Once before, pdq asserts the crime connections of "Big Tommy" D'Alesandro Jr. Just as before I have not found such an allegation nor has pdq given such links.

I did find this - and let me say that if all the gender specific identifiers were changed to the male form my guess is that most of the men here would be admiring.

"If there's one thing "Little Nancy" D'Alesandro learned early, it was the importance of math. Born March 26, 1940, she was the youngest child of Thomas "Big Tommy" D'Alesandro Jr., an insurance salesman turned politician who was teaching his tots how to count votes while their peers were still immersed in the exploits of Dick and Jane. A lifelong denizen of Baltimore's Little Italy, Big Tommy was elected to Maryland's House of Delegates at 21, followed by five terms in Congress and three as mayor of Baltimore.

"During Nancy's youth, the D'Alesandro household revolved around her father's political life. "He set the tune, and we danced to it," says Thomas D'Alesandro III, Nancy's eldest brother, who also served as Baltimore's mayor. That tune was combative, pragmatic, and personal. The D'Alesandro home operated like a field office, with the children serving as auxiliary staff. Constituents streamed through the door starting at 10 a.m., and whoever was manning the front desk--a post at which every child served several hours a week starting at age 13--handled requests ranging from finding a family public housing to bailing someone's husband out of jail. It was quite the education, says D'Alesandro, Pelosi's brother. "We dealt with human nature in the raw."

"A staunch Catholic and New Deal populist, Big Tommy conferred on his offspring a sense of society's obligation to the poor and powerless, enduring themes in his daughter's politics. But he also schooled them in the nuts and bolts, the transactional nature of the game. His career characterized by hard- fought races and endless vote-scrounging, Big Tommy was forever juggling the demands of the Poles, Germans, Irish, Czechs, Jews, and Italians in his district. Constituent service became his calling card, and Nancy and her brothers helped maintain a "favor file" on everyone for whom their father had ever found a job or served a hot meal. (Nancy's mom kept pots of stew and pasta sauce simmering at all hours to feed petitioners.) The operation also kept scrupulous count of how many votes it had-- and needed--from each precinct, block, ethnic group, union, to win an election. "Make sure you have the votes" was drilled into the D'Alesandro children's heads.

"Nancy absorbed subtler lessons as well, including how a smart woman could amass power. At the core of Big Tommy's operation was Nancy's formidable mother, Anunciata, one of those women who, born to a different age, would have ruled outright. Smart and ambitious, Anunciata became Baltimore's first female auctioneer in the 1920s. But, when the company wanted to move her to New York, her parents refused. "She was from a very cloistered Italian family who thought working downtown was a sin," recalls D'Alesandro.

"So, instead, the fetching Anunciata married a promising young go-getter from right across Albemarle Street, bore him six sons and one daughter, and threw herself into making her husband a success. She and her "moccasin network" of ladies knew everyone in town and what was happening on every block. She figured out the city's bureaucracies and whom to call to get a problem fixed. On Election Day, she patrolled the polling stations. Fiercely tribal, Anunciata served as her husband's chief enforcer and had a long memory for transgressions. "No one could say a word against him," says D'Alesandro. (Family legend holds that Anunciata once slugged a mouthy poll worker.) "With my mother," D'Alesandro told The Baltimore Sun in 2006, "there was no forgiving."


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