Dem
47
GOP
53
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is coming under fire from many directions. He is 75 now and increasingly under pressure from younger Democrats who think he doesn't have much fight left in him. In fact, he has become a campaign issue, with some Democratic Senate candidates vowing not to vote for him for leader if they are elected. Running for the Senate against the leader of your party is something new.
Senate candidates Mallory McMorrow (MI), Graham Platner (ME), and Juliana Stratton (IL) have all said they will not vote for Schumer as the leader of their caucus if they win. Some other Democratic Senate candidates have not taken a position on who they will vote for if elected. In this category is Senate candidate in Texas James Talarico. He said if he wins, he will sit down with all the leadership candidates and see what their plans are. Even some sitting senators, like Andy Kim (D-NJ), have waffled on how they will vote in Jan. 2027. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who is a generation younger than Schumer at 52 and seen as a potential leader if Schumer doesn't have the votes, has been coy about his future plans in the Senate.
Much of the griping about Schumer has concerned his caving to Senate Republicans on various bills, such as one that kept the government open in March 2025. Many progressive Democrats wanted him to shut the government down and then blame the Republicans since they have the trifecta and are thus responsible for governing. Since then he has been a little tougher, for example, not caving on ICE.
While Schumer has been taking a lot of flak from the left online for not being feisty enough, he has handled the job of Senate candidate recruitment well, getting his top-tier candidates in Alaska (Mary Peltola), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), North Carolina (Roy Cooper) and Maine (Janet Mills). All of those states are potentially flippable if there is a gigantic blue wave. (V)