After winning commanding majorities in Congress in last week’s midterm elections, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) might have expected little opposition to their efforts to continue guiding their party on Capitol Hill.
Instead, the two Democratic congressional leaders are beating back progressive campaigns to oust them.
Neither effort appears likely to succeed, given the inherent challenges of persuading a majority of the Democratic caucuses to change direction on short notice following major political victories. Many members have already expressed their support for Schumer and Jeffries.
But liberal advocacy groups, boosted by high-profile figures like actor Mark Ruffalo, are organizing against the two men, and some congressional offices say they have received hundreds of phone calls from constituents demanding new Democratic leaders.
In the House, a handful of incoming lawmakers have refused to commit to voting for Jeffries as speaker, while in the Senate, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) has openly flirted with a challenge to Schumer.
“Voters just gave Democrats a huge mandate. It was a vote for change from Trump, but it was also a vote for change from the status quo,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, the progressive activist who helped launched the career of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). He has been posting to his tens of thousands of followers on social media every day about replacing Schumer and Jeffries.
Critics argue the two men are the wrong leaders for the moment. Schumer and Jeffries have been lambasted by progressives as ideologically out of step with their own party: too closely aligned with corporate donors as populism is on the rise, too supportive of Israel and too weak to effectively oppose President Donald Trump in his final two years in office.
Jeffries has faced a restless Democratic base for months. After progressive challengers began upsetting incumbents in primaries this summer, some spoke about withholding their support from him to extract concessions or even deny him the speakership in a potentially closely divided House. The New York Times reported in August that Jeffries secretly met with Trump’s son-in-law and political adviser Jared Kushner, further fanning liberal discontent.
Then Democrats blew past expectations last week. They have already won 255 seats in the House and lead in six races that have yet to be called.
Jeffries “has earned the right to lead us,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan) told reporters on Tuesday.
House Democrats are scheduled to vote next week on a Democratic nominee for speaker, and Jeffries would need a simple majority to prevail. When the full House chooses a speaker in January, Jeffries needs 218 votes — meaning probably more than 40 Democrats would have to defect to deny him the position.
So far, only a small number have indicated they might. Rep.-elect Angela Gonzales-Torres of California said Monday that she is currently a no because her community voted for change. Rep.-elect Richard Ojeda of North Carolina is demanding a vote on legislation to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on campaign finance before he will agree to vote for Jeffries.
Chakrabarti said he’s spoken to other members who privately wish for an alternative to Jeffries but will vote for him because he has no credible challenger.
“We don’t need a credible challenger right now,” Chakrabarti said. “We just need to make sure Jeffries doesn’t win.”
As Congress arrived back in Washington this week to welcome newly-elected members and resume business, Jeffries dismissed the threat to his leadership.
“I’m very confident we’ll get there,” he said at a news conference. Walking into his weekly leadership meeting, where he was greeted with cheers, Jeffries added, “We’re talking to everybody, and I look forward to the vote next week.”
Despite decisively flipping the Senate — where Democrats now have 54 seats and lead in two more uncalled races — Schumer also faces a growing resistance. Though the effort is largely led by the party’s grassroots arm, the International Association of Machinists union on Monday called on Schumer to step aside.
“Americans want to see leadership. They want to see a willingness to take on concentrated power and corruption,” said Leah Greenberg, the co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible. “In order to do that, we can’t use the same old same old.”
Indivisible has been urging its members to call their senators and ask for an open process to choose a new leader.
Greenberg said there is more urgency around the Senate because of the filibuster, which creates an obstacle to Democratic priorities that does not exist in the House. In addition to abolishing the filibuster, Greenberg said the next Senate leader must commit to ending the Iran war and clawing back billions of dollars in new funding for immigration enforcement that Republicans approved earlier this year so that it can be redirected to health care programs.
In an interview last week, Schumer said he believes he’ll be elected majority leader. Democrats will choose in secret and Schumer needs only a simple majority of the caucus. The full chamber has no say on his job.
“Our caucus is united and strong and really happy with where we are right now,” he said.
He has plenty of supporters, such as Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), who said Tuesday that Schumer “worked really hard to get the majority back.”
But newly-elected senators from across the ideological spectrum — such as Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan), Annie Andrews (South Carolina) and Adam Hamilton (Kansas) — have publicly said they will not vote for Schumer for majority leader, fueling hopes among progressive activists that there is a path to defeat him.
Many are now rallying around Van Hollen and encouraging him to formally challenge Schumer.
Van Hollen, a progressive who spent 14 years in the House before he was elected to the Senate in 2016, has said he is in “listening mode” and that he discussed the matter Monday with Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), who also has not ruled out running for majority leader.
“There should not be a coronation,” Van Hollen, who is also considering a bid for president in 2028, said Tuesday as he headed into the Senate Democratic caucus meeting. “We need to have discussion as a caucus and there needs to be a plan on how we’re going to use this large majority to deliver for the country.”
It’s rare for a Senate Democratic leader to face a challenger. A group of senators opposed Harry M. Reid, the late Democratic Senate leader from Nevada, after he lost the majority in 2014, but he held onto the position because no one ran against him.
Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
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