[The tension at the heart of Jeffries’ relationship with the key
progressive bloc of his party could shape how the newly minted leader
approaches his task as the first new House Democratic leader in two
decades.]
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INSIDE HAKEEM JEFFRIES’ QUIET STANDOFF WITH THE LEFT  
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Ursula Perano and Sam Brody
December 16, 2022
The Daily Beast
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_ The tension at the heart of Jeffries’ relationship with the key
progressive bloc of his party could shape how the newly minted leader
approaches his task as the first new House Democratic leader in two
decades. _

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries speaks about combating structural racism in
public policy at a Brookings event, photo: Brookings Institute (CC
BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

On his road to becoming House Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
(D-NY) has had a complicated—and sometimes tortured—relationship
with the left.

In recent years, the Democrat has spearheaded efforts to protect his
party’s incumbents
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liberal primary challenges, clashed with progressives
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issues like Israel-Palestine, and decried the “extreme left”
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being “obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on
Twitter.”

Progressives have long criticized Jeffries—with a Brooklyn district
that is, in one place, about a mile as the crow flies from Wall
Street—for his coziness with the financial industry.

When he was just a New York state assemblyman in 2011, Jeffries
cosponsored a “payday loan
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bill that consumer advocates said was “predatory.” When he got to
Congress in 2013, he split with the majority of Democrats
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vote to kill a Dodd-Frank rule against risky trades. And according to
OpenSecrets
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in 2022, only two House Democrats running for re-election received
more contributions from the finance and real estate industry than
Jeffries.

On several
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occasions
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Jeffries and his team feuded with the House’s most visible
progressive, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is one of the
few members yet to tweet or issue a statement praising Jeffries’
election to the leadership post.And yet, as Jeffries prepares to step
into the top job for Democrats in January, the party’s most
progressive lawmakers aren’t preparing for war. Instead, most are
welcoming his ascent—and even holding out hope that they could work
more harmoniously with him than with his predecessor, Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-CA).

“I do anticipate a good working relationship with the [Progressive]
Caucus, and even those in the Caucus who are further to the left. I
think he’s gonna work well with all of us,” said Rep. Jamaal
Bowman (D-NY), who won a seat in the House in 2020 after defeating a
Democratic incumbent endorsed by Jeffries. “It’s going to be a lot
of disagreement and dialogue and debate, but I think, yes, I think
he’s ready, willing and able to do that work.”

“Obviously, there are a few detractors,” Rep. Jared Huffman
(D-CA), a newly elected member of Progressive Caucus leadership, told
The Daily Beast. “But overwhelmingly, people feel good about who he
is and what he stands for.”

The fact that progressives are welcoming Jeffries’ rise—and that
he faced not even a perfunctory challenge from the left for the
leadership gig—speaks to what is considered Jeffries’ greatest
skill: relationship building.

According to several progressive lawmakers and aides, the question of
whether Jeffries is actually a progressive himself is somewhat beside
the point. However, he is a member of the Progressive Caucus in good
standing, which requires backing most progressive policies, including
items like Medicare For All, which Jeffries consistently has through
his tenure.

Jeffries’ spokeswoman, Christie Stephenson, told The Daily Beast
that, as chair of the House Democratic Caucus, “Rep. Jeffries
prioritized and valued input from all parts of the family, including
Progressives, New Dems and Blue Dogs. In his new leadership position,
he will do the same.”

“Leader-elect Jeffries also plans to build upon a successful track
record of defending House Democrats he serves with who have a proven
track record of legislative success,” Stephenson continued. “In
this most recent election cycle, he raised more than $17 million for
his colleagues, battleground candidates and the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee. His work is just beginning.”What
makes progressives more optimistic is that his long-running engagement
with them means he will be attentive to their concerns. One
progressive aide said that Jeffries “comes to all the Progressive
Caucus meetings, he’s vocal, he’s smart, he responds quickly to
all the whips.”

“Just all of the little things,” this aide said, “that add
up.”

For many on the left, there’s real value in having
Jeffries—comparatively young at 52 years old and the first Black
person to lead a party in Congress—at the helm.

“I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that Jeffries will be
some major change agent,” the aide said, “but I think he’ll be a
degree more sensitive to the need to lift up the new generation of
progressives, and especially issues that affect people of color and
minorities.”

There’s a paradox, however, behind Jeffries’ strength with
progressives in the Capitol building: outside it, many of his
relationships in the broader progressive movement are frayed at best.

Among the activists who elevated members like Bowman, Jeffries is seen
as the champion of a Democratic establishment that has worked
arduously to stop the progressive movement from gaining a foothold in
Congress.

Ironically, that perception may run deepest in Jeffries’ hometown of
New York City—and his home turf of Brooklyn, home to perhaps the
nation’s most concentrated membership of the Democratic Socialists
of America.

In that deep blue district, Jeffries is reliably re-elected by
50-point margins, and has plenty of progressive allies. But Rachel
Himes, a DSA leader for the chapter that covers much of Jeffries’
district, described long-running exasperation with the congressman in
their camp. They see him as a powerful figure who has needlessly
antagonized progressive activists and candidates both at home and
nationally. Not just that, Himes said he has been “hard to pin
down” on—or outright opposed to—key agenda items like the Green
New Deal.

Himes said she was “maybe disappointed, but not surprised” that
Jeffries faced no internal opposition for the leadership post. “We
want to see some of those lawmakers who are more outspoken on
progressive issues holding him accountable, to the extent that is
possible now,” she said. “Maybe there are lawmakers who, in good
faith, see his new role as an actual opportunity for a new start in
moving progressive legislation.”

The tension at the heart of Jeffries’ relationship with a key bloc
of his party could shape how the newly minted leader approaches his
task as the first new House Democratic leader in two decades.

