Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), left, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) hold a news conference, July 23, 2024, in Washington.
From a reporter’s perspective, the main thing you need to know about the Democratic National Convention’s state delegate breakfasts is that they take place very early in the morning before the full schedule for the day picks up. Covering these events is a bit like getting all of the morning class sessions for a semester’s worth of college courses. But they rank among the convention’s not-to-be-missed events because all the state leaders scheduled to deliver addresses to the assembled delegates show up. Plus, you never know exactly who else might swing by to offer up a few words.
The New York delegation breakfast is one of the main events this week for the obvious reason that both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hail from the Empire State. They’re both Brooklynites, as the borough’s delegates congregating at one of the tables in the back of the room were eager to point out.
Beyond party leadership, politicos have their eye on New York this year because of its four key swing House races (maybe five if you’re being generous) that could help the Democrats send a majority to the House of Representatives. (Failing to hang onto seats in Long Island, Hudson Valley, and upstate around Syracuse was the reason the party lost control of the House in 2022.)
Both leaders zeroed in on the congressional stakes in their morning remarks. “The road to take back the House is through New York state,” as Chuck Schumer put it. Jeffries followed up with a football analogy: “We’re inside the five-yard line and can see the end zone in sight.”
Most speakers opened with the same riff about the many hours-long flight delays from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare that held up numerous DNC-goers the night before, including state party chair Jay Jacobs, who didn’t attend. Gov. Kathy Hochul chalked it all up to Mother Nature, which is true enough, though I’d bet the passengers stuck on the tarmac for upwards of three hours might find fault elsewhere. It was also clear that each speaker had prepared the same joke about the delays, but Schumer got the first crack at it.
Schumer will deliver a longer address at the breakfast on Tuesday, but kicked off Monday morning with general remarks about the unshakable “unity” he saw at the convention this week, a dig at the line the Republicans repeated ad nauseam during their own convention in July.
He praised the new ticket while also lauding President Joe Biden for a selfless act of voluntarily taking himself out of the race, as Schumer put it, and being a “magnificent president.” Schumer then rattled off several top-line issues that Democrats championed under the Biden presidency: fair taxes, infrastructure, capping the cost of insulin, and protecting reproductive rights.
Jeffries had a more rousing speech, centering on the two core pillars for Democrats: growing the middle class and reproductive rights. The congressman focused more on outlining the GOP’s Project 2025 agenda and the threat it poses to democracy, which is sure to be a recurrent theme this week even as the Trump campaign tries to run away from it—a retreat that seems to demonstrate the political efficacy of this line of attack for Democratic officials. To counter Project 2025, Jeffries stressed that Democrats need to claim as their mantle “Patriotic America,” forward-looking and diverse. “Out of many, we are one,” he concluded.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) also checked out the New York breakfast. As a Minnesota lawmaker, she’s clearly been tasked this week with talking up Tim Walz. Tapped by Kamala Harris as her vice-presidential pick, Walz is popular in Minnesota, but still isn’t as well known in other regions of the country.
Klobuchar noted Minnesota’s history of producing numerous vice president and presidential candidates, namely Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. She touted Walz’s pedigree as a football coach, and veteran, and emphasized his teaching background to indicate that the Harris-Walz ticket would be strongly pro-union. “When unions are strong, our economy is strong,” she said. Rather than focus on policy, Klobuchar held up the online appeal of Harris and Walz as a watershed moment for Democrats. “These guys [referring to MAGA] captured the internet … we’re taking it back,” she said.
Though Klobuchar is the known trustbuster in the Senate, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) came by to highlight the administration’s anti-monopoly policy for the New Yorkers. Nadler treated the delegate breakfast more like a committee hearing than a pep rally. He mainly outlined the Democrats’ record on the economy: bringing down costs, negotiating down Medicare drug prices, as well as injecting competition into brittle, concentrated markets. “The Federal Trade Commission helped crack down on monopolies and that’s because of the appointment of Lina Khan,” Nadler said, mentioning an administration official who’s been the subject of recent attacks from Democratic donors unhappy with her tough-on-corporate-crime approach. He also backed up Harris’s rollout of her economic vision, which includes combating corporate price-gouging on groceries.
Nadler lambasted the Supreme Court as the main “threat to democracy,” just as much a threat as the Project 2025 playbook. He unveiled his plan to “pack the Court,” by adding four new members and instituting term limits of 18 years, giving a president two appointments per term. He name-checked Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas specifically for “flouting decency” and vowed to institute a new ethics code to be enforced against the Court just like other branches of government.
Hochul concluded the breakfast by discussing her personal experience working with Walz through the National Governors Association, and with Harris, who traveled to New York after the Buffalo mass shooting in 2022. Hochul and Walz both ran for Congress in red districts, which in Hochul’s eyes gives them a better sense of the electorate.
On the whole, Hochul seemed more focused on local matters—shoring up state support for taking back the House and for her own re-election campaign. To indicate how far the New York Democratic Party had come, she told a story about how she hadn’t been given any help by the state party when she decided to run for a red seat. They said, “You’re on your own.” Hochul added, “We could have been a powerhouse party.” She stressed how she’d helped the party regain its footing and build an organizing infrastructure with digital media chops.
“We are certainly a stronger party now, I’d say,” said an upstate delegate representing an area outside Buffalo.
