Democrat Rep. Jackie Speier announces she won't seek re-election

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier announced Tuesday that she will not run for re-election in 2022.

"It's time for me to come home," Speier, D-Calif., announced in a video, adding that it was time to be "more than a weekend wife, mother and friend."

Speier, 71, represents California's 4th District of San Mateo County and the Peninsula. She previously represented the 12th District of San Francisco from 2008 to 2013.

Her path to public service began in 1978, when she was shot five times in the Jonestown Massacre that left 909 people dead in Guyana. She was serving as an aide to Rep. Leo Ryan at the time. He died in the shooting. They had been on a mission to investigate human rights abuses.

"Forty-three years ago this week, I was lying on an airstrip in the jungles of Guyana with five bullet holes in my body. I vowed that if I survived, I would dedicate my life to public service. I lived, and I survived," Speier recalled in the video, posted to Twitter.

Speier also served in the California legislature.

In the U.S. House, Speier championed women's equality and sits on the House Committee for Armed Services and Government Oversight & Reform.

Speier, who said she had been harassed while working as a young staffer at the Capitol, introduced the Me Too Congress Act. The proposal served as the basis for the Congressional Accountability Act Reform Act, which requires anti-harassment training bars non-disclosure agreements from silencing survivors.

This summer, she worked on issues of sexual assault in the military, when top Pentagon officials urged Congress to change the system for assault cases.

She noted during a committee hearing in July that the Pentagon "estimates that roughly 135,000 active duty service members, 65,400 women and 69,600 men, have been sexually assaulted."

Speier is the ninth House Democrat to announce retirement plans from Congress. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the longest-serving Democrat in the Senate, also announced his retirement Monday.

Five others who recently announced are Republicans: Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Speier is a San Francisco native and graduated from UC Davis and UC Hastings, where she earned a law degree.