- Pelosi told a friend "at this point in my life, I don't need this," upon her election as Speaker in 2018.
- Pelosi's was dismayed and frustrated about having to "grovel" for the post, according to a new book.
- "The experience of begging for support to stay on as speaker was wearing on her," the authors wrote.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mulled retirement as she ran for a second go-around as House Speaker in 2018 and even told a friend "I don't need this," according to a forthcoming book.
New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns pull back the curtain on Pelosi's internal frustrations in their forthcoming book, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," due for release on May 3. Insider obtained a copy of the book ahead of its publication.
"The experience of begging for support to stay on as speaker was wearing on her," the book said. "The precarious margin of control and her party's ideological divisions in the House demanded an experienced, authoritative hand."
Pelosi, the authors wrote, "was the only Democrat in the chamber — the only Democrat alive — who had already served as Speaker, who had shown she could do the legislative arithmetic and twist the necessary arms to get things done."
"And yet," they added, "they were making her grovel."
"At this point in my life, I don't need this," Pelosi, who was then 80, told a friend, according to the book.
Pelosi broke a glass ceiling when her colleagues elected her to serve as the first-ever female House Speaker after the 2006 midterm elections. But her second turn running for House Speaker after the 2018 midterms was far more contentious and somewhat bitter.
The speaker, the authors wrote, was "confronting a Democratic caucus that was hazing her and a Republican-controlled Senate that threatened to suffocate every consequential piece of legislation that she wrangled out of her own chamber."
Pelosi faced no formal opposition from other members, but still came up against resistance from frontline Democrats on her second run for House Speaker.
Many newer members of Congress openly challenged Pelosi's leadership and questioned her mandate to lead the party, spurring Pelosi to make a number of deals and arrangements with Democrats in the weeks leading up to the speakership vote.
And Pelosi's eventual election to the speakership on November 18, 2018, the authors wrote, seemed like "a joyless one."
"One ally recalls Pelosi expressing her frustration and fatigue with unusual vehemence that day, discussing her political future in a way she rarely did around colleagues," the authors wrote.
Pelosi told the person: "You couldn't pay me a billion dollars to run for Speaker again," the authors wrote. Pelosi was elected for a fourth term as speaker in 2020.
Pelosi's office did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.