Will Varner/Insider; Alex Wong/Getty Images
- House Democrats say Hakeem Jeffries is a better listener and is more consensus-oriented than Pelosi.
- He's forged strong bonds with swing-district Democrats who voted against Pelosi's speakership.
- But the real test for Jeffries, progressives warn, will come when their party retakes the majority.
Hakeem Jeffries has officially been their new leader for just four months, and House Democrats are still trying to figure out what the future holds for their caucus.
The New York Democrat, who rank-and-file lawmakers have described as a gifted orator, a highly attuned listener, and a dogged consensus builder, is enjoying a period of goodwill following the end of Nancy Pelosi's 20-year tenure as the House Democratic leader.
There's one big reason for it: House Democrats can't pass any of their own bills right now. And interviews with more than a dozen of those lawmakers revealed that the real test for the House Minority Leader will be how he leads the caucus when his party holds the majority again.
"I think it's good that he gets to start out with the minority," said Rep. Scott Peters of California, who arrived in Congress alongside Jeffries in 2012. "There's less pressure. You know you're going to lose every vote."
"Hakeem is still building his alliances here," said Rep. Angie Craig, who represents a Minnesota swing district. "He's figuring out who he wants, around him, to take guidance from."
Perhaps the biggest early coup for Jeffries has been winning over the party's politically vulnerable, intermittently restive "front-line" members — including those who had long had an adversarial relationship with Pelosi, including Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.
"He's always receptive to people's opinions, he will always hear people out," said Spanberger as she described the "significant differences" between Jeffries and Pelosi. "He's encouraged dialogue."
But while progressives spoke warmly about their new leader, there's a history of distrust between Jeffries and members of the party's furthest-left flank. And when it's time to elect him to the position of Speaker, progressives are likely to demand hard commitments from him, including on committee assignments and scheduling floor votes on bills regarding Medicare For All and tuition-free public college, in exchange for their votes.
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"The fact that he didn't have to go through an election, the fact that there was sort of a coronation, I think that he's gonna have to make real concessions to that wing," said one progressive lawmaker who was granted anonymity to speak freely about internal party matters.
Still, don't expect a Kevin McCarthy-level meltdown from his caucus or any of the personal, vitriolic infighting that took place among House Republicans during the first week of this year.
"It won't be 14 ballots, but it won't be easy," the lawmaker added.
Jeffries declined to be interviewed for this article. Pelosi's office did not respond to repeated inquiries.
'He gets it'
Jeffries, 52, has enjoyed a rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic caucus.
Born in Brooklyn to a social worker and a substance-abuse counselor, Jeffries graduated in 1992 from Binghamton University, where he was active in campus politics.
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He later broke into elected politics in 2006, when he was elected to the New York State Assembly after an unsuccessful attempt six years earlier.
He then ran for and won election to a Brooklyn-based US House district in 2012, and just four years later, he joined party leadership as a co-chair of the party's messaging apparatus.
In 2018, Jeffries was elected as the party's caucus chair, a messaging-centric role that serves as a stepping-stone to the top job. He defeated Rep. Barbara Lee of California — an iconic progressive known for her lone vote against authorizing the use of military force in the wake of 9/11 — in a contentious and close election marred by rumors that Lee had backed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's insurgent primary campaign earlier that year.
His chief legislative accomplishment is the First Step Act, a bipartisan package of criminal-justice reforms that former President Donald Trump signed into law in 2018. He then served as an impeachment manager during Trump's first impeachment in 2020, playing a high-profile role that naturally suited his skills as a communicator.
In November, when Pelosi announced that she would step down from leadership, Jeffries immediately announced his bid to succeed her — and faced no opposition. He was formally elected to the job as House Democratic Leader just two weeks later, becoming the first Black lawmaker to lead a party in Congress.
"I take great pride in calling him 'Leader Jeffries,'" said Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus who also first arrived in Congress at the same time as Jeffries. "I believe he's the best communicator that we have in our party."
"I don't want to come across as disrespectful, but he's like a brother," said Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York. "He's from New York, he's of the hip-hop culture, just like me — we were both raised in the culture."
"When I mention Hakeem's name, particularly to Black audiences in the Bronx, it elicits a palpable enthusiasm," said Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York. "There is immense pride in what he represents and what he has achieved."
For others, such as Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio — who has served under six different House Democratic leaders since her election to Congress in 1982 — Jeffries represents a return to the party's working-class roots, particularly after 20 years of having a leader from San Francisco with an estimated net worth of over $100 million.
"He comes from the working class," said Kaptur. "You have to grow up in it to properly relate, and to understand, and he has that depth."
The long-serving Ohio lawmaker, who maintains a chart that lists every US House district by median income, said Jeffries "pored over" the document when she first gave him a copy.
According to that chart, Pelosi's district is the seventh-wealthiest in the country. Jeffries' is the 371st.
"So he gets it," said Kaptur, rapping her fist on the table for effect. "He gets the struggle."
An 'unusually gifted listener'
After taking the reins from Pelosi, Jeffries is earning plaudits for his ability to listen closely to his members and foster understanding between Democrats of different stripes.
"It's the secret of his success," said Torres. "He is an unusually gifted listener."
