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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Democrats are on the offensive in six states currently held by Republicans. He’s eyeing more.
The New Yorker told Semafor that he’s paying close attention to Kansas Democrats after pastor Adam Hamilton won the Democratic nomination to face Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. Schumer called Hamilton a “moderate; he has 40 churches in Kansas, and 100,000 people evidently listen to a sermon every Sunday. That’s a lot of people.”
And though he said it’s still a “long shot,” Schumer sees potential in Mississippi Democrat Scott Colom’s run against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss. He called Hyde-Smith “extremely weak” and Colom a “tough prosecutor who’s won elections in a tough district.”
All told, Schumer is now looking at competing for eight GOP-held seats — Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and Mississippi — while his party needs to net four seats to flip the majority.
“That’s how you build a majority, by expanding the map. And I’d like to build a majority that not only is in 2026, but on into the future,” Schumer told Semafor in an interview on Thursday. “We’re always looking to expand the map with candidates who fit their states.”
Across the aisle, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott told Semafor this week that he believes Republicans have four pickup opportunities in Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Minnesota. That means a Senate battleground map of at least a dozen states, with the potential for more to get added.
Schumer did not comment on Montana, where the open-seat race could become more competitive if opponents of Republican Kurt Alme consolidate around one candidate. And Nebraska independent Dan Osborn is trying once again to break Republicans’ winning streak there.
Schumer’s sprawling battleground map took shape for several reasons. One is candidate recruitment: He drafted Mary Peltola in Alaska, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Roy Cooper in North Carolina.
The other is the environment: President Donald Trump’s approval numbers are low in battleground states and very poor nationally. Schumer said the war in Iran has become “total chaos” to everyday people.
Looking across his contested races, Schumer is still seeing a possible wave election in November. In his typical style, he credited Democrats for hampering Trump politically, waging shutdown fights on immigration enforcement and healthcare affordability.
Trump has played his part, too. Schumer said he hoped to see the president’s approval numbers “below 40, and now they’re 34 or 35. Some of that Trump did because of himself. But some of it we have done,” he said. “I really am feeling very good about winning the Senate back.”
Democrats have one more important primary next week in Minnesota, but Schumer said he has no preference between Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn.
His path back to majority leader has been complicated by two of his picks losing primaries in Maine and Michigan — where Schumer said Abdul El-Sayed “ran a great campaign” and that “Trump is really in terrible shape.”
But Republicans remain optimistic, given those stumbles.
“Abdul El-Sayed improves our ability to keep the Senate. I think Troy Jackson in Maine improves our chance,” Scott said. “So there’s a lot of interesting, fascinating, and crazy folks who seem to be committed to our success on the right.”
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The job isn’t finished, and money is on Schumer’s mind. Republican groups have outraised their Democratic rivals, narrowing his party’s big fundraising advantages at the candidate level.
Schumer called the GOP fundraising machine “obscene” and “crass in how it raises money.”
“We’re not going to have as much money as they are. I’d rather have the people on our side on the issues than a money advantage,” Schumer said, before adding: “We need money, and we certainly have to raise enough money so that when they attack us, we can answer them.”
And Schumer still has work to do in Congress, where he’s negotiating pre-election deals with Majority Leader John Thune that carry their own political consequences. A vote on Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general, for one, will put other incumbent senators on the spot because Maine Sen. Sen. Susan Collins is already a no on Blanche.
“If you want to wipe out corruption, you can’t have the president’s personal attorney as the attorney general. You don’t need a PhD in political science to know that,” Schumer said.
Room for Disagreement
Michigan has emerged as Republicans’ best pickup opportunity, but Scott told Semafor that he’s not limiting his options.
“Minnesota? Don’t sleep on Michele Tafoya,” Scott said. “I would not relegate our most likely areas of success to one state. I would say there are four in play.”
Burgess’s view
Democrats need this to be a 2006-like wave election and not a 2020-like squeaker if they want to win back the Senate majority. And waves aren’t common in the Senate: The last one was in 2014, when Republicans flipped nine seats in then-President Barack Obama’s second midterm.
That’s the spot where Republicans are in now, pinned down by Trump’s unpopularity in his own second term. Still, the political geography is a big advantage for them. Maine is the only state they are trying to flip that Kamala Harris won in 2024.
Cooper, a former governor, looks like a strong candidate to break the Democrats’ losing streak in the Tarheel State. But the other battlegrounds of Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas have disappointed Democrats in recent years and are tight enough to go either way.
Taking Kansas and Mississippi would require epic upsets: Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982 and are winless in Kansas since 1932.