Paul Pelosi, Jr., the fresh green prince of San Francisco
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi loves to talk up her folksy grandmotherhood. But what's her record at raising kids? This much we know: Son Paul Pelosi Jr. is dating a lingerie model. And more:
- Age: 39. Marital status: Single, though we hear Bulick may be his live-in girlfriend. Residence: San Francisco's Marina district.
- Last year, Men's Vogue called him the "rising prince" of a "new political dynasty." He's so green it hurts, refusing to wash his clothes during peak hours of energy use. He also rides San Francisco's electric Muni buses, which predisposes us to like him.
- Pelosi is president of San Francisco's Commission on the Environment, a powerless advisory group. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is his cousin, and they're supposedly good buds. But Pelosi was appointed by Newsom's predecessor, Willie Brown.
Pelosi fling Nicole Bulick isn't what you'd call a professional model; she donned lacey underclothes in her part-time, contract position as "Arbiter of Zeitgeist" for Moxsie, a San Francisco online-fashion startup. Bizarrely, when Valleywag reported on Bulick's brief modeling career and mentioned her relationship with Pelosi, she sent us a threatening email claiming that she neither worked for Moxsie nor dated Pelosi. In fact, their relationship is well-known and she's frequently found on his arm at San Francisco society events.
Pelosi earned three degrees at Georgetown University — which kept him conveniently close to mom, who was first elected to Congress in 1987. Georgetown received hundreds and his thousands of dollars from his mom and dad. (Paul Pelosi, Sr. is a wealthy real-estate investor who's been involved in some questionable deals.)
- His LinkedIn profile is a bit incomplete. It discusses his investment-banking work for Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. And it mentions his job at Countrywide, for example, where he worked as a loan officer — at one of the mortgage companies most scrutinized for its role in the housing bubble and ensuing collapse of Wall Street.
- But it pointedly omits his $180,000 a year job as a senior vice president at InfoUSA, a marketer of consumer databases, which he started less than one month after his mother became House Speaker, while simultaneously holding his job at Countrywide. InfoUSA CEO Vinod Gupta also paid Bill Clinton millions of dollars as a consultant, so many suspected Pelosi's job was an attempt to win influence with Nancy Pelosi. Paul Pelosi's explanation: He got to know Gupta as a client for whom he refinanced a house, and his experience as an investment banker was useful in evaluating acquisitions.
- InfoUSA is best known for peddling lists of seniors with gambling addictions and serious diseases like Alzheimer's or cancer to opportunistic telemarketers. Gupta resigned as InfoUSA's CEO in July 2008. Pelosi is not listed on the company's investor-relations website as an officer of the company.
- Which raises the question: What was a former investment banker doing working as a mortgage loan officer, anyway?
- Pelosi is currently working as an advisor to NASA on environmental issues, and he's joined the board of Blue Earth Solutions, a recycling outfit. So basically, he dabbles in a lot of green work, but isn't holding down anything resembling a full-time job at the moment, as far as we can tell.
- Know more about Pelosi? Tip us off.
(Photo of Pelosi via Men's Vogue; photo of Pelosi and Bulick by Drew Altizer via SFLuxe)