Cindy Sheehan Going After Pelosi's Seat in Congress

Last July she said she'd run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this election year. And now leftist anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan has made it official.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle's' SFgate.com, Sheehan showed up at San Francisco City Hall to file the papers necessary to launch her campaign -- but she'll have a long way to go before her campaign will be recognized as official. That will require her to get 10,198 signatures of friends and supporters, or 3 percent of the district voters registered for the 2006 general election. Sheehan has until Aug. 8 to collect the needed signatures.

She'll be taking on an opponent who is one of the best-known and most powerful Democrats in the country. Pelosi has served 10 terms in the House and routinely gets about 80 percent of the vote in her district.

The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who first made headlines camping on the doorstep of President Bush's Texas ranch from 2005 until 2007, Sheehan told the Chronicle: "It's an uphill battle, but I'm excited about the signature-gathering process. It's going to be an opportunity to talk to people about our campaign."

Moving ahead on her promise to run against Pelosi because she refused to start impeachment proceedings against Bush, Sheehan has been campaigning against the speaker virtually full time since relocating to the San Francisco Mission District represented in Congress by Pelosi.

"I said last year that I was going to take a break (from the anti-war movement) and then come back," Sheehan told the Chronicle," adding that when the president commuted White House aide Scooter Libby's prison sentence last summer, she decided "that seeing George Bush impeached would be a victory for humanity."

Her demands for impeachment failed to get Pelosi, who already had said that impeachment was "off the table" when it came to the Democratic congressional agenda, involved.

Pelosi's refusal to vote for an immediate end to the Iraq war and to support single-payer health care shows also she's out of touch with San Francisco's progressive roots, Sheehan told the Chronicle.

"I'll represent everyone in San Francisco, not just the corporate elite," she said. "I'm working class, my family was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled."

The odds against victory don't bother Sheehan, who has raised more than $100,000 for her race, most of it from outside the district.

"Even people who I won't represent are willing to back me, because they know what I'll do in office," she said. "Many people in San Francisco know me, and they know my persistence.

"If I get to Washington, I'll only be in office a couple weeks before Bush leaves, but I guarantee he'll know I'm there."