Hakeem Jeffries to succeed Pelosi, becomes 1st Black congressional leader

U.S. House Democrats ushered in a new generation of leaders on Wednesday with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries elected to be the first Black American to head a major political party in Congress as long-serving Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team step aside next year.

Showing rare party unity after their midterm election losses, the House Democrats moved seamlessly from one history-making leader to another, choosing the 52-year-old New Yorker, who has vowed to "get things done," even after Republicans won control of the chamber. The closed-door vote was unanimous, by acclamation.

"It's a solemn responsibility that we are all inheriting," Jeffries told reporters on the eve of the party meeting. "And the best thing that we can do as a result of the seriousness and solemnity of the moment is lean in hard and do the best damn job that we can for the people."

On the other side of the aisle, Republican Kevin McCarthy won a leadership vote earlier this month but saw 31 of his party colleagues vote against him. He'll have a chance to become the next Speaker with a majority vote when the House convenes in January.

Wednesday's internal Democratic caucus votes of Jeffries and the other top leaders came without challengers.

The trio led by Jeffries, who will become the Democratic minority leader in the new Congress, includes 59-year-old Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts as the Democratic whip and 43-year-old Rep. Pete Aguilar of California as caucus chair.

The new team of Democratic leaders is expected to slide into the slots held by Pelosi and her top lieutenants — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Democratic whip James Clyburn of South Carolina — as the 80-plus leaders make way for the next generation.

Pelosi, the first and only female U.S. congressional leader, has led the House Democrats for the past 20 years, and colleagues late Tuesday granted her the honorific title of "Speaker emerita."

While Democrats will be relegated to the House minority in the new year, they will have a certain amount of leverage because the Republican majority is expected to be so slim and McCarthy's hold on his party fragile.

Jeffries has said he hopes to find "common ground when possible" with Republicans but will "oppose their extremism when we must."

Like Schumer, a Brooklynite

The job of minority leader puts Jeffries in line to become Speaker if Democrats can regain House control, with their earliest opportunity to do so in 2024.

Jeffries has long been seen as a charismatic new leader, known for his sharp but careful style, first in New York politics and then when he entered the national stage upon winning election to Congress in 2012.

A former corporate lawyer and state assemblyman, Jeffries has represented Brooklyn and parts of Queens for a decade and quickly rose through the ranks in Congress, serving as the party's fifth-highest-ranking member as chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Jeffires lives with his wife and two sons in a neighbourhood not far from that that of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

"Hakeem Jeffries's elevation as House Democratic Leader is a turning point in the history of the United States Congress," Schumer said Wednesday from the chamber floor.

"I can't wait to talk to my neighbour from Brooklyn four or six times a day, like I did with Speaker Pelosi," added Schumer.

Jeffries's district includes the Black cultural hub of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood, home to Jackie Robinson and once represented by Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress.

Reaction from Democratic congresswoman from California:

State politics, then national

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.

He clerked for a federal judge and worked for several years at a New York City law firm and later as a corporate lawyer for CBS. His first runs for public office were strong back-to-back but unsuccessful attempts to unseat longtime Democratic state Assemblyman Roger Green starting in 2000.

He eventually won a state seat in 2006, serving six years at the capital in Albany, working on criminal justice and civil rights legislation. He sponsored a law that stopped the New York Police Department from keeping a database of personal details of every person stopped and questioned under the department's controversial stop-and-frisk tactic, even if the people were released and not charged with a crime.

He continued that work in Congress in Washington. After the 2014 chokehold death in New York of Eric Garner, a Black man, Jeffries sought to pass legislation that would make the chokehold manoeuvre a federal crime.