The News
Chuck Schumer doesn’t have much to say about Graham Platner. Don’t mistake that for a deviation from his years-long campaign to oust Susan Collins.
Schumer seems more focused than ever on knocking out the Maine GOP senator in the midterms after their epic clash in 2020, which punctuated a long-running competition between the two. In an interview on Thursday, Schumer called Collins “weaker than in 2020” and declared: “We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the majority.”
“First, she has to defend [President Donald] Trump, who is highly unpopular in her state. [Joe] Biden won Maine by six, but it’s now probably plus-nine Democratic. And she has to defend him all the time,” Schumer told Semafor. “Second, there’s still a great residue of resentment of Collins’s [Supreme Court votes] … she swears they’d keep Roe, and after the election they didn’t.”
He added: “Medicaid cuts have hurt Maine more than most any other state, because they have so much rural healthcare. So, you put all that together, and we’re going to win.”
Collins responded in kind in her own interview afterward with Semafor, touting bringing $1.5 billion in federal funding to Maine over the last five years. She blanched at the idea that she constantly defends Trump, declaring that “anyone who takes a look at my record knows that it’s a record of independence and bipartisanship.” She also voted against Republicans’ party-line tax cut bill, which included Medicaid cuts, last year.
“We heard the same song six years ago, exactly. And so I’m sure it’s going to be a hard-fought campaign. I’m sure that Sen. Schumer will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into it, as he did last time,” Collins said.
She said the large number of Senate Democrats thus far refusing to back Platner “shows discernment, integrity, and wisdom on their part.” Schumer declined to address the divisions in his caucus over Platner amid allegations of unsettling and intimidating behavior by past girlfriends. “I’ve said what I have to say about Maine,” Schumer said. He said he spoke to Platner after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the race but declined to get into the details.
The pitched fight between the two rivals for the Maine Senate seat is just one plank of Schumer’s plan to seize on Trump’s unpopularity and wrest control from Majority Leader John Thune this fall. It’s one of a half-dozen seats that Schumer is eyeing to take back his old majority leader job, up from four states earlier this year: North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Maine, Iowa, and Texas.
He declined to comment on Montana and Nebraska, where two independent candidates are running against Republicans. Some Democrats think South Carolina and Mississippi could eventually be in the mix as well. The party needs to flip four GOP seats and hold Michigan, Georgia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire to win back the majority.
Schumer explained that he’s “always planned on multiple paths, and I was always looking for new ways to go.” He would like some extra breathing room if he does get his big job back: He presided over 50-seat and 51-seat majorities, respectively, and wants to build a durable majority rather than a flash in the pan. His work as campaign chairman in 2006 and 2008 helped build an eight-year majority that endured the tea party wave of 2010.
“If you want to expand the map and want to build a majority and build a more permanent majority, you have to look at states that are not blue but are purple or even reddish,” Schumer told Semafor.
“And we spent a lot of time working very hard to find candidates that fit their states and really mirrored their states, as opposed to mirroring the national Democratic Party.”
In this article:
Know More
Schumer is in complete political animal mode. He is singularly focused on winning back the Senate majority, dialing up aides and colleagues at all hours to further his mission. His job recruiting candidates is done but his messaging job is far from it, and the Democratic leader is rolling out policy proposals aimed at bringing down costs on issues like electricity, housing, groceries, and childcare.
He also has a classically succinct Schumerism to describe Democratic efforts to seize on Trump’s poor approval ratings: “Costs, chaos, and corruption.” He says it’s a unifying theme in his caucus, even for an outlier like Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.: “Fetterman I think agrees with us on all three of those.”
The New York Democrat rarely sees a downside in politics, but did concede that Republicans’ super PAC, the Thune-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, is likely to outspend Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC this cycle.
“The amount of money they have is sort of obscene, and we’re not going to have as much money as them,” Schumer said.
Democrats still have two important primaries left in Michigan and Minnesota. Schumer prefers Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., in the former but did not choose sides in the interview between Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is more antagonistic to Schumer’s leadership. He simply said his party would win Minnesota.
Schumer already has one likely incoming senator in Illinois, Lt. Gov Juliana Stratton, who says she will vote against him in next year’s leadership election. Platner opposes him as well. Asked how he will deal with potential opponents, he said only this: “I tell people we’ve gotta win.”
He was similarly coy about what his plans are for 2028, when he will have to decide whether to pursue a six-year term. He won’t even say when he will make that decision: “My whole focus is winning in 2026.”
Room for Disagreement
Republicans say Schumer is losing influence in his party to an anti-establishment faction of Democrats.
“Chuck Schumer is losing proxy battles to Bernie Sanders while positioning Democrats to lose the war to Republicans. As Democrat candidates lurch further left to appease their radical base, Republicans remain focused on lowering costs, investing in American jobs, and doing the work required to defend the majority,” said Bernadette Breslin, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Burgess’s view
Schumer’s political game is still strong — his recruitment of candidates like Josh Turek in Iowa, former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and former Rep. Mary Peltola in Alaska shows it. The emergence of James Talarico in Texas gives Schumer some cushion.
But he clearly doesn’t quite agree with some of his colleagues who see a more fertile path to the majority without Maine.