“It is a very important relationship,” said Michael Hardaway, a
former longtime aide to Jeffries.

As Pelosi was before him, Jeffries will be a top focus of attention
and scrutiny for progressives both inside the Capitol and beyond it.
When it comes to legislative action on issues like climate change and
health care, progressive members themselves have often echoed
activists’ demands and pushed for them at the negotiating
table—one at which Jeffries will be leader.But for the next two
years, Jeffries’ central charge will be returning Democrats to the
majority. As he quarterbacks that effort, the way he approaches
candidate recruitment, fundraising, and resource allocation could
reintroduce past sore spots in his relationships with progressives.

“He'll get shit from the far left, you know, quite often, and
sometimes justifiably,” predicted Bowman.

That is because, off Capitol Hill, Jeffries boasts far fewer fans in
the progressive sphere.

Even before assuming the caucus’ top job, Jeffries built a
reputation as an ardent defender of incumbent Democratic
members—particularly those facing progressive challengers. He
propped up the Team Blue PAC, which works to defend incumbents facing
insurgent bids. Jeffries himself has hit the campaign trail in past
primary cycles to go to bat for his colleagues.

That loyalty won him points throughout the Democratic caucus. Members
saw that if they’re in a pinch or facing a rising progressive star,
Jeffries would have their back. And he’s promised that won’t
change while he serves in the caucus’ top spot.

But his work also left behind a trail of progressive hopefuls,
organizers and activists who question his tactics.

Some wonder why he opted to spend time and resources during this past
campaign cycle in overwhelmingly blue districts—meaning a Democrat
was almost guaranteed to win the seat, regardless of who the nominee
was.

In Illinois’ 7th Congressional District, for instance, there was no
Republican running this year. So when progressive Kina Collins
challenged longtime Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL), the seat was safe
regardless of whether she or Davis won.

That didn’t stop Jeffries from jumping in. He went to the district
to campaign for Davis in May. Collins questioned whether Jeffries and
his PAC’s resources could have been used on competitive races
instead, especially in a cycle where Democrats were overwhelmingly
forecasted to, and ultimately did, lose control of the House.

“I want to see Rep. Jeffries build a coalition between progressives,
moderates, independents even, across the country, and make sure that
the resources that we’re using in these races are going toward the
right things, like fighting Republicans, and allow the Democratic
primaries to let the chips fall where they may.” Collins ultimately
lost the primary by 6.6 points.

Team Blue endorsed this cycle against progressive Imani Oakley, who
unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), a moderate member
of the caucus whose father held the seat before him. While there was
at least a_ _Republican running in New Jersey’s 10th District, it
was an overwhelmingly safe seat. Payne ultimately won re-election by
more than 57 points.

Jayapal Wants to Grow Progressive Caucus and Move Dems Left
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Oakley said she doesn’t expect progressives on the Hill could have
mounted a successful challenge to Jeffries for the job. But she was
disappointed members didn’t at least call out his past work against
progressive hopefuls before nominating him to the role, if only in an
attempt to raise awareness about his complicated relationship with the
left.

“I would have liked to see progressives be a lot more vocal on his
shortcomings. Even if they did end up voting for him,” she said.
“They could say something along the lines of, ‘Well, I voted for
him, but you know, purely because I actually don’t like him. I just
simply do not have the numbers to get somebody else in there.’”

But there’s, of course, a method to Jeffries’ work on the campaign
trail, even if it was bound to rub some progressives the wrong way.
One former Jeffries staffer told The Daily Beast that Team Blue has
served in particular as a mechanism for protecting sitting
Congressional Black Caucus members, who’ve now been a driving force
behind his climb to leadership.

The staffer also noted Jeffries’ work protecting incumbents provided
a currency of trust. Members knew he’d have their back—and in a
world where redistricting can change the political makeup of a seat
every few years, a leader who can play defense is valuable to even the
safest House Democrats.

Even as Jeffries stares down the barrel of leading a caucus with over
100 card-carrying progressive members—the most in its history—he
doesn’t seem daunted. “I have no issues with any member of the
House Democratic Caucus,” Jeffries told reporters after his election
to the post. He has also reportedly been courting members like
Ocasio-Cortez, who told Axios
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November that she had sat down with the new leader—for the first
time ever.

A complicated relationship with the left is one thing that Jeffries
will share with his historic predecessor. Pelosi often embraced the
“San Francisco liberal” label that was part of her Republican
caricature. That legacy helped her keep a measure of progressive
credibility as speaker—though it may have diminished after years of
pitched battles with progressives on key issues.

Jeffries, meanwhile, came up through hard-nosed, Democrat-dominated
New York City politics, where ideology often matters less than
coalition politics and personal relationships. But his allies argue
his experience—and his upbringing as a Black man in working and
middle-class Brooklyn—forged him into a staunch progressive.

“Hakeem has been a progressive his entire life,” argued his former
aide Hardaway, who expressed befuddlement that there are people who
believe otherwise. “Progressives will have more power this term than
they ever had, because their leader is a dyed-in-the-wool
progressive.”

The reason Jeffries has strong relationships with progressives,
Hardaway said, is because they understand he is one of them.
“Ninety-nine percent of what’s important to them is important to
Hakeem,” he said.

Obviously, many progressives do not share that view. To Jeffries’
critics, Huffman, the California Democrat, had a simple message.

“They’re going to see some great leadership from this man,”
Huffman said. “I wouldn’t ask any activist to stand down and stop
fighting for more, but the smart activists understand that no leader
is going to please them every single time. Let’s cut the guy a
little slack and give him a chance to lead.”

* Hakeem Jeffries
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* Democratic Party
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* Congressional Progressive Caucus
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* Left Politics
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