Step aside governors, Hakeem Jeffries is ready to take the Democratic mantle

On the Friday before the Nov. 5 election, House Speaker Mike Johnson flew up to Syracuse to give Rep. Brandon Williams an edge in one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country.

Williams had touted the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan law he backed to support the production of domestic semiconductors, including a Micron facility in his district that plans to break ground outside Syracuse next year. But Donald Trump fumed that the law was a giveaway to big tech companies on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

So the speaker let the CHIPS fall where they may. When Johnson was asked about the law, he said Republicans would “probably” try to reverse it if they retained power. Williams was dumbfounded by the answer, and he reiterated how it was significant for the region.

But the remark created an opening for Democrats and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who was just reelected to his leadership post, quickly pounced. He warned that Republicans “want to take a blowtorch” to the law at two rallies in Central New York for Williams’ opponent, state Sen. John Mannion. Johnson backtracked, claiming he misheard the question, which kept the story in the news cycle throughout the weekend before Election Day.

While the gaffe may not have impacted the outcome of the election – a narrow win for Mannion – it demonstrated the damage that can be done by a legislative leader out of touch with his members’ local issues. And Jeffries is always, painstakingly, on message.

New York Democrats flipped three House seats on an otherwise abysmal night. After losing the White House and the U.S. Senate, and failing to take back the House, Democrats are adrift. Their thorough drubbing at the polls caused the party’s factions to blame each other for shedding voters across the country in nearly every demographic. 

Now that Trump is returning to Washington, D.C., with total control over federal agencies, Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and an enemies list longer than a CVS receipt, an ambitious horde of Democratic politicians are jostling to be seen as the new face of the party. A set of governors, including California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, and Illinois’ JB Pritzker, are chief among that group. The race to become Democratic National Committee chair is wide open. Younger voices, such as U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, could stake their claim as the party’s standard-bearer, while some Democrats may continue to look to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during upcoming periods of tumult. Voters may even entertain a comeback from Vice President Kamala Harris if they believe President Joe Biden bore responsibility for her loss.

But in the short term, few people are in a better position to advance the vision of the Democratic Party through shaping its messages and policies during its prolonged identity crisis than Jeffries.

“I think he becomes the de facto leader of the party, not just because he represents a new generation of leadership,” said Evan Thies, co-founder of Pythia Public Affairs. “His values are the values of working people and working people of color in particular. He understands the message we need and who to message it to.”

How he got here

Jeffries, a Crown Heights native, was on the path to become a corporate lawyer after graduating from New York University School of Law and joining the famed firm Paul Weiss, but his work with Black contractors and a longtime association with the Cornerstone Baptist Church led him into politics.

Jeffries won an Assembly seat in 2006, then ran for an open seat in Congress when veteran lawmaker Ed Towns decided not to seek a 16th term in 2012. He faced a spirited primary from then-New York City Council Member Charles Barron, but the race wasn’t close.

“If you look at how he ran his campaign, he built a coalition of elected leaders, clergy, labor unions, Democratic club leaders, activists in his district in Brooklyn and won by a very large margin,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic strategist. “It really was a type of optimistic, hopeful way of running for Congress. It’s been pretty consistent throughout his career.”

Jeffries became known as a coalition-builder in Congress, where he seemed destined for leadership. He landed on the influential House Budget Committee in his first term and soon served on the House Judiciary Committee, impressing colleagues with his ability to distill complex policies into easily digestible messages.

After turning down offers to challenge New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017, another opportunity arose in 2019 after House Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley lost his Queens congressional seat in a primary challenge from Ocasio-Cortez. Jeffries jumped at the chance to become the caucus’s chair and won, making him the youngest member of the House leadership team. When Pelosi decided to step down after two decades as the party’s leader in 2022, Jeffries ran unopposed, promising a “bottom-up style of leadership.”

There were growing pains. As caucus chair, Jeffries contended with a cohort of progressives, known as “The Squad,” who challenged the conference on health care, Israel-Palestine and racial justice issues. Resentment had simmered between Jeffries and Ocasio-Cortez, who openly contemplated supporting a primary challenge to Jeffries just days after her election. And he complained to The New York Times in August 2021: “The extreme left is obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on Twitter.” He had launched a PAC to support more moderate incumbents earlier that summer.

Once Jeffries became minority leader, he sought to repair relationships by meeting with progressives and serving as a mentor for younger members. His coalition-building kept Democrats united when Republicans burned through 15 rounds of speaker votes over four days before electing Kevin McCarthy in January 2023 and when Republicans failed to ram through proof of citizenship voting requirements during a stopgap funding measure this fall. Even Ocasio-Cortez came around, contributing $260,000 this year to the House Democrats’ campaign committee, which brought in a record haul but came up short in its efforts to retake power. 

