon Ossoff nearly won a multiparty primary outright. Ossoff still could claim a June runoff victory that would jolt Washington, and his opponent, Republican Karen Handel, warns he'd be Pelosi's "rubber stamp."

In Montana, a grainy black-and-white television image of Pelosi greets voters mulling another Democratic upset bid. "Rob Quist talks folksy, but his record is more Nancy Pelosi than Montana," a voiceover warns of the singer-turned-candidate.

Trump himself has joined in. "Ossoff is funded by Nancy Pelosi," who wants "to land a blow against my presidency," reads a fundraising email the president signed on Handel's behalf.

Pelosi has proven effective as a prolific fundraiser and a leader capable of rallying Democrats to deliver major legislation for then-President Barack Obama.

As speaker, she muscled through the 2010 health care law and the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul - complex laws the likes of which her Republican successors have been unable to handle.  - AP