“Hakeem is singularly focussed,” a House Democrat said. “He’s literally focussed on one thing—and that’s becoming Speaker.”Photograph by David Urbanke for The New YorkerThe House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, has two primary jobs, the staff writer Jason Zengerle writes. Job one: help Democrats get back a majority in the House of Representatives. Job two: keep the peace within his party’s caucus.If he succeeds at the first job, and Democrats regain control of the House after this November’s midterms (hardly a lock!), Jeffries will make history, becoming the first Black Speaker. And then, he will get another job as well: figuring out exactly what the Party can accomplish with that majority during the last two years of Donald Trump’s Presidency.In this week’s issue, Zengerle profiles Jeffries, a Brooklyn native (“old-school Brooklyn, not gentrified Brooklyn,” as Jeffries has insisted) who worked in Big Law before going into New York politics. Throughout his political career, he has developed a reputation as someone who works with an unshowy efficiency. He is not a figure of soaring rhetoric or personal charisma. “He struck me from the beginning as somebody who was perfectly happy working under the hood,” Steve Israel, a former House member from New York, said. “He was one of those rare members who was just willing to be operational.”Take the recent national fight over redistricting. Last year, Texas gerrymandered its House maps in an attempt to give Republicans five more congressional seats, as part of a White House-led effort. Then, Democrats struck back, redrawing California’s map to try to regain five seats. One Democratic consultant tells Zengerle that, while California Governor Gavin Newsom was the face of the campaign out West, “the map that was adopted was Hakeem Jeffries’s.”Zengerle’s report offers an insider’s look at the life and the career of a man tasked with leading a large, messy, chaotic, and ideologically diverse caucus at a moment when the future of the Democratic Party somehow still feels fraught. So far, in the House, Jeffries has largely taken a consensus-building approach to leadership. (He typically responds to texts in less than an hour, Zengerle writes.) “Most people, if you ask them, ‘Do you have a good relationship with Hakeem,’ they’d say, ‘Yeah, I have a great relationship with Hakeem,’ ” Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic House member from New Jersey, tells Zengerle. But not everyone appreciates his style. Should Jeffries ascend to the Speaker’s chair this coming January, “he’s going to have to get tougher,” one House Democrat warned.Read or listen to the story »This Week’s IssueCover by Kadir Nelson