As election models increasingly show a favorable Senate result for Republicans and a toss-up race for the White House, there is a significant chance that the House Democratic leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, may be the most powerful Democrat in the country come January should his party be able to flip just a handful of seats to retake the House majority. Should President Trump prevail in the electoral college and Senate Republicans take down at least one incumbent Democrat, Mr. Jeffries will be the only man standing against the Trump White House. 

According to current polling models, Republicans are overwhelmingly favored to take control of the Senate this year. They are almost guaranteed to pick up Senator Manchin’s seat in West Virginia, where the state’s popular governor, Jim Justice, is the GOP nominee. They are also leading in Montana, where Democrats fear Senator Tester will be unable to overcome the state’s conservative voting record. 

Senate Republicans only need to pick up one seat, however, should Trump win the White House, because Senator Vance as vice president would be the tie-breaking vote to give the GOP the Senate majority. The White House race is now viewed as a dead heat, with Vice President Harris and Trump running neck-and-neck in the seven critical battleground states. 

Come 2025, there are a host of issues Congress will have to deal with, regardless of who wins the presidency. The 2017 tax cuts expire before the end of the year, there may have to be more foreign aid packages to Ukraine, Israel, and Free China, and there very well could be a push to shore up Social Security given the rapidly approaching insolvency deadline.

A Speaker Jeffries would be able to win significant concessions from a hypothetical Republican Senate and Trump White House, should it be necessary.

Trump’s own legislative agenda could very well be dead on arrival under Mr. Jeffries’s speakership. The Democratic leader has said in recent years that he is always looking for ways to work in a bipartisan fashion, but he has also proven immovable on key policy issues when he can’t get a significant win. His party helped hold up aid to Israel for months because Speaker Johnson refused to include weapons and economic aid for Ukraine and Taiwan. 

Trump’s most significant legislative pushes — elimination of taxes on Social Security and tips, a 15 percent corporate tax rate, and the elimination of the Department of Education — would also be shut down by a Democratic speaker. 

One former Democratic lawmaker who served alongside Mr. Jeffries, Congressman David Price, tells The New York Sun that Mr. Jefffries learned at the feet of Speaker Pelosi how to run the House in a disciplined, effective manner. Mr. Price served in the House from 1987 to 1995, and again from 1997 to 2023, when he overlapped with Mr. Jeffries in the chamber for ten years. 

Mr. Price — who holds a PhD from Yale University in political science and wrote a textbook on congressional practices — says he believes Mr. Jeffries will be able to “combine the qualities that are required” to run the House and effectively deliver for the Democratic Party and the country, especially if Trump is able to return to the Oval Office. 

“You need in a speaker — first of all, a party leader [who] has to articulate the party’s program and plan, and to corral party members and to meet their needs and desires,” Mr. Price said of what is necessary to be an effective speaker. 

Mr. Jeffries’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. 

Mr. Price is one of the few remaining members of Congress who has served under a Democratic House speaker not named Mrs. Pelosi. During Mr. Price’s first term, Speaker Wright lasted for only two years. From 1989 to 1995, Speaker Foley ran the show, making him the last non-Pelosi Democrat to hold the speaker’s gavel. As of today, there are only five members currently serving in the House who were members during a Democratic speakership other than Mrs. Pelosi’s tenure. 

Mr. Price says Mrs. Pelosi was instrumental in altering the speakership from the models of Wright and Foley — more deferential to committee leaders and caucus bosses — to a more activist model that included being involved in party messaging, legislative discipline, and partisan action. He says Mr. Jeffries has learned the speaker emerita’s ways, and will be a similar kind of leader.

“He’s got many strengths. He’s a great inside player, but he’s also a very good presenter and representative of our cause,” Mr. Price says of Mr. Jeffries. 

“The speakership has changed alot since the days I was first there with Jim Wright,” Mr. Price says of the leadership style of past Democratic speakers, including Speaker O’Neill. 

“That’s just a sign of the times and what it takes to run the House these days. The speaker is going to be a strong leader and there’s going to be more disciplining of committees and individual members,” he said. “You need a speaker who can take hold of things, and that’s what I think Hakeem understands.”