NEW YORK — The Democratic Party’s two top congressional leaders — both New Yorkers — agree: The party lost big in the election because of voters’ economic fears and now must rethink its wallet to win again.
“Promises to help working people sound nice, but they mean nothing without real results,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at the kickoff of the new Congress.
“House Democrats will fight hard to protect working-class Americans and the things that matter to them, not the rich, the affluent and the well-connected,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed. the House of Representatives, in his own speech.
But other New York Democrats in Congress aren’t so sure.
Interviews with nearly every New York House Democrat reveal variations on where they think their party’s push against new President Donald Trump should begin, underscoring Jeffries’ challenge in leading a big-tent caucus which ranges from Socialists to Blue Dogs. Some members of the House of Representatives are less humiliated by their party’s election abuses than others, some blaming the news coverage and others blaming the culture wars — even though the most consistent theme to emerge is the urgent need to to push back on the Republicans’ economic narrative.
The Empire State will play an outsized role in that mission, with Schumer and Jeffries as the top Democrats in Washington, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand leading the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm, several House New Yorkers as ranking members and caucus chairs, and Rep. Alexandria. Ocasio-Cortez as national progressive standard-bearer. New York was also one of the few bright spots in last year’s elections for the Democrats – with the party gaining three seats in the House of Representatives there.
Some of those Democrats are now starting to build the cost of living case. In the two months since Republicans won the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, Trump has piled his government picks on at least 13 billionaires and enabled Musk to meddle in a government shutdown deal using misguided information that dismissed the tangible implications of such action.
As the House session ended last month, Jeffries commented on this as his Republican counterparts grappled with self-inflicted wounds, namely Trump and Musk’s eleventh-hour torpedoing of a bipartisan shutdown package and the final moment hedging by conservatives in the House of Representatives over the endorsement of Mike Johnson (R.-La.) for speaker.
“House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys’ club,” the minority leader told reporters.
And while kitchen table economics will shape the narrative for Democrats, the message won’t be a one-size-fits-all approach.
Several of Jeffries’ fellow members of New York say he has given them the space to approach Trump 2.0 in a way that is best for them and their districts.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, one of 48 Democrats in the House of Representatives who recently voted for the Laken Riley Act, which would crack down on illegal immigration, praised the leader as “not very heavy-handed” and said he believes the border is a is an important starting point for his party, because it is preparing for Trump 2.0.
“If you actually want to do something effectively, and not just do it for political purposes… which is to secure the border, which is to fix the broken asylum system, which is to modernize the legal immigration system, then you really should doing. on a bipartisan basis,” Suozzi said in an interview.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said more broadly it’s about combating disinformation: “The bottom line is we have to create an ecosystem of truth.”
Still, others, including Reps. Greg Meeks, Nydia Velázquez and Pat Ryan, said in interviews that Democrats should start with the economy.
“If, in my opinion, there is one conclusion to be drawn from this latest round of elections, it is us clearly re-emphasizing that we are for the middle class and the working class, and against big corporations and billionaires,” said Ryan, a Democrat on the front lines in the Hudson Valley. POLITICS.
In the Senate, Schumer has argued that it is Republicans — not Democrats — who are the party of the privileged, as he used the waning weeks of 2024 to quickly confirm judges appointed by Biden. He led the outgoing majority in confirming 235 of them – more than any administration this century.
“For a long time, the norm was to give priority to judicial nominees who came from a privileged group. Most of them were prosecutors or from large law firms. Most were men, most were white,” the 74-year-old Brooklynite said in a speech. “But when Democrats gained the majority in the Senate, we cast a wider net.”
For Schumer, who was also minority leader when Trump first took office in 2017, the next task will be determining which of Trump’s Cabinet appointees should be rejected and confirmed by Democrats. He has not yet publicly released details about the president-elect’s choices, but he told his majority leader replacement, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) that Democrats plan to fully vet each nominee and indicated that Republicans should do the same .
The confirmation hearings set to begin this month will provide Democrats’ next big opportunity to show where Republicans’ winning approach to the economy could be more perception than reality, especially as Trump has tapped several billionaires with limited qualifications to to join his cabinet.
Perhaps the biggest chance Democrats will have this year to put the Republican Party on the defensive over the economy will be the years-long fight over Trump’s signature tax cuts, which expire in December. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, believes the party’s resources should be focused on that legislation.
“The starting point is the biggest proposals that Trump is going to make, that show the difference between them and us,” Jayapal said in an interview. “So I consider Trump’s tax scam No. 1 because I think when you have a Cabinet full of billionaires, this is an opportunity for Democrats to show how we want the economy to work for poor and working people. ”
Newly reelected Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York has said he would work with Democrats, including on restoring the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, but he warned: “I encourage my Democratic colleagues not to Resistance 2.0 to do.”
A full-time resistance is indeed not the Democrats’ plan. Highlighting areas ripe for bipartisanship, like immigration, and areas where they will hold their own, like Medicare, is much closer to shaping their strategy.
Jeffries and Schumer, who have a solid working relationship as fellow Brooklynites, albeit from different generations, were unanimously re-elected as conference leaders. Jeffries is the son of a social worker and a substance abuse counselor. Schumer is the son of an exterminator and housewife. Meeks said in an interview that their background will help convince voters before the midterm elections that Democrats understand their economic problems “because they have lived through them.”
But the two New Yorkers are also members of the political establishment.
“People understand that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party get a lot of money from a lot of the same people, and that money corrupts our politics,” said Jasmine Gripper, co-director of the New York Working Families Party. “So it feels like people are fighting for the billionaires, but not for the average voter and the average American.”
Despite such perceptions, Democratic Party leaders say they are better positioned to confront Trump than when he first occupied the White House. Jeffries has tried to emphasize that his minority is not so small after all. The chaos of last month’s government shutdown proved that Johnson needs some Democrats to bail him out in key legislative battles. And Jeffries has repeatedly noted that the Republican Party’s five-seat advantage is much smaller than their margin of 47 when Trump took office in 2017.
“My prediction is that the Democrats in the House of Representatives led by Leader Jeffries will be the most powerful minority we have seen in recent history because the Republican margin of control is so vanishingly small,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (DN.Y.) in an interview. “Republicans are unlikely to get anything big done without the support of Leader Jeffries and House Democrats.”
