Hakeem Jeffries appears this Wednesday as the only favorite in the elections in which the Democrats will choose their new leader in the House of Representatives, thus replacing Nancy Pelosi and going down in history for being the first black person to lead one of the two parties in the United States Congress.
Jeffries, a representative from New York and chairman of the Democratic caucus, is running unopposed. Third so far on the party’s ladder in the House, his choice represents an important generational shift, since both Pelosi and the other two in charge, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, are in their 80s.
This generational change in the party’s controls within the House is completed by Katherine Clark, representative for Massachusetts to be in charge of party discipline, and representative for California Pete Aguilar to chair the Democratic caucus.
After the midterm elections in early November, the Republicans managed to take control of the House of Representatives, although not as they had hoped, so for the next two years the triumvirate led by Jeffries will lead a exiguous a Democratic minority.
Jeffries’s rise has been meteoric, since in 2019 he became the youngest Democrat to chair his party’s caucus, a body that is responsible for electing its leaders within each of the houses of Congress, establishing discipline and the rules of the formation and approve the committees and their assignments.
The one who will be her predecessor, Pelosi, who on Tuesday was named by her “speaker emeritus” for her almost two decades at the head of the Democrats in the House, has given her blessing to the trio headed by Jeffries, whom she trusts to lead with ability the designs of the party.
