As New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and fellow democratic socialists celebrated a trio of insurgent leftist victories that rocked last week’s House primaries in New York, so did congressional Republicans.
In the days since, the GOP has gleefully speculated that a potential Democratic majority next year could be just as unruly and restive as its own has been, with an ideological battle between liberals and moderates undermining a possible speakership of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.).
“You can call it the Bolshevik Revolution of 2026,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said following the election results, while the National Republican Congressional Committee facetiously sent Jeffries a sympathy card and flowers.
Jeffries and his Democratic allies have downplayed the tensions, noting that their party held together a broad spectrum of members the last time they were in charge of the House, from 2019 to 2023.
But there are warning signs for Jeffries, who already faces frustration from the Democratic base that he is not fighting back hard enough against President Donald Trump. If Democrats win only a narrow majority in the heavily gerrymandered chamber in November, it will give each vote outsize importance and Jeffries critics more opportunities to stir up trouble.
Two of the challengers backed by Mamdani, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, defeated Democratic incumbents endorsed by Jeffries; only one of the three, Brad Lander, has committed to vote for him as speaker. Those candidates, all of whom are likely to win their heavily Democratic districts in November, and a handful of others who have prevailed against more moderate Democrats in primaries this year are expected to push for more liberal policies, particularly regarding Israel and Gaza, immigration enforcement, and universal healthcare.
“What I hope will happen is that Democratic leadership will incorporate the lessons that voters are sending into the agenda that we’re going to be fighting for,” Lander said.
Jeffries, for his part, has projected his typical calm and refused to engage with conjecture about how his leadership could be challenged. His office did not respond to a list of questions from the Washington Post but pointed to a CNN interview on the subject.
“What’s in front of us right now is we’ve got to do everything to take back control of the House of Representatives,” Jeffries said in that interview Friday, where he steered every question about the New York primary back to a message of Democratic unity. “That’s actually the moment that we’re in.”
On Saturday, Jeffries congratulated Valdez, Lander, and Avila Chevalier on social media.
Not everyone in the party is ready yet to rally around Jeffries in return. A viral video from Valdez’s watch party on Tuesday night showed a crowd erupting with chants of “you’re next” when Jeffries appeared in news coverage they were watching.
“If he continues to ignore what voters, not only in New York City but across the country, are telling him is important to them, he will do so at his own peril,” said Grace Mausser, co-chairperson of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. “It will weaken his power and ability, not only to control his own caucus, but to fight the right wing.”
It’s not the first time that Democrats have navigated this dynamic.
The wave that carried the party to the House majority in 2018 elected “the Squad,” a group of left-wing newcomers — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) — who were more willing to openly challenge party leadership to achieve their aims. Ocasio-Cortez, who also defeated a high-ranking Democratic incumbent in her first primary, notoriously joined a sit-in in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during her freshman orientation.
But Pelosi (D., Calif.) wrangled the Squad by simultaneously embracing them and diminishing their power. By 2021, she was delivering historic legislative victories for then-President Joe Biden.
In an interview, Pelosi dismissed the significance of the liberal victories from 2018, which she said “didn’t make that much difference,” and from Tuesday in New York, which she insisted would not be a problem for Jeffries because the Democratic caucus has long maintained ideological diversity.
“I wouldn’t make so much of it,” she said. “You always have to balance. We have Blue Dogs to Squad, and they represent their districts as they ought to be respected. So he’ll be fine.”
Since retaking control in 2023, Republican leaders, who lack Pelosi’s decades of experience, have struggled more to contain their antiestablishment wing: the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, whose members have a history of withholding votes unless their demands are addressed. Those rebellions cost former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) the gavel after only nine months and have nearly derailed some of Trump’s legislative priorities.
With a new generation of Democratic leadership confronting a rising populist wing of the party, the Jeffries era could face the same kind of turmoil — a prospect that has Republicans gloating.
“Democrats had a very bad week,” said Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.). “When you’re Hakeem Jeffries and you’re trying to be the next speaker of the House, and you lose three elections in your hometown, that’s a pretty big slap in the face.”
This year’s cohort of left-wing challengers, many of whom come from organizing backgrounds, is already connected to strategize about their campaigns and beyond.
Mai Vang — who finished ahead of Rep. Doris Matsui (D., Calif.) in a primary this month for a Sacramento-area seat — said she regularly speaks with other candidates including Valdez, Avila Chevalier, and Chris Rabb, who won the Democratic primary for a Philadelphia House seat in May.
Under California’s top-two system, Vang will face Matsui again in a November runoff. If she wins, Vang said, she would decide whether to support Jeffries as leader only after a conversation with the other liberal freshman members.
“These election wins in the primaries are mandates from the people,” she said. “Right now, the Democratic Party has to reckon with whether they are bold enough to represent the people.”
Democratic strategist Trip Yang said the disagreement is healthy because it keeps the party more responsive to the public.
“There will be some discord in the House Democratic caucus. Discord is good,” Yang said. Jeffries “is no stranger to hard, necessary conversations.”
Some of the more moderate House Democrats are already bracing themselves. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D., N.Y.) warned the insurgent candidates who won Tuesday that “they’re going to have to compromise and work together” once they arrive in Congress.
On social media last week, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) sounded pessimistic about that prospect.
“The Democratic-Socialists are bomb throwers, not problem solvers,” he said. “They’ve declared war on common sense Democrats, which will only lead to more deadlock, dysfunction, and hard-working families paying the price.”
But publicly, most establishment members of the caucus are generally brushing off the idea that the arrival of more liberal colleagues will complicate their agenda should they win control in November. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, plans to launch investigations into the Trump administration’s alleged abuse of the justice system.
“I served opposite James Comer, and I serve opposite Jim Jordan, so I can work with anybody,” Raskin said, citing two of the most conservative members of the House. “There are exciting new generations within the Democratic Party.”
Ocasio-Cortez called the expectation that the incoming class of left-wing members would pose trouble for Jeffries a “double standard.”
“Conversation, negotiation, all of that is the business of governance, and it’s the business of Washington,” she said. “There’s this tendency that when a progressive negotiates, that means that they’re bad, but when a moderate negotiates, that means they’re savvy. And that is a myth. We’re all here doing the same job.”
