Sen. Chuck Schumer is already mapping out a target list for the 2028 elections, hoping Democrats can build “a durable majority” that lasts for many years.
The Senate minority leader, who expects to win his race to become majority leader in a few weeks, pointed to a handful of states where Democrats just won big this month that Republicans must defend in two years. If their current lead in Alaska holds up, Democrats will have 56 seats next year, and any additional gains in 2028 would get them closer to the senatorial Holy Grail of a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority.
Newcomers including Josh Turek of Iowa, Adam Hamilton of Kansas and Annie Andrews of South Carolina are going to be deployed to sell the Democratic brand to voters in their conservative states and open the doors for new recruits to again compete there.
“It’ll change the whole way the Democratic Party is viewed in those states, and make it easier — it’s necessary but not sufficient, maybe — to take back some of these seats. And if we win four more seats, wow! Not predicting we will, it’s too early to tell, but that would be amazing,” Schumer told The Washington Sun on Tuesday evening in an interview in his second-floor office just off the Senate floor.
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If his colleagues agree to his promotion, Schumer is poised to make history as the first Senate leader to go from minority leader to majority leader, back to minority leader and then reclaim majority leader. It’s a sign of his own staying power in an institution that tends to cast aside leaders after big political defeats the way sports teams fire head coaches after losing seasons.
But Schumer is not getting an easy promotion. For almost two years, he has faced criticism from the left, particularly the younger, heavily online generation that saw Schumer, who turns 76 just before Thanksgiving, as a relic of the Democratic past who didn’t appreciate modern political warfare.
Despite a potential nine-seat gain — which would be the party’s largest Senate haul in an election since the 1958 midterms — Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is leading calls for someone to challenge Schumer. The independent who caucuses with Democrats, who just turned 85 himself, wants to see the leadership torch passed to a younger generation. First-term Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan appeared alongside Sanders on Tuesday to join his call for new leadership, but so far only Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has entertained the idea of a challenge.
“I am going to be elected leader, OK, and we’re united on the issues. We’re united,” Schumer told The Sun, saying he has already locked down more than enough support through a round of phone calls to the caucus.
Before a recent appearance on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” Schumer watched as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a darling of progressives, and Hamilton, who ran to the middle in Kansas, talked on the show in similar tones about their party’s economic agenda of confronting billionaires and reducing costs.
“Their answers on the issues, on the substance, on what we wanted to do for people, were remarkably the same on economic issues. Prairie populism works from one end of the country to the other,” Schumer said, adding, “I have broad and deep support in my caucus.”
The discontent among senators is less about finding a new floor leader — the most ambitious Senate Democrats all seem to be eyeing presidential bids, including Van Hollen — and more about assuring a leadership transition will happen soon.
Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, who is still in Schumer’s corner, said the “big change” he wants is for powers to be delegated away from the leadership suite and into the hands of rank-and-file Democrats.
“I want the new members who electrified the nation with their victories, including in deep Trump districts — [they] need to be more the face of our party, and I’m urging Schumer to make sure that those folks are front and center,” Welch told reporters Tuesday.
One way to alleviate that internal pressure would be for Schumer to tell his colleagues that 2027 and 2028 would be his last years as leader, and after that he will retire.
But Schumer put off any decision about his own future even as he faces reelection in 2028 back home in New York, where talk of a left-wing challenge in the notoriously low-turnout Democratic primary grows louder each month.
“I am focused right now on 2027 and our promise to get the job done. That’s what I’ll say,” he said.
Senate leaders are traditionally loath to announce their plans too early and become lame ducks as their caucuses jostle over a succession fight.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced in February 2024, following a multitude of health issues, that he would step aside as Republican leader at the end of that year, after 18 years at the top of his party. Harry Reid of Nevada, Schumer’s predecessor, suffered a brutal injury that blinded him in one eye, and he eventually announced his retirement plans in the spring of 2015, helping smooth Schumer’s rise into the leader’s office.
The current situation most mirrors 1986, when the Democrats won eight seats in Ronald Reagan’s second midterm and reclaimed the majority. Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd faced internal critics who saw his style as out of touch for the new TV era, but he waited until the spring of 1988 to announce he would step down as leader and become chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee.
Reminded of that example, Schumer returned to the party’s unity of their campaign themes attacking the Trump administration, declining to address when his own transition out of power would take place.
“We are united on the issues of cost and chaos and corruption, which our caucus focused on. And when I talk to the freshmen, they’re excited doing that together as a unit,” he said.
Schumer, who has not faced any health issues, began the 30-minute interview selling the political successes of 2026 and the immediate effort to win more seats in 2028, going to his hallmark trait of campaign strategist first and foremost.
But how he and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a fellow Brooklyn native who is all but certain to become House speaker, govern Congress will either ease tensions or further divide a party that, heading into the 2028 presidential elections, can ill afford the type of ideological division that gripped several of this year’s primary contests.
The immediate goal is to take a collection of bills that are considered politically popular and bring them up one by one. These will be narrow bills to be debated and voted on individually, avoiding the modern Senate practice of lumping many bills into one massive, confusing package that becomes easy for the minority party to oppose.
Some ideas floated by Democrats include raising the federal minimum wage, restoring tax subsidies that boosted participation in the Affordable Care Act and passing anti-corruption legislation that bans lawmakers and administration officials from trading stocks. It’s a replay of how Republicans passed a bill that empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pursue undocumented immigrants accused of violent crimes, bitterly dividing Democrats after the issue of border security played sharply against them in the 2024 elections.
“We’re going to put bills on the floor that are very popular with the American people, that focus on costs above all, corruption and chaos, and we’ll see where they go, but it’s going to be a bunch,” Schumer said. “And are they going to oppose restoring the ACA subsidies, which are so popular in their states, and let people lose [health care]? Are they going to say it’s OK for senators and the president to do inside trading?”
Jeffries, with a bulging majority of potentially 260 Democrats, will easily pass those bills out of the majority-rules House without needing a single Republican vote.
Schumer must clear the 60-vote hurdle to win Senate approval, but he believes some of the Republicans facing voters in 2028 will want to get right with constituents.
“I even have begun to hear little glimmers from Republicans who are saying, ‘We maybe can work with you on this issue or that issue or this issue,’ and I’d say this: Four votes is easier than six,” he said, referring to the difference that winning Alaska and Mississippi would make. (He spoke before Mississippi’s race was called for the Democrats.)
Always the political animal, Schumer said that President Donald Trump will either sign that legislation or further hurt the Republican cause in 2028 by vetoing it, aiding the Democrats in a year when they will be hoping to win the trifecta of the presidency and Congress, just like they did in 2008 after sweeping the House and Senate in 2006.
“In a certain sense, it’s a win-win. I’d rather get things done, but it’s not going to stop us,” he said. “We are going to move forward with or without Trump, with or without the Republicans.”
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