Jubilant Democrats Assume Control on Capitol Hill

By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — In a day of transition and pageantry, exultant Democrats on Thursday took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years and elected the first woman to be speaker of the House.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California took the speaker’s gavel at 2:08 p.m. from Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, whom she defeated by a vote of 233 to 202, the 31-seat margin of the new Democratic majority. The floor and the packed galleries erupted in cheers when the vote was announced.

Even Republicans grudgingly acknowledged the unprecedented nature of the day on which a woman ascended to power on Capitol Hill by rising as one to applaud her.

“This is an historic moment,” Mrs. Pelosi said in her first remarks as speaker of the 110th Congress. “It’s an historic moment for the Congress. It’s an historic moment for the women of America. It is a moment for which we have waited for over 200 years.”

Earlier in the day, on the other side of the Capitol dome, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, became majority leader, a result of his party’s one-seat victory margin in the November elections.

Both Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi promised a new era of cooperation after years of partisan passion and gridlock. “Guided by the spirit of bipartisanship,” Mr. Reid said, “Democrats are ready to take this country in a new direction.”

The House opened the session by passing, by a large bipartisan margin, new ethics rules.

Read more on the openning of the 110th session of Congress at the New York Times.

Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times