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Senate Democrats will soon decide who will lead them with their newly acquired grip on power in the upper chamber, and while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., appears to be the favorite, some in the caucus aren’t eager to back him.
Schumer has led Senate Democrats for nearly a decade, helming the caucus as both majority and minority leader since 2017. But many of the fresh crop of Democratic senators-elect, which span the ideological gamut from moderate to progressive, are tepid, at best, in backing him for another term.
And some said throughout their campaigns that they wouldn’t support him at all.
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Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., conducts a news conference at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee about Democrats taking control of the House and Senate in the midterm election on Nov. 4, 2026. (CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
“I mean no disrespect for Chuck Schumer, but we need new leadership,” Sen.-elect Adam Hamilton told CNN in September. “We need new younger leadership, young blood.”
Hamilton is the moderate megachurch pastor who toppled Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., on Election Night, flipping the Sunflower State for the first time in nearly a century. He, like others this cycle, argued that Democrats needed “fresh ideas and fresh leadership.”
“In Kansas, Chuck Schumer is a liability for Democrats, and we’ve got to have leaders that can unite us, bring us together, not just Democrats, but bring together Democrats and Republicans to solve real problems,” he said. “And I think people are frustrated with the gridlock in the sense that people are not working together to solve problems.”
Democrats are expected to hold their leadership elections later this year, and Schumer will have to shore up support within his newly expanded caucus to stay at the top. But he will only need a majority of Senate Democrats to back him.
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So far, Democrats’ majority in the upper chamber is at 54 seats and could further expand depending on the results in Mississippi and Alaska, which as of Thursday were leaning in their favor.
Schumer believed that he would still be the one to lead Democrats and contended to reporters on Wednesday that issues that incoming senators and their voters may have had with the direction of the Democratic Party in recent years were not about him.
“The issue is not me,” Schumer said. “I’ll be re-elected as majority leader, but the issue is focusing on the American people and what they want.”
Still, there is a faction of newcomers, including senators-elect Troy Jackson in Maine, Julianna Stratton in Illinois, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, who aren’t all in for Schumer.
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Former state Sen. Troy Jackson, a Democrat from Maine and gubernatorial candidate, speaks during a Fighting Oligarchy event. (Sophie Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Jackson, speaking to reporters just before Election Day, said his position hadn’t changed on Schumer.
“I told Schumer that I’m going to, you know, support somebody else,” Jackson said. “So it’s no different now.”
That somebody else could be Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who has been proposed as an alternative by progressives, like El-Sayed, to lead Senate Democrats instead of Schumer. Van Hollen may have his eyes elsewhere — he has said that he’s “kicking the tires” on a 2028 run.
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A Democratic aide familiar with Van Hollen’s thinking told Fox News Digital that before selecting a new leader, the lawmaker believed “the caucus needs to have an honest and open conversation about how we move an agenda forward that reflects the will of the American people.”
“He’s made it clear that the new Democratic majorities need to use their power to push a proactive, economic agenda,” they said.
