Can Chris Van Hollen Unseat Chuck Schumer? A Senate Leadership Fight Takes Shape

One day after Democrats notched what was described as the most impressive electoral performance by either political party in a generation, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer kicked off his own campaign, racing to build enough support to continue leading Democrats should they regain control of the Senate in January. His rationale was simple: he argued that he should be made majority leader because his efforts to recruit and raise funds had helped create the new majority.

In podcast and television appearances, as well as in an Atlantic story that declared him the “architect of a historic landslide,” Schumer emphasized his role in helping flip several hard-fought seats, including in Mississippi, a state he had long described as his “white whale.” Schumer told The Daily that he personally courted Scott Colom, saying, “I went to him and said, ‘You’ve got to run.’”

But Schumer’s argument is weakened by the fact that many incoming senators disagree with the characterization that he played a major role in their victories.

Speaking to The Washington Post last week before his race was called, Colom listed a number of Democrats who had helped him become the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction: Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Raphael Warnock, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Bill Clinton. The Post noted that Schumer was “notably absent” from that list. Colom was even more direct on Friday, telling CBS that it was “not accurate” to say Schumer recruited him. “The people of Mississippi recruited me… You think I was listening to someone that lives in Brooklyn?” He declined to say whether he would back Schumer for majority leader.

Colom is not alone. Of the 13 incoming Democrats, only Sherrod Brown, the senator from Ohio, has publicly pledged to support the Senate’s current Democratic leader.

Abdul El-Sayed, the newly elected senator from Michigan, quickly threw his support behind Schumer’s rival, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, shortly after Van Hollen publicly announced his bid to challenge the senator from New York on Thursday. Van Hollen, who represented the D.C. suburbs in the House for a decade and a half before joining the Senate in 2017, earned praise in 2025 for traveling to El Salvador and pressing to meet with constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was erroneously sent by the Trump administration to the sprawling CECOT prison complex.

“I called on Sen. Chris Van Hollen to lead our caucus as a candidate back in April because he leads with courage and experience. We need both right now,” El-Sayed wrote on X shortly after.

El-Sayed defeated Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens, Schumer’s preferred candidate, in the primary, before Stevens made the most dramatic heel turn of the 2026 cycle and endorsed Republican Mike Rogers days before the election. Schumer called the move a “despicable betrayal.”

El-Sayed is not the only new senator Schumer bet against. He backed centrist Rep. Angie Craig over Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota’s Democratic primary. Flanagan, who will take over the seat vacated by Sen. Tina Smith, has also announced her support for Van Hollen.

“Minnesotans are demanding change. Democrats need to deliver. That starts with new voices in our leadership,” Flanagan said Friday on X. “I believe Chris Van Hollen is the leader and fighter we need to bring about real change, so no American is left behind.”

Four other freshman Democrats — Sens. Troy Jackson of Maine, Juliana Stratton of Illinois, Adam Hamilton of Kansas, and Annie Andrews of South Carolina — have said explicitly that they will not support Schumer, while six others have declined to say whether they would.

It is not a coincidence, Ezra Levin, executive director of the progressive group Indivisible, told Rolling Stone, that Schumer’s most vocal opposition has come from recently elected senators. “Those senators who just came through an election had to spend a lot of time with the public, and they understand where the public is [on Schumer],” Levin said.

“I don’t think anybody would deny that the people of this country want change,” added Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. “People want government to do more, not less. People want immediate relief from the economic crisis they’re in. They want accountability, and they also want new leadership. We’re listening to our folks, and we are embracing that change, and we are supporting Chris Van Hollen and his bid to be the next majority leader.”

Mitchell points to the blowout victories by newly elected Reps. Brad Lander of New York and Randy Villegas of California — primaries they won against centrist candidates closer to the Schumer mold — as evidence of the bold vision voters are seeking from Democrats. “They both ran on Medicare for All, they both ran against the war, they both were very clear about the need for us to change our relationship with the state of Israel,” Mitchell said. “Chris Van Hollen is aligned on all of those things.”

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have also thrown their support behind Van Hollen, as has Our Revolution, the political group that grew out of Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, and the Democratic Socialists of America, which kicked off a “Say No to Schumer” campaign this week.

The political advocacy group MoveOn has also taken a stand against Schumer, citing figures indicating that 82 percent of its membership wants to see him replaced. “Our members are tired of politicians content with incrementalism,” MoveOn’s Executive Director Joel Payne said in a statement. A poll by Indivisible had worse results: just 10 percent of respondents wanted Schumer to remain in the leadership.

Schumer has been regularly criticized throughout the second Trump era for failing to do more to thwart the president’s scorched Earth agenda, provoking particular anger when he joined Republicans to pass a funding bill in March 2025. Indivisible first called on the Democratic leader to step down from his position after that vote.

“The argument, then as now, was not about ideology, it wasn’t about personalities, it wasn’t even about communication style,” Levin said. “It was about: Do you know what time it is? Do you know who is in the White House? Do you know what this regime intends to do? Are you willing to unify the caucus and strengthen the Democratic Party to get it done?”

Ahead of Van Hollen’s formal announcement on Thursday that he would seek the role, Schumer claimed that he already had the votes necessary to be reelected leader. Levin, for his part, is skeptical: “After Van Hollen announced, the fact that you did not see 29 senators, en masse, in a press release or at a press conference with Chuck Schumer means he doesn’t have the votes yet.”

Van Hollen has echoed some of the incoming senators in emphasizing that Democrats won big in the midterms in spite of, not because of, the party establishment. “I think if you look at this election, this was not a Washington, D.C.-orchestrated victory. This was a huge movement across the country,” he said this week. “That’s why we won in places like South Carolina. That’s why we won in Mississippi. Look, I appreciate the work of everybody at the DSCC, but the reality is that until the very last minute, the DSCC did not spend much in South Carolina or Mississippi.”

A total of 14 senators had publicly pledged to support Schumer on Friday, roughly half the number he would need to be reinstalled in his leadership position, a process that takes place via secret ballot. Ten senators, meanwhile, are on the record opposing his bid.

Van Hollen has acknowledged that he is an underdog in the leadership fight, but as last Tuesday’s results in places like Mississippi showed, that does not mean it is not a fight worth having.

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