Some saw Pelosi, by contrast, as less accessible to the rank-and-file members and less interested in taking the time to work through disputes — maintaining a "pretty centralized model," according to Peters.
"There was a formality and a seniority to her office that gave it kind of this vaunted quality," said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a swing-district lawmaker now running for US Senate in Michigan. "You could ask for a meeting, but you weren't always going to automatically get it within the time that you needed. Hakeem is just much more approachable for a pull-aside on the House floor, for a quick text exchange, for a quick phone call."
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
"It'd be hard to say she was a consensus builder," said Craig. "She just understood what buttons to push across the ideological spectrum in order to get things done with a very slim majority."
Over the last several months, Republicans have held floor votes on bills that have, at times, put Democrats in tough spots, including a resolution denouncing the "horrors" of socialism and nullifying an overhaul of Washington, DC's criminal code.
That's forced swing-district Democrats, in particular, to vote for the Republican-proposed bills.
But intraparty feuding about those measures has been at a minimum, lawmakers have said, because the new leadership team has done more to foster trust and understanding between members.
Spanberger, elected in December as the party's "battleground leadership representative," recalled an instance in the early weeks of the year when Jeffries' leadership team asked her to address the caucus and explain to other House Democrats why some front-line members might be about to vote for a GOP bill.
"There were always very different views within the Democratic caucus on people who voted their district," said Slotkin. "Some people understood it but didn't like it — and told you that. Some people never understood it, particularly people who are from deeply blue districts."
Spanberger, for her part, said the discussion contributed to an atmosphere of mutual understanding that she felt had been lacking before, allowing members to "generally understand each other or generally be on the same page, even if they don't agree."
Jeffries appears to have even applied those same principles toward his chief congressional adversary, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, including reportedly texting with his Republican counterpart and holding regular meetings with McCarthy to keep lines of communication open.
'He's going to have to build that trust'
Four years after Jeffries defeated her, Lee — who's now running for California's open US Senate seat — said it's all water under the bridge now. "I think we're the grown-ups in the room," she said.
But tensions remain between Jeffries and some of his ultra-progressive colleagues, even as he remains a co-sponsor of Medicare For All and remains a member of the Progressive Caucus. In 2021, he told The Atlantic that there would "never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism."
That same year, he cofounded "Team Blue PAC," an effort to protect Democratic incumbents from progressive primary challengers. Though the group's expenditures ended up being minimal by the standards of electoral politics, the mere presence of the PAC and its endorsements drew accusations of "bullying" from the insurgent left.
"I think there are places where he will have to work hard to build relationships," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, adding that she feels "he has that willingness" based on her own interactions with Jeffries.
While the official progressive caucus currently accounts for nearly half of the broader Democratic caucus, a key group for Jeffries to focus on will be the eight or so "Squad" members, some of which consider themselves to be Democratic Socialists.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
"He's going to have to build that trust with everyone, and that doesn't exclude progressives," Jayapal added. "There are going to be things that members of our caucus disagree on. I think what's important is: Does he respect, and does he work to build the relationships?"
In November, as Jeffries faced no opposition to becoming the Democratic leader on the heels of Pelosi's retirement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The New York Times there was "a lot of healing that needs to be done in our caucus."
When Insider asked in March how she assessed Jeffries' tenure as leader so far, Ocasio-Cortez — who is said to have once mulled backing a primary challenger to the new leader — declined to speak about it at length.
"You know, I think it's so early," she said. "I don't think there's been any catastrophes, so we're proceeding in good faith."
'Hard commitments once we're in the majority'
As McCarthy struggled to win the votes to become Speaker of the House in early January, Jeffries managed to hold the votes of all 212 members of his caucus for 15 straight ballots, something several Democrats noted with pride when speaking with Insider.
But the Democrats' failure to hold their majority in the House made that feat easier.
"Hakeem, I've got to warn you," said McCarthy after finally winning the gavel. "Two years ago, I got 100% of the vote from my conference."
Coming just a handful of seats short in 2022, Democrats are exuding confidence in their ability to win back the majority next year. But progressives openly acknowledge that holding that majority — particularly if it's slim — will bring new challenges.
"We haven't had any actual moments that have called for a display of leadership yet," said Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the deputy chair of the progressive caucus.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
"There hasn't been that much contention, because it's sort of opposition to crazy Republican proposals on the floor," said Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a longtime ally of the insurgent progressive wing of his party. "It's a much harder task when you're having to say: what should the agenda of the party be if we're in the majority?"
And that agenda, according to progressives, will include certain demands.
"I don't know what those demands are going to be," said Bowman. "But absolutely, yes."
Jayapal, for her part, identified "getting progressive bills on the floor" and "representation on key committees" as key priorities in future negotiations with Jeffries. "The relationship is incredibly important, but so is the action," she said.
"I mean, the spectrum [of demands] is huge, I think," said Omar. "I can tell you; those conversations are not easy."
"I think the question is still: How will we advance our progressive priorities on Medicare For All, free public college, and a Green New Deal?" Khanna added. "Progressives will want hard commitments once we're in the majority."
When the day arrives, it will be Jeffries' job to steer a fractious ship — and prevent the intraparty enmity that defined McCarthy's first days in the majority.
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