Inside the grand ballroom of a Beaux-Arts building in Old San Juan, Representative Hakeem Jeffries took in the celebratory buzz, the Democratic crowd still hung over from the party’s dominance in the midterms.
“This looks amazing,” Mr. Jeffries said to the audience, gathered for an annual conclave where New York’s political class assembles in Puerto Rico after Election Day.
But even as Mr. Jeffries and his Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, are preparing to preside over Congress, they must deal with a restive faction of their party that regards them as establishment figures unable to exact the kind of change it feels is overdue.
And nowhere is that sentiment more prevalent than in New York City, the home base of both Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Schumer.
The city has undergone a distinct shift to the left, triggered by Zohran Mamdani’s rise as mayor, and expanding with the election this year of fellow democratic socialists to the House and the State Legislature.
In this current cycle, Mr. Jeffries nearly had to face a primary challenge from Chi Ossé, a young, magnetic democratic socialist who only ended his brief candidacy after pressure from Mr. Mamdani. And across New York and Puerto Rico this week, many Democrats discussed whether Mr. Schumer, 75, will face a primary challenge in 2028, possibly from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — if he runs at all.
In recent months, prominent members of the Democratic Socialists of America of New York City have urged Mr. Ossé to challenge Mr. Schumer if Ms. Ocasio-Cortez does not, three people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Ossé declined to comment, but others at the Somos conference in Puerto Rico offered their takes.
At the Caribe Hilton, the site of the conference, Jon Paul Lupo, a top adviser to former Mayor Bill de Blasio, said that Mr. Schumer was “in an incredibly difficult position,” even given his stature and accomplishments. “The way the left is structured here, I don’t know that Chuck is going to be able to avoid a challenge.”
Mr. Lupo cited Mr. Mamdani as someone “who nobody ever heard of, and then got elected mayor on the power of this movement. Now, it’s not just the city, it’s New York State, but someone from that movement will make a challenge.”
Everything seems on hold until Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most energizing political figures nationally and a lightning rod for criticism of the left, decides if she wants to run for re-election in 2028 or aim for the Senate or the White House. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Ossé, for example, might decide to run against Mr. Schumer if Ms. Ocasio-Cortez runs for president. Representative Pat Ryan, who was re-elected to his upper Hudson Valley seat by more than 30 percentage points, also raised speculation by merely attending Somos for the first time.
Mr. Ryan, a close ally of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s who recently campaigned with her, declined to comment about his political future. In an interview, he praised Mr. Jeffries, recalling the energy he brought when they campaigned on behalf of Cait Conley, who defeated Representative Mike Lawler, the Republican incumbent.
“Hakeem is in an incredibly strong position in our caucus, in my district and in the state,” Mr. Ryan said, adding that Mr. Schumer deserved huge credit for efforts in helping Democrats seize the Senate.
Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, a Queens Democrat, said that Mr. Schumer’s long record in the House and Senate means he has a reservoir of good will in districts like hers. She also noted that when he was a member of the State Assembly, Mr. Jeffries was the “poster child for how to make government better and more transparent.”
Yet a host of more progressive Democrats expressed misgivings about Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries, citing their views on Israel and their acceptance of money from AIPAC; their refusal to call for the abolition of ICE; and the meeting Mr. Jeffries had in August with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.
Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Schumer did call for impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in the days after the election, the first time top Democrats had publicly endorsed the idea.
“If they just refuse to listen to the populists and what they’re asking, I think people are going to continue to be very unhappy with their leadership,” said Councilwoman Alexa Aviles, a local D.S.A. member, the morning after she led a protest about ICE’s actions in Puerto Rico that Mr. Mamdani and other politicians attended.
“Hakeem mentioned in the press he is looking at reforming ICE,” she added. “He makes very tepid statements about things that people really care about. So it’s those things that people are very frustrated by.”
This sort of agita led Mr. Ossé, a city councilman whose district overlaps with Mr. Jeffries’s, to briefly challenge him last year. But the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America chose not to endorse his candidacy, in part because Mr. Mamdani argued that mounting a campaign against Mr. Jeffries would distract from other left-leaning priorities.
Mr. Mamdani met with Mr. Jeffries while in San Juan and spoke with Mr. Schumer, who did not travel to Puerto Rico, in the days after the election. In Puerto Rico, he sidestepped questions on whether he would back challengers to Mr. Jeffries or Mr. Schumer.
“My focus right now is on reflecting on the incredible victories that we saw across the country,” the mayor said on Friday.
Mr. Schumer declined to endorse Mr. Mamdani last year, and Mr. Jeffries only did so shortly before the election. To Gustavo Gordillo, a leader of the local D.S.A. chapter, that snub was evidence that Mr. Schumer was “not the leader for a historic electorate demanding a working-class economic agenda.”
“Schumer has been publicly absent during the Trump era, absent during the genocide in Gaza and largely absent when a democratic socialist almost won back Florida by herself,” Mr. Gordillo said in a text, referring to Angie Nixon’s close loss in a Florida Senate contest. Though Mr. Schumer did some fund-raising for Ms. Nixon, some progressives were frustrated by the level of national Democratic investment in her campaign.
Mr. Schumer has always trumpeted his ability to drive federal funding to projects that benefit New York, and he did so in spades in a statement released on Saturday.
He cited the recovery of Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks, and of the areas ravaged by Hurricane Sandy; and economic packages to benefit workers, the transit system and cultural institutions that suffered during the Covid pandemic closures. And he gave no indication that he intended to back away from a movement he has long fought for.
“We have a great delegation, strong and rising talent,” Mr. Schumer said. “I’m here to help lead the orchestra to its highest and most harmonized notes yet.”
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Still, discord was not hard to find. One member of New York’s Democratic congressional delegation described being inundated with over 100 emails from constituents opposed to Mr. Jeffries. “We are asking for generational change and not business as usual,” one of these messages read.
Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, two democratic socialists just elected to the House, have not committed to supporting Mr. Jeffries’s bid to become speaker, even if the success of his candidacy seems largely assured.
And back in New York during heavy rain on Friday, dozens of soaked protesters stood in front of Mr. Schumer’s apartment in Brooklyn. They urged Mr. Schumer to oppose legislation related to data centers and had planned to walk to Mr. Jeffries’s nearby district office to continue their protest, but decided against it.
Liat Olenick, a co-founder of Climate Families NYC, a grass-roots organization for family-friendly climate justice, urged both politicians not to do the bidding of large corporations. She called on them to respond to the will of voters who appear increasingly wary of the proliferation of data centers across the country.
“I have very little faith in Chuck Schumer to do that,” Ms. Olenick said.
Reporting was contributed by Andrea Barnes, Sally Goldenberg, Dana Rubinstein and Jeffery C. Mays.
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