Crowley, now a lobbyist at Dentons in Washington, D.C., believes Jeffries will become a national figure soon.

“I think Hakeem has navigated the waters this year really well. He’s a very bright young legislator who has the breadth of support from the entire caucus,” Crowley said. “Who knows what lies ahead. There’s a lot of soul searching and reflection going on within the party itself.”

Next four years

It certainly won’t be easy. The Brooklyn Democrat will face a far more challenging task than he did corralling Democrats over the past two years when Republicans controlled the House.

He will no longer have a willing partner in the White House or a Democratic Senate to check the Republican-controlled House. However, Johnson may only have a slim majority of a few votes, so he’ll have to quell dissidents within his ranks or risk Jeffries stymieing parts of Trump’s agenda.

But the biggest obstacle will be the unrelenting torrent of policies and appointments spewing from a Trump White House to undo much of Biden’s and former Presient Barack Obama’s legacies.

“Hakeem Jeffries has a mission that is very simple and very complicated,” said Evan Stavisky, founding partner and president of The Parkside Group. “He will have to serve as a check on Donald Trump’s worst instincts, advance a vision for the Democratic Party and win a majority of the House of Representatives in two years. That is his mission.”

Jeffries had already begun previewing his message in news conferences and television interviews, explaining what he thought went wrong in the election while promoting his new children’s book, “The ABCs of Democracy.” 

He acknowledged the “American people had spoken” and said the party would have a “family conversation” about what happened in the election on “CBS Mornings.” And he told “PBS NewsHour” that his party must do a better job addressing the high costs of housing, gas and food. 

“Far too many people are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck all across America, in urban America, in suburban America, rural America, exurban America, certainly small-town America and the heartland of America. And we’re prepared to work with the incoming administrations to decisively deal with that issue,” he told PBS.

The mere suggestion of Trump’s far-reaching agenda has already given Washington, D.C., whiplash, and it will fall on Jeffries to slow, as best he can, the pace of change.

“Hakeem Jeffries is going to have to be good at jiu-jitsu and not karate. He’s going to have to use the energy of his opponent to defeat him,” said former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is considering a run for City Council. “I don’t think there will be broad bipartisan coalitions to do things, so he’ll have to use his skills and the incompetence of the Republican Party to fall under their own weight.”

Jeffries objected to several of Trump’s initial picks, including former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard, even though the House does not have a role in approving the president’s nominees.

“Is this the very best that America has to offer for a moment like this with so many challenges that we confront? Of course not. America deserves better,” Jeffries said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “Hopefully we’ll see the Senate Republicans do this job, scrutinize these picks, certainly confirm those that meet the basic level of qualifications, and reject others.”

The real work will start once the new Congress arrives in Washington, D.C., to vote for the next speaker on Jan. 3. Trump has pledged to establish a Department of Government Efficiency run by Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk that would seek to downsize the federal workforce. He also vowed to eliminate the federal Department of Education. And his advisers are crafting proposals to gut Medicaid, food stamps and Affordable Care Act marketplace subsidies to pay for extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts.

But his most disruptive move could be declaring a national emergency to utilize the military for deporting tens of millions of undocumented immigrants, which would cause catastrophic effects to the country’s economy and quality of life.

Trump’s second term could also bring significant consequences for New York. He has criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul’s move to revive congestion pricing and Republicans may try to kill it. Republicans in Congress could also seek to withdraw billions of dollars in federal funds for regional infrastructure projects such as the Second Avenue subway and the Gateway rail tunnel as they seek to roll back Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal. And Trump could blow up the state’s climate goals by ending all offshore wind projects, which are expected to provide one-sixth of the state’s energy within a decade.

Determining the strategies to stall harmful legislation will take skill.

“Hakeem Jeffries is probably the single most important leader in the House of Representatives right now,” Stavisky said. “The Democratic Party is a big tent and they disagree on a lot of things but if there’s one unifying force it’s opposition to Donald Trump. People may disagree over tactics, but it’s easier to stay unified when you are trying to rein in the worst abuses of the White House.”

Democrats may need a savior, but first, they need a Moses figure to lead them out of the wilderness to electoral victory.

“The job is going to be harder, but Hakeem is smarter,” said Yvette Buckner, president of the Buckner Group. “The Trump administration is unpredictable. Trump woke up and chose violence. We see the way Donald Trump leads. He’s trying to undo the fundamentals of our democracy one by one.”