Sen. Harry’s Reid’s perfunctory announcement on Friday that he won’t seek re-election next year — leaving a vacancy for leadership of the Senate Democrats — was followed, hours later, by a matter-of-fact statement in an interview with The Washington Post: “I think Schumer should be able to succeed me.”
That would usher in a whirlwind of activity on Capitol Hill in the next year as New York’s senior senator prepares to seize the reins of power — and retool the party as a center-left powerhouse that can win and hold a majority in 2016 and beyond.
Left-leaning activists have begun scrambling to block Chuck Schumer’s rise. The progressive organization Democracy for America is calling for Sen. Elizabeth Warren to seek the leadership post, and the left-leaning Daily Kos website is circulating a poll seeking other challengers and denouncing Schumer as too close to the “Wall Street wing” of the Democratic Party.
With more than a year to go before Senate Democrats will choose a new leader, anything can happen. But after watching Schumer in action for more than 20 years, I’d be surprised if he gets outsmarted in a political moment he has literally been working for a generation to create.
With more than $13.4 million on hand in his campaign coffers, Schumer has more money than all but one member of the Senate — and is the only Democrat in the top 10 in that category. He ran the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee when it took the majority in 2006 — and while Democrats lost the majority during his second stint in the job in 2012, the field looks far more promising for them in 2016: Republicans must defend 24 seats, while Democrats need to protect only 10.
Schumer brings an extraordinary level of personal political skill to the leadership fight. Even among the 100-member Senate — home to a great many ambitious politicians with big egos — Schumer has long operated at a high-octane level of smarts and media-savvy brashness that impress and occasionally startle his colleagues.
Republican Bob Dole, a longtime lion of the Senate, once quipped that the most dangerous place to be in the Capitol is between Schumer and a television camera. The joke stuck — but behind the gag is a sign of grudging respect for a man who excels at the basic block-and-tackle necessities of political life.
Schumer is attuned to television and radio (growing up in the world’s media capital will do that). In fact, he popularized a practice of holding press conferences on Sunday, a slow news day guaranteed to draw reporters — and ensure him prominent placement in the Monday newspapers.
But he is also a consummate street politician: At 64, he maintains a habit of biking around New York City neighborhoods without fanfare or an entourage, quietly noting local problems and occasionally inviting himself into a block party or parade. When a reporter once casually asked him to name all 62 counties of New York state, Schumer did her one better, and hand-sketched a map of the state with all the counties filled in. (He visits every county in the state every year.)
Schumer isn’t the only politically ambitious kid from Brooklyn — before attending Harvard, he graduated from a public school, James Madison High, whose alumni include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sen. Bernie Sanders and ex-Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota (a childhood pal of Schumer’s).
But Schumer’s political climb been a long-term work in progress. He emerged on the national stage as a prime sponsor of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a law that banned assault weapons; in the run-up to the final vote, New Yorkers practically couldn’t turn on television without seeing Schumer, then a congressman, on the floor of the House, waving a rifle over his head as he argued for the ban.
The higher profile served him well a few years later, when Schumer took on — and defeated — three-term incumbent Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. As a senator on the rise, Schumer attracted politically ambitious staffers who moved on to high-profile positions where they can help their former mentor.
A very partial list of those includes Howard Wolfson, Phil Singer and Blake Zeff, who went on to help run Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign; Ben Lawsky, who is now shaking up the world of finance as New York’s top banking regulator; Preet Bharara, who has become an anti-corruption powerhouse as a U.S. attorney; and Rodney Capel, who is executive director of the state’s Democratic Party.
With allies, money and the blessing of Reid, Schumer is in a prime position to implement the ideas contained in his important and overlooked 2007 book, “Positively American,” which lays out a vision for how Democrats should lead America.
Like Schumer himself, the book is savvy, hopeful and politically attuned to the desires of middle-class voters. Those who wonder what a Schumer Senate leadership would look like should take a look as Democrats prepare for what could well be the start of the Schumer era on Capitol Hill.
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