Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, is pressing to wrap up his nomination to be speaker next week quickly and overwhelmingly, leaving potential detractors little room to maneuver around him even as some of them complain about an undemocratic process.
His allies this week began asking Democrats to sign a letter publicly signaling their backing for Mr. Jeffries ahead of the House Democrats’ closed-door leadership elections on Wednesday. Some of them think he deserves to be elected unanimously during that session, bypassing a vote by secret ballot that would give any dissenters a chance to register opposition. It would be a show of overwhelming unity and support, although Mr. Jeffries has not yet indicated whether he is seeking it.
But his allies are soliciting group endorsements to lock in backing from large factions, effectively shutting down any conversation about other options in an implicit sign that his nomination is inevitable. The New Democrat Coalition, a group of 114 center-left House Democrats and at least 40 members-elect, issued one such statement in support of Mr. Jeffries this week.
Mr. Jeffries has been meeting privately both with incumbents and new members to make his case, although he has yet to reach out to every newly elected member of the House. He is set next week to attend the Congressional Progressive Caucus board meeting, according to two people familiar with the plans, and his goal is to be in direct contact with every member by Wednesday.
The quiet campaign comes as Mr. Jeffries, in line to be the first Black speaker after presiding over sweeping Democratic victories and winning a historic majority, is facing some resistance from an energized left clamoring for a new face at the helm of the party for the new Congress. No one has stepped forward to challenge him.
But several Democrats elected last week would not commit during their campaigns to backing Mr. Jeffries for speaker. And many members are receiving an influx of calls and emails from progressives who say they are fed up with the Democratic Party establishment and see the leader, a reserved moderate, as an avatar of the status quo who is beholden to corporate interests.
Mr. Jeffries has publicly shrugged off the dissent — “You think I don’t have the votes nailed down?” he told a reporter this week, flashing a smile — but said that he takes “nothing for granted” and that part of the process was laying out “our vision for the future.”
At the same time, his allies are privately working to ensure any lingering resistance to Mr. Jeffries cannot derail him.
“There is an accurate sense of confidence that the votes are overwhelmingly there, but there’s an active whip operation underway to take no chances,” said Representative Jared Huffman, a progressive California Democrat who is part of Mr. Jeffries’s whip operation. He and other supporters of the leader are reaching out to each other and to other Democrats and “making sure this thing is airtight,” he added.
The push has alienated some incoming members who are openly chafing at what they view as an unfair process meant to engineer a predetermined outcome.
Representative-elect Don Leonard of Ohio has said he wants votes on ending U.S. aid to Israel and a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling that struck down limits on spending in politics. He said his first hours in Washington were an introduction to the hardball tactics.
In a video he posted online, Mr. Leonard said that unnamed “senior House Democrats” had threatened to make his life a “living hell” if he did not support Mr. Jeffries for speaker.
“We kind of knew this stuff was coming,” Mr. Leonard said in his video. “It’s a whole other thing when it’s in person, by people who actually care about you and are cheering for you but expect you to wear the team jersey and be a team player.” He later said that he had spoken with Mr. Jeffries and had expressed his concerns to him privately.
Some of Mr. Jeffries’s allies said that if new members wanted to kick off their congressional careers by opposing the first Black speaker, that was their prerogative but it would make little difference.
“Hakeem deserves it to be by acclamation,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, referring to a unanimous voice vote. “That said, if winning in places we’ve never won before and having a historic majority isn’t good enough for a few of our members, then let them vote ‘no.’”
Mr. Jeffries’s top lieutenants helping to shore up the vote said that despite some squeaky wheels, overall the process is lacking in real drama.
“I’ve been in a lot of whip organizations,” Representative Joseph D. Morelle, the New York Democrat overseeing new member orientation, said in an interview. “This is by far the easiest.”
Mr. Morelle said he had spoken to almost all of the new members and asked whether they had any concerns they wanted him to share with Mr. Jeffries. So far, he said, nobody had told him they planned to stand in the way.
That has not stopped some progressives from seeking to use the moment to press their agenda with Mr. Jeffries. Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she was angling for a promise of a committee markup next year on a Medicare for All bill.
Ms. Jayapal conceded that with no one challenging Mr. Jeffries, her leverage to secure any concessions from him is minimal, but she argued he had plenty of incentives to embrace the liberal agenda.
“I’ve been explaining to people, you can’t beat somebody with nobody,” she said. “He knows he needs us, and we can be the wind behind his sails.” She would not say whether she would support Mr. Jeffries if he did not give her what she asked for.
“I’d like to believe we’re going to get a ‘yes,’” she said.
That’s an impression Mr. Jeffries has been leaving with other progressives, who said he appeared to be approaching conversations with an open mind.
Representative Delia Ramirez, Democrat of Illinois, told Drop Site News that she had met with Mr. Jeffries about bringing to the floor the Block the Bombs Act, which would withhold certain offensive weapons from Israel. She said that he did not give her a “no.”
Mr. Jeffries’s political challenge is the inverse of the one faced by his predecessor, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when she was working to round up the votes to be elected speaker in 2018. Back then, it was moderate Democrats who did not want to elevate the liberal congresswoman from San Francisco.
This time around, it is the progressives who are raising concerns. Mr. Jeffries has been steadfast in the face of criticism.
“Our track record of success, decisiveness and a historic victory over MAGA extremism speaks for itself,” Mr. Jeffries said in an interview last week. “There’s nothing else for anybody to say when it comes to what this House Democratic leadership team has been able to accomplish.”
Mr. Huffman, himself a senior member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the sniping from the left has been mostly noise.
“For now, there’s this little tempest,” he said. “I will wager that you’re going to see a surprisingly small number of protest votes.”
Even the new members who have complained that they are being steamrolled have not gone so far as to say they will not vote for Mr. Jeffries.
“It has been disappointing how undemocratic this process has felt,” Representative-elect Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist from Colorado who defeated an incumbent in the primary, told CNN. “I fiercely believe in the importance of competitive elections. It feels like a lot of our class are just coming in and being told: ‘This is what the leadership is going to be.’ ”
