"The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history," said a jubilant Pelosi on election night.

“Nancy Pelosi is a great woman. She understands the policy and the politics that got us here,”said Congresswoman Barbara Lee. “We are fortunate she is right across the bay from us and understands our district.”

California Democrats stand to gain the most from Pelosi’s election as speaker. Many of her key allies – Representatives George Miller, Howard Berman, Henry Waxman, and Tom Lantos are almost certain to pick up key positions on important House committees, said Tim Hodson, Executive Director of Sacramento State University’s Center for California Studies.

Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who as chair of the Democratic Party’s Congressional Campaign Committee many credit with playing a crucial role in Tuesday’s Democratic victories, can expect to play a key role as well, Hodson said.

“Remember the Godfather?” Hodson asked. “Everybody needs to have an enforcer, and it could well be that Emanuel will become Pelosi’s enforcer.”

Hodson said the campaign strategy that Republicans used to frame Pelosi as a San Francisco liberal to energize their base would only intensify when she takes over as speaker. They will attack, he said, to try and moderate her agenda.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, and now a professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, said that Pelosi will have to work to escape the liberal label. But with those in line for appointments, he had his doubts about her chance of success.

“She does not want to be called a San Francisco liberal. She’s going to have to hold the party together,” said Reich. “The people in line to run the leadership committees are very, very liberal. How is she going to hold them in line… there may be a mandate and she won’t be able to control the caucus.”

The new position is “going to bring her a level of scrutiny and attack that she’s never experienced before,” Hodson added. “She’ll have to take lessons from Hillary Clinton.”

“Iraq is on the way to totally imploding,” said Hodson. “Pelosi will have to be very careful to not play into the Bush administration’s hands,” by being too critical of the Iraq War strategy, and thus becoming a scapegoat for decreasing morale,

Representative Lynne Woolsey, who won California’s Sixth District by a wide margin on Tuesday, said she thought Pelosi would do fine.

“Voters know the difference between a liberal and Nancy, who’s leading from the center,” she said. “[Nancy] has a spine of steel but she’s civil.”

While she beats back attacks from Republicans, Pelosi will have to restrain many of the Democratic party who are likely to call for an immediate retreat from Bush administration policies on the war and tax cuts.

Some, Hodson said, will be looking for some payback for the way Republicans ran the House during the Clinton era.

Pelosi’s recent pledge to prevent a move to impeach President Bush if elected speaker, was seen by many as an early warning to her colleagues.

“One of the people that Nancy Pelosi may wind up being particularly grateful toward is Tom Delay,” Hodson said. “Tom Delay, and Newt Gingrich before him, helped give the position of House speaker vastly more power.”

The power Republicans gave to the position will likely give Pelosi more room in both shaping the Congressional agenda and holding her Democratic colleagues at bay.

All of the future politics bothered few as Pelosi claimed victory on Tuesday. A reporter for Ms. Magazine, said that the crowd there was full of young people drinking wine, chugging beer, and swaying to a live rock band.