George Miller was reared in the liberal Democratic Party of Northern California— not the fancy Nob Hill kind, but the fiery kind bred in the docks, shipyards and canneries of the East Bay. His father was state party chairman and taught his son to distrust Big Money and to "go to work like you're killing snakes." Elected to Congress in 1974 at the age of 29—in the wave of Democrats sent to Washington by Watergate and Vietnam-Miller is now the Man of the House: the closest ally of and adviser to the already-embattled speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. "It sounds corny," he told me, "but I was taught that you acquire power for one reason: to help the seriously disenfranchised."
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