An online petition demanding that Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) not be the next Democratic speaker of the House surpassed one million signatories Saturday as the clamor for a change in leadership within the party exploded after historic midterm victories driven by populist demands.
As of this writing, the Change.org petition — titled “House Democrats: CHOOSE A NEW SPEAKER” — has 1,004,752 verified signatories, and that number is growing rapidly.
Although final totals are not yet in place, Democrats emerged from Tuesday’s elections with at least 254 seats in the next Congress, taking back the majority from Republicans, who currently only have 162 seats when new members are sworn in in January.
While Jeffries is clearly the Democrats’ presumptive choice, and he formally entered the fray Wednesday with a letter to all members, outside progressives have expressed serious opposition given his failure to adopt many of the positions — including support for Medicare for All, reining in corporate power and restricting military assistance to Israel following its genocide in Gaza — that have animated voters across the country this election cycle.
According to the petition:
We believe the President should represent Democratic voters, not just the Democratic establishment.
The Speaker has considerable influence over the direction of the House, including its legislative priorities and agenda. Before voting, representatives should carefully review Jeffries’ public record, his policy positions, his campaign donors and his leadership…and listen to voters who don’t want him elevated to president.
This is not inevitable. There is still time for other Democratic members of the House to come forward and seek the nomination for Speaker, someone whose priorities more accurately reflect the voters who hope to elect the Democratic majority.
We call on all members of the upcoming 120th Congress to vote against Hakeem Jeffries for President in January 2027 and choose a different candidate.
Axios reported Friday that members of Congress had been “inundated” with calls urging them not to elect Jeffries and suggested that some of the hesitation isn’t just from progressives.
The outlet reported that it interviewed Thursday “nearly a half-dozen new House Democrats in deeply red seats who refused to take a position one way or another on voting for him.”
As Corbin Trent, a former senior aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who now leads a progressive organizing group called A Fight Worth Have, wrote in a column published Friday in Common Dreams, “The Democratic leaders we have today are completely inadequate for the moment. They lack the vision for what it will take to rebuild the trust the American people have lost in their government, their institutions and the Democratic Party itself.”
“Democrats have said loud and clear that they want new leadership,” Trent said of the election. “Unfortunately, too many people in Washington are not listening.”
Even though the large Democratic majority in the House makes it easier for Jeffries to maneuver ahead of the leadership vote, and given that no challenger has emerged to confront him directly, the betting money is still sure that Jeffries will be the next Speaker of the House.
But public pressure denouncing him as a poor leadership choice at a time when Democratic voters clearly demand — and expect — a much bolder agenda, could still affect his calculations.
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