Newly elected U.S. Rep. Don Leonard said he's already gotten threats from top Democrats if he doesn't support Hakeem Jeffries for House speaker.
Leonard, an Ohio State University professor, beat incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Carey to flip Ohio's 15th Congressional District from red to blue. In a video posted to social media on Nov. 9, Leonard said senior Democrats told him that holding out support for Jeffries would amount to “making my life a living hell for the next two years” and losing re-election in 2028.
After the election, Leonard told The Dispatch he was looking for "transformational change" in a House speaker.
The video has drawn national headlines for a first-time politician who won on a platform of economic populism and opposing overseas
wars.
Leonard said that his key issues with Jeffries were supporting a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, a 2012 Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to more money in politics, and ending U.S. support for wars in Iran and Israel.
“We kind of knew this stuff was coming – it’s part of the stuff you see in the movies, it’s another thing when it’s in person by people who actually care about you and are cheering for you, but expect you to wear the team jersey,” Leonard said in the video, posted after the first day of orientation.
“At the end of the day, the ‘big-D’ Democratic Party needs some ‘little-d’ democracy and I’m just a stubborn S.O.B.,” Leonard said.
A few other incoming Democrats have also not publicly committed to supporting Jeffries, but some high-profile progressives, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Californian Ro Khanna, have pledged their support.
A petition on change.org urging House Democrats to find a new leader has received more than 1.1 million signatures as of Nov. 11.
Leonard told Axios on Nov. 10 that he met Jeffries for the first time and asked for a brief one-on-one meeting.
Axios reported that House Democratic Caucus chair Pete Aguilar of California said at a press conference Nov. 10 that he didn’t know which senior Democrats Leonard was talking about and that he wasn’t losing sleep over Jeffries’ expected election as speaker of the House.
Leonard said in another social media post the evening of Nov. 10 that his comments had “apparently caused quite a stir in this town,” but said that’s what his voters “sent me here to do.”
“We got here not owing anything to anyone except the voters of the 15th Congressional District. It is for you I fight and I am relentless – let’s go change this town,” Leonard said.
Anna Lynn Winfrey is a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. She can be reached at awinfrey@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ohio Democrat says top party leaders threatened him over Jeffries holdout
