PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) — This election, he has warned, is about the economy. Freedom. Stopping Project 2025 and the MAGA extremes.
And, after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, it's about democracy.
And yet, Hakeem Jeffries, in line to make history as the first Black speaker of the House, says he is choosing to stay calm, as Democrats work to wrest control of the chaotic U.S. House from Republicans.
"In this unprecedented moment that we’re in, I’ve concluded that calm is an intentional decision," Jeffries told The Associated Press during an interview at a park-side cafe in between campaign stops in Southern California.
“We have to continue to make the decision to remain calm, execute the plan, run through the finish line," he said. "And then put it into the hands of the American people.”
Ever tight, the campaign for control of the House is a toss-up, playing out in unlikely corners of the country far from the presidential race, including in Jeffries' home state of New York and in California. A single contested seat, among 435, could make the difference if Democrats can flip the majority and dislodge Republican Mike Johnson from the speaker's office.
Never before in the nation's nearly 250-year history has a Black American been so close to grasping the gavel. Jeffries, 54, is part of a younger generation of leaders, alongside Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, proposing a new way forward, past the era of the former president, Republican Donald Trump.
But Jeffries, a lawyer before coming to Congress, doesn’t want to talk about the milestone of becoming House speaker, and he won’t venture to predict that Democrats will sweep the House majority. He wants to talk about the choices before voters right now.
"Everything we care about is on the line. Everything we care about is on the ballot. We can either move this country forward or turn back the clock," he said on an early Sunday morning in the high desert community of Palmdale, the dusty far reaches of Los Angeles County.
“We're not going back!” chanted the hundreds of volunteers, ready to go knock on doors to get out the vote for Democrat George Whitesides in the race against Republican Rep. Mike Garcia.
The Brooklyn-born Jeffries took over as House Democratic leader when Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi stepped aside, making him heir apparent to the speaker’s office. He is poised to win internal party balloting as leader again later this year, regardless of the election results. Yet if Democrats win majority control, he would stand for election as speaker by the whole House, when the new Congress convenes in January.
One of the party’s most effective communicators, Jeffries' free-form speeches on the House floor stand out among modern oratory, popping with cultural references of the times. He is sometimes compared to former President Barack Obama.
Now, the congressman's skills and savvy as he traverses the country and fundraises for the party are being put to the test.
He is open and accessible to colleagues, methodical and even meditative, though sometimes slow to act, and keeps his counsel very close. He appears to have told almost no one what he said to President Joe Biden when the two spoke privately during a tumultuous July, before the president announced his decision to withdraw from the race and endorse Harris.
“A rock,” said Rep. Grace Meng, a fellow Democrat from New York, who has viewed Jeffries as a mentor. “He takes everyone seriously.”
Logging 25,000 miles and visiting more than 30 states to flip the House, Jeffries is proposing a “robust” Democratic agenda, which he described as lowering inflationary costs, creating better jobs and safer communities, and confronting the affordable housing crisis.
The House, under Democrats, would vote to enshrine access to reproductive care in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that ended abortion rights in Roe v. Wade, he said. And it would pass the John R. Lewis voting rights bill to expand and protect ballot access.
On the campaign swing through California, Jeffries spent Saturday afternoon rallying voters at a banquet hall in Orange County’s Little Saigon, near Disneyland, in one of the most contested seats of the cycle.
By Sunday, he was at one of the older Black churches in the Lancaster area, in what residents said had been a segregated part of town. He urged the congregation to round up family and friends and “vote for enlightened leadership, people who have your best interests in mind, who want to work together.”
In many ways, Jeffries has already been acting as the de facto House speaker, the leader who could be depended on after Republicans booted Kevin McCarthy from the speaker's office and threw the chamber into chaos.
It was Jeffries who provided the Democratic votes to ensure Congress passed major legislation, including to prevent a government shutdown and to arm Ukraine as it fights Russia, when Johnson could not control his own GOP majority.
And it was Jeffries who saved Johnson’s job as speaker, again providing the Democratic votes needed to turn back far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's effort to oust him.
Asked about what kind of speaker he would be, if Democrats win, Jeffries said he has already shown it.
"Putting ‘people over politics’ is not simply a slogan,” he said about the party's message. “It’s been a governing way of life.”
Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, once the highest-ranking Black leader as the House Democratic whip, said having Jeffries ascend to speaker would show the nation's path "toward a more perfect union.”
"All of that are stepping stones," he said. "And you keep going until you make a breakthrough. And I think we have a chance to make the breakthrough here.”
As families played at a nearby park, Claudette Reynolds, a retired postal official, spotted Jeffries walking into the Orange County cafe.
She rushed over to take a selfie, and later shared their conversation.
“I told him we’re going to make him the next speaker of the House,” she said.
