Rep. Pete Aguilar, who is positioned to become the House majority whip if Democrats reclaim the chamber in November, said party leaders are already thinking through how to unite an ideologically diverse caucus behind an agenda focused on lowering costs and combating corruption.
But a week before Election Day, the California Democrat cautioned against a guaranteed victory.
“Nothing’s inevitable. We got to win elections,” Aguilar said in an interview from South Texas, where he was campaigning for Rep. Henry Cuellar. “We got to win first.”
Aguilar, the highest ranking Latino in Congress, has been on the campaign trail helping candidates, especially those in areas with large Hispanic populations, ahead of Election Day. He has visited Pennsylvania in support of Janelle Stelson and Bob Brooks, New Jersey in support of Rep. Nellie Pou and candidate Rebecca Bennett, and New York in support of Rep. Laura Gillen.
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Should Democrats secure the majority, Aguilar pointed to three broad priorities to address: lowering everyday costs, addressing health care access and lowering caregiving expenses. He also vowed Democrats would address corruption issues within President Donald Trump’s administration. That would also include investigations from relevant House committees and legislation to ban lawmakers from trading stocks.
“I would anticipate that Leader [Hakeem] Jeffries will talk about the process for the affirmative agenda and what we plan to carry forward,” Aguilar said, pointing to the minority leader’s discussions of the first 100 hours and first 100 days of a Democratic majority.
Aguilar ticked off a list of items a new majority would focus on. “The rising costs that people face are crushing them: housing, health care, gas, groceries, utilities, child care, elder care and then corruption,” Aguilar said. “Those are going to be the elements of what the agenda kind of looks like in the first 100 hours [and] the first 100 days.”
But the path to turning those priorities into law could be difficult. Aguilar told The Washington Sun that even if Democrats retake the House, the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for advancing most legislation would remain a significant obstacle, regardless of which party controls the upper chamber. And Trump will still occupy the White House for the next two years.
“In my opinion no party is sniffing anywhere near 60 for a while, and so we’re going to have to work,” he said.
He said the priority for Democrats was to move what they can from the lower chamber.
“We’ll have an agenda. We’ll focus and we’ll move that off of the House floor, and then we’ll send it over to the Senate,” he said. “No matter what the Senate looks like, we can engage.”
He acknowledged the party has seen ideological differences emerge in primary contests, raising questions about how a potentially narrow majority could complicate leaders’ efforts to get different factions on the same page. He said Democrats are currently focused on winning the competitive districts that will determine control of the chamber.
“Right now the elections that matter, the elections that give us an ability to make Hakeem Jeffries speaker, are the races that we’re focused on, not bright blue districts,” he said. “We’ll govern to find that highest common denominator of what’s the most that we can possibly do, and we’ll chart our efforts to get there.”
That balancing act could become particularly important if Democrats secure only a slim majority, leaving party leaders little room for defections.
Aguilar expressed confidence in Jeffries’ readiness to lead the chamber, while emphasizing that the minority leader remains focused on the immediate task of winning the election.
“He’s prepared and he will do well, but he also isn’t measuring the drapes right now,” Aguilar said. “He’s doing everything he can to make sure that these candidates have the resources and the energy down the home stretch.”
For now, Aguilar said Democrats are concentrating on the final days of campaigning, particularly in competitive districts that could determine whether Jeffries gets the speaker’s gavel.
“We’re going to sprint through the finish,” he said. “We got a lot of work to do here in the Rio Grande Valley, here in South Texas, but we feel good about where we are across the board.”
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