Chuck Schumer Faces Senate Majority Challenger as Van Hollen Enters Race

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Maryland U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said Thursday that he will run for Senate majority leader in the next Congress.

Maryland U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said Thursday that he will run for Senate majority leader in the next Congress, setting up a challenge against Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer after the party swept to power in the midterm elections.

Van Hollen's announcement Thursday makes him the first to challenge New York's Schumer.

“In this election, the American people called for change,” Van Hollen said in a statement. He argued that voters rejected President Donald Trump’s policies and that “the status quo that isn’t working for working people.”

Van Hollen called it “a generational opportunity for the Senate to respond to the call of the American people for change."

Former presidential candidate and progressive Senator Bernie Sanders is among the highest-profile voices criticizing the New York lawmaker's direction, but several Democratic centrists have also declined to back Schumer for the role he has held since 2017.

Schumer has said he expects to keep his job and declined to directly answer a question about whether he has spoken to Van Hollen since he began mulling a challenge.

Earlier this week, he told reporters, “I’ll be reelected as majority leader.”

His allies point to the midterm results. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who ran Senate Democrats’ campaign arm this cycle, said that Schumer not only won the Senate back but he “cares deeply, and he understands politics well."

Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed has repeatedly said he would support Maryland's Van Hollen for the majority leader role. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal also said he was open to new leadership if a challenger stepped forward.

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