Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is watching some of his preferred Senate recruits run into trouble in primaries in Maine, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota, with at least one field shaping up around candidates who are openly running against him. What began this year as a carefully assembled path to a stronger Democratic map is now looking less orderly, and in some cases directly hostile to the man who built it.
Schumer is willing to back those candidates anyway, and if the races demand it, he may put serious money behind them. That is the political reality inside a party that is preparing for the general election in November 2024 while also dealing with a leader whose favorable rating is described as dismal and whose brand carries as much baggage as support.
The clash is personal as well as strategic. Schumer has been open with donors in private sessions about the candidates he wanted, and some were recruited personally by him. He also promised ample resources from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to several of them. In Maine, Democrats started the year with a governor recruited to challenge Sen. Susan Collins. In Michigan, a pragmatist wonk was in the mix to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters. In Iowa, a charismatic and centrist Paralympian gold medalist was favored for the open seat. In Minnesota, a moderate lesbian stepped up to replace a fellow Democrat.
But in each of those four races, the pieces have not lined up with Schumer’s original blueprint. The pushback is tied in part to frustration with his tenure as party leader dating back to 2017, and it shows how far some Democratic voters and activists have moved from the establishment view he represents. National polls show roughly twice as many people see Schumer as a meddling symbol of Washington’s gerontocracy as there are who back him, a measure of how weak his standing has become even as he remains the center of the party’s Senate operation.
That leaves Schumer in a familiar but awkward position: rooting for candidates who have made trashing him part of their own messaging. Maeve Coyle, speaking for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the party’s campaign arm has “one goal: to win a Senate majority” and said it had expanded the map with “all-star candidates, a winning message, and stronger campaigns” that would power Democrats to victory. The committee’s answer to the criticism is simple, and it is one Schumer is banking on. He can swallow the attacks, spend where needed and still try to hold together a coalition that is fracturing before the general election campaign fully begins.
