Jeffries announced his run Friday, and would be the first Black American to helm a major U.S. political party in Congress if successful.
NEW YORK — A day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would step aside, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York launched a history-making bid Friday to become the first Black person to helm a major political party in Congress as leader of the House Democrats.
FILE - Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., talks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022. The day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would step aside, Jeffries announced his own history-making bid Friday to become the first Black American to helm a major U.S. political party in Congress as leader of the House Democrats.
House Democrats will meet behind closed doors as a caucus in two weeks, after the Thanksgiving holiday, to select their members. So far, Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar have no stated challengers. “He always seemed like a guy that was headed somewhere but was willing to pace himself to get there,” Sharpton said. “You meet a lot of people that are ambitious, that would do anything. You never got that impression from Hakeem.”
His district includes the Black cultural hub of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, home to Jackie Robinson and once represented by Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress. Growing up in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, Jeffries attended New York City public schools before graduating from the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he studied political science. He received a master’s in public policy from Georgetown University and a law degree from New York University.