House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks during an election night news conference with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at a Washington, DC hotel.
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After helping lead House Democrats to a decisive victory in the midterm elections, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., appears almost certain to become the first Black lawmaker to be elected House speaker.
Jeffries was elected House Minority Leader in 2022 and is the first Black politician to lead either party in the House or Senate. As president, Jeffries would be second in the presidential line of succession, after the vice president.
His elevation to speaker would represent the culmination of a nearly 14-year tenure in the House, a period that saw Jeffries rise from a rank-and-file member focused on criminal justice policy to a high-ranking party lieutenant under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and then minority leader.
It’s a climb that required buy-in from a diverse and often divisive House Democratic caucus — a task that could prove even more difficult as the Democratic Party now seeks to keep its promises to voters.
“This is an election of change, and we understand as House Democrats that we need to make sweeping changes,” Jeffries said Tuesday evening. “Things are broken. We need a Congress that puts the American people first.”
Criminal justice reform work
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jeffries has represented parts of the borough in Congress since 2013 and was a leader of the influential Congressional Black Caucus and the House Democratic caucus.
Before entering politics, Jeffries served as an attorney in private practice and believes that the time he spent helping members of his community through a law school legal clinic sparked his interest in criminal justice reform.
“I think over time it made me realize that if I had the opportunity to go into the practice of law, or possibly into public service, I wanted to do something for the broken criminal justice system,” Jeffries said in a 2023 interview with NY1.
He served for six years in the New York State Assembly, where he worked to regulate warrantless searches by the New York City Police Department. As a policymaker in Washington during the first Trump administration, Jeffries led efforts to pass the bipartisan First Step Act, which reduced sentences for certain drug crimes.
This effort required working closely with President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. He said Time that “getting things done in this city takes a coalition of unusual suspects.”
“There was a real partnership (with Kushner) that produced real results,” Jeffries said.
The lawmaker faced backlash from some in his party this year for meeting privately with Kushner, first reported by The New York Times and later confirmed by Jeffries. He later said he took part in the meeting at Kushner’s request to discuss affordability, adding that Democrats intended to hold the administration accountable.
Political identity
Jeffries was formerly a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a sponsor of Medicare for All proposals, although he has long attracted skepticism from outside activists on his party’s left wing. As president, he will have to consider how best to integrate, or sideline, a growing flank of Democratic Socialists of America-aligned and far-left members in the new term’s legislative process.
“There will never be a time when I kneel to far-left democratic socialism,” Jeffries said. The Atlantic in 2021. “Black progressives tend to tackle issues first and foremost with an understanding that systemic racism has been present on American soil for over 400 years.”
Although the party’s progressive members are as racially diverse as the rest of the caucus, Jeffries specifically points out that his race has shaped his views on the drivers of systemic American inequality.
“Far-left progressives tend to see the defining problem in America as being rooted in social class. That’s not my experience as a black man in this country,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries also served as impeachment manager in the Senate trial over Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine, during which Trump withheld military aid while pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce investigations into Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Like many Democratic elected officials, Jeffries has so far refused to commit to pursuing Trump’s impeachment during Trump’s second term. He told Fox News in April that it wasn’t a top priority for Democrats, and in September he told ABC that Democrats “haven’t decided anything and we haven’t ruled anything out.”
Jeffries argued that the main goal of the new Congress was to reduce costs for Americans.
The House will take a floor vote to elect the president when the new Congress meets on January 3.
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