Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who has been one of Congress’s leading liberal voices for three decades, will not seek re-election next year, heeding a call for generational change roiling his party.
The decision will mark the close of a 34-year congressional career that put Mr. Nadler at the center of major civil rights battles and three presidential impeachments. It will also almost certainly touch off a crowded primary fight over a rare open Democratic seat in the heart of Manhattan.
In a recent interview in his downtown Manhattan office, Mr. Nadler, 78, said he hesitated to step aside when he believes that President Trump is threatening the foundations of democracy. But he said he had been persuaded it was time for a changing of the guard.
“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Mr. Nadler said, adding that a younger successor “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”
Mr. Nadler, who is both the longest-serving New Yorker and Jewish member of the House, had already been swept up in an intraparty reckoning over aging leaders. He was forced to give up his House Judiciary Committee leadership at the beginning of the term when it became clear a younger, more energetic colleague would beat him. Back home, he was facing a 26-year-old primary challenger.
Mr. Nadler shared his plans with The New York Times last week on the condition that they not be publicized until Monday. He spoke for an hour about triumphs, fears and his shifting views on the war in Gaza, all while surrounded by talismans of a half-century in public life: old maps of Manhattan, placards from 16 years in the State Assembly, a photo with Bella Abzug, a former congresswoman and a political mentor.
He would not discuss who should succeed him, acknowledging that numerous allies might run. Stretching from Union Square through Central Park, the district is home to more Fortune 500 companies, millionaires and cultural landmarks than perhaps anywhere in the country.
But a person familiar with his thinking said Mr. Nadler planned to support a loyal former aide, Micah Lasher, who represents parts of the Upper West Side in the Assembly, should he run. Mr. Lasher, 43, declined to comment.
Mr. Nadler also declined to name specific colleagues he believed should retire, though he acknowledged that other aging Democrats ought to consider it.
“I’m not saying we should change over the entire party,” he said. “But I think a certain amount of change is very helpful, especially when we face the challenge of Trump and his incipient fascism.”
Unfailingly voluble in his left-leaning views, Mr. Nadler will not quickly be replaced. The yeshiva-educated son of a chicken farmer, he fought his way into Manhattan politics with a group of Vietnam-era reformers known as the West Side Kids while still a student at Columbia University. He has played a role in many of the biggest political and cultural debates since, including recently endorsing Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York City.
In 2001, Mr. Nadler’s district included the World Trade Center, and he spent years fighting for federal funds to rebuild the area and care for New Yorkers who suffered illnesses from toxic fumes at ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He helped craft compromises reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act in 2006, curtailing Bush-era surveillance powers in 2015 and codifying the right to same-sex marriage in 2022.
Mr. Nadler said he had tried to make the Declaration of Independence’s claim that “all men are created equal” his north star. “Much of the evolution of our country is broadening the definition of what that meant,” he said. “And I like to think I played a part.”
Mr. Nadler’s principled positions earned him a loyal following, especially among his Upper West Side political base, which in later years embraced him as something of a civic mascot in suspenders and spectacles.
When he showed up at the House’s impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump in 2021 carrying a grocery bag from Zabar’s, he went viral. Asked what was inside, he answered: “A babka and the Constitution, what else?”
For years, Mr. Nadler’s seat snaked down the West Side of Manhattan into Brooklyn, making it the most Jewish district in the country. In 2022, redistricting forced him into a painful primary with a longtime crosstown ally, Representative Carolyn Maloney. Mr. Nadler won in a rout.
Disappointments were numerous, too. Never known as a masterful political strategist, Mr. Nadler lost several runs for higher office early in his career. He later watched as the clubhouse of cerebral progressives he helped build up — including his successor in the State Assembly, Scott M. Stringer, and the former state attorney general, Eric Schneiderman — was battered by scandal and defeats.
Mr. Nadler reached the peak of national prominence during Mr. Trump’s first term. The two men had sparred since the 1980s over Manhattan development projects. (Trump once called him “one of the most egregious hacks in contemporary politics.”) As Judiciary Committee chairman, Mr. Nadler became one of the most powerful proponents of impeaching Mr. Trump.
He ultimately succeeded, steering articles of impeachment through his committee in 2019. But his uncompromising views and unwillingness to stick to talking points irked then Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who sidelined him at key moments in favor of the more politically deft Adam B. Schiff.
Mr. Nadler said last week that he was now fearful Mr. Trump was bent on undoing much of what he had fought for in Congress.
His Manhattan office sits just one floor above an immigration courtroom where the Trump administration has been accelerating deportation proceedings. In May, federal officers entered the congressman’s office and briefly handcuffed an aide who had been observing officers detain migrants outside the courtroom.
“I am not terribly optimistic. I wish I could be,” Mr. Nadler said. “But this is the most severe threat we’ve had to our system of government since the Civil War, and unfortunately Abraham Lincoln is not the president.”
Mr. Nadler was similarly downcast about Israel, a longtime ally and focus of his work.
For years, he has tried to stake out space for a politics that was both pro-Israel and progressive. But in the interview, he conceded that Israel’s brutal prosecution of the war in Gaza had not only turned Democrats against a former ally “to a very major extent” but made his own position increasingly hard to maintain.
“I don’t know what to say at this point,” he said. “I can’t defend what Israel is doing.”
Mr. Nadler has been sharply critical of Hamas, still believes in a two-state solution for the region and does not agree with those who say Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza. But he said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel was committing mass murder and war crimes in Gaza “without question.”
And for the first time, Mr. Nadler said that when Congress returns later this month, he plans to join a growing number of Democratic lawmakers trying to use congressional authority to block the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel. (He said he will still vote to fund Israel’s missile defense systems.)
He said he was not entirely without hope as he contemplates life after Congress. He likes Democrats’ chances of retaking the House next year.
“Then you can cut the reign of terror in half,” he said.
And Mr. Nadler, who spent decades struggling with obesity before losing weight, reported with delight that he was in fine health. In fact, his doctor had just recommended he try to eat more vanilla ice cream for calcium.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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