Progressive Dem Candidates Are Using Their Opposition to Schumer to Pitch Voters

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) is being openly criticized by progressive Democratic candidates for office, who are making their opposition to the current leader of the Senate caucus a plank in their platform.

For some candidates, it may aid them in winning their respective primary races.

Iowa candidate for U.S. Senate Zach Wahls, for example, says voters are reacting positively to speeches he gives on the campaign trail in which he disparages the party leader.

“When I’m doing my stump speech and tell people that on the first day of this campaign, I made a promise not to support Chuck Schumer for leader, the room — without any explanation — just spontaneously bursts into applause,” Wahls recently said.

Wahls has the support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and other progressives in the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, state Rep. Josh Turek (D-Iowa), considered a moderate, is supported by Schumer.

Turek is attempting to push back against Wahls’s criticisms, claiming they are a distraction in the campaign.

“Wahls is out here running against Schumer. I’m out here running against Donald Trump and [GOP candidate for Senate] Ashley Hinson,” Turek said.

Other states are also seeing a schism within their Democratic Party primaries, with Schumer playing a major role.

In the Michigan Senate primary race, for example, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) is favored among the party establishment, including by Schumer, whereas Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, is backed by progressives, including independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The two are neck and neck in recent polling, with a third of voters still undecided.

How voters feel about Schumer may very well tip the scales toward the winner in the primary.

Establishment Dems are backing Stevens as a more “electable” candidate — a point that El-Sayed, a proponent of Medicare for All, flatly rejects.

“I think there is this notion that electability is about being the least offensive. If that were true, why would Donald Trump have won the presidency twice?” El-Sayed has pointed out.

Schumer’s backing has done more harm than good in other states already. Last week in Maine, his preferred senatorial candidate, Gov. Janet Mills, dropped out of the race, viewing the momentum as favoring progressive oysterman Graham Platner instead.

Schumer also faces deep opposition from voters in his own home state. As Axios has pointed out, multiple polls over the past six months have indicated that he has barely surpassed a 40 percent approval rating. Such unpopularity, if it persists, could lead to a primary challenge for his seat in 2028, including potentially from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).

Schumer’s unpopularity is growing as he continues to push pro-Israel positions in the Senate as the country commits acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. Schumer has said that his votes to increase aid to Israel are a top priority of his, despite polls showing that just 4 percent of Democratic voters support increasing aid to the country.

Schumer also likely angered progressive voters with his reaction to a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump earlier this year, in which Trump vowed to destroy the entire Iranian civilization. While Schumer condemned Trump’s “threat to extinguish an entire civilization,” he did not join other Democrats in calling the action an impeachable offense.

Nationally, Schumer is deeply unpopular, with only 17 percent of Americans giving him a positive approval rating and 57 percent saying they disapprove of his job as Democratic leader of the Senate, an Economist/YouGov poll from January found. Among voters with Democratic views, he still gets a net-negative approval rating, with 32 percent of Democratic-leaning voters approving of his work and 47 percent saying they do not.