Exclusive / Schumer lauds recruits as Democrats see Senate within reach

Chuck Schumer has faced questions for months about his leadership of the Senate Democratic caucus. He has four answers now in his four top-tier recruits: Mary Peltola, Janet Mills, Sherrod Brown, and Roy Cooper.

“The answer to these critics is to win. If we win back the Senate, that will answer every question,” Schumer told Semafor in an interview on Tuesday.

There was no guarantee a year ago that Schumer would be able to land enough candidates to even make a Senate majority mathematically possible. Schumer said he directly appealed to each of his recruits by playing on their potential regrets if they sat out the midterms.

“You could just sit back and relax, but if we lost the Senate by one vote, you wouldn’t be happy in retirement,” Schumer said, summing up his message. “And it motivated them.”

Peltola “was the last piece to the puzzle,” Schumer added. “We’re more likely to win than not in North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska. We couldn’t have better candidates.”

Schumer’s view is a rosy one — part of his job, along with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is to sell his party on a vision of taking the chamber. There are tons of obstacles they’ll have to navigate around to have any hope of actually flipping a chamber that’s now a 53-seat GOP majority.

Among those barriers: President Donald Trump won Alaska, Ohio, and North Carolina barely more than a year ago. Mills faces a tough primary challenge in Maine’s Senate race, Democrats will have to hold two seats where Trump won in 2024, and in some states’ primaries, Schumer himself is an issue.

What’s more, several of his Democratic members don’t agree with the party leadership’s preferences for Mills, Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan, and Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota.

But if Schumer’s four candidates from Alaska, Maine, Ohio and North Carolina win this fall, and Democrats don’t lose any seats they currently hold, it would be enough to take the Senate back.

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., acknowledged that “Mary Peltola is an incredible recruit, and Alaska will be in play this year.”

But Heinrich, who backs Mills’ rival Graham Platner in Maine and Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan over Craig, said that “there are other places where it would be more appropriate for the DS[CC] not to be involved early in the game.”

“The sort of formula for what’s been successful in the past may not apply right now,” he added. “Politics is about whose side you’re on, and we need to make it very f*cking clear that we’re on the side of average working Americans.”

Still, Schumer’s recruiting tactics cleared the field in several states. Democrats would not be able to mount much of a campaign in Ohio and Alaska without Brown and Peltola, respectively. Cooper was strong enough to get would-be challengers to step aside once he got in.

“That doesn’t happen by accident,” said Lauren French, a spokeswoman for the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC. “The result is a Senate battlefield that’s bigger, more competitive, and far more expensive for Republicans than they planned.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she’s “100%” behind Cooper and Brown but she still sees “too much interest in candidates who will go along to get along with wealthy donors, and not enough interest in out-of-the-box candidates who are ready to fight and bring real energy to our party.”

Schumer acknowledged that not everyone agrees with the strategy he’s employing. But he is unabashed in moving forward and believes he’ll be vindicated come Election Day: “People can disagree with that, but we’re pursuing the path that we think wins us the Senate.”