An Emboldened Hard Left Eyes Schumer Challenge

NEW YORK — The hard left’s Empire State momentum is a five-alarm fire for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The relentless march — beginning with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s upset win last year and punctuated by a trio of insurgents toppling establishment-backed candidates Tuesday — is now shifting to the even bigger prize of ousting the 75-year-old Brooklyn lawmaker.

Schumer has long been considered vulnerable to a left-flank challenge, and progressive frustrations over the perception he has not aggressively confronted President Donald Trump has only amplified the push to replace him. His stalwart support for Israel has created additional left-flank exposure as criticism of the Jewish state is no longer a hindrance to winning a New York election.

Now the political earthquake precipitated by Mamdani and sustained in three deep-blue House districts won by his allies underscores a heightened degree of political peril for one of the nation’s most powerful Democrats.

Taken together, the rapidly shifting political dynamic is morphing into a crisis for New York’s Democratic establishment — a power structure Schumer sits atop.

"The establishment — and no one's more establishment than Chuck — needs to take this as a wake up call,” said Matt Bennett, vice president of public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “No one is safe."

Schumer, speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, suggested he saw the progressive surge on his home turf not as a warning sign, but as part of the broader momentum Democrats are building toward November.

“We’re seeing tremendous energy from all different areas of our party. You’re seeing centrist energy in Virginia, Iowa, and New Jersey; progressive energy in New York City. We’re going to harness it all to win in November, because all Democrats are united in the mission of taking back the Senate and defeating Trump,” Schumer said.

Leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America do not have a specific candidate in mind to take on Schumer, a prodigious fundraiser who is known for traveling to each of the state’s 62 counties every year. But the organization’s leaders don’t believe they need a political celebrity on the magnitude of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be successful. DSA candidates have scored modest in-roads with state-level races in Buffalo and the Hudson Valley, in addition to the Congressional victories notched Tuesday — forming a potentially deep bench of candidates who may be tapped to run for Schumer’s seat.

Mamdani himself was only recently an unknown backbench Assembly lawmaker before his stunning upset to win City Hall last year.

“We can take a number of different routes,” said New York City DSA Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo. “When we first ran Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy he was at 1 percent in the polls. Few people knew who he was outside of his district and our organization. I don’t see why we can’t do that for a Senate race.”

Successfully running statewide against a household name like Schumer would be a wholly different challenge, though — and one that would create a fraught dynamic for Democrats trying to appeal to middle-of-the-road suburban voters.

Leftist candidates — albeit those without DSA backing — have tried and failed to run statewide. Gubernatorial bids by progressive activists like Zephyr Teachout and Cynthia Nixon fell far short of being competitive. And while deep blue New York City is crucial to winning a statewide election, some establishment Democrats believe the primary victories Tuesday were more a reflection of hard-left activity in pockets of the Big Apple where anti-Israel sentiment has animated voters.

“I don’t think it translates into a statewide victory,” said former New York City Councilmember David Greenfield. “DSA is yet to crack that. People are trying to extrapolate a victory from the DSA’s self-proclaimed commie corridor is not being seen in Rochester or Albany.”

Schumer, though, has fallen out of favor with New York voters statewide. A Siena University poll released in May found only 33 percent of voters hold a favorable view of him — a rating that’s equal to how New Yorkers felt about Trump in that same survey. A majority of voters, 52 percent, held an unfavorable view.

Tuesday’s results — in which Mamdani-backed House candidates defeated establishment favorites — have only served to reinforce concerns that incumbents like Schumer will struggle with an electorate that’s shifted to the left and is increasingly restive with incumbents. His political troubles reflect the woes of elected officials globally — the resignation of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer the most recent example.

“There’s been a lot of work over the years,” said New York-based Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz, whose firm worked with Mamdani during his mayoral bid. “But the 2026 primaries built so much off of the 2025 primaries, and the left is going to just keep going in New York.”

First elected in 1998 by unseating powerful Republican Al D’Amato, Schumer has never drawn a significant primary challenger as an elected officeholder. He — barely — completed his 27th annual visit to each New York county last year after a winter scramble to travel to much of the state’s hinterlands.

Schumer’s problems mirror the woes of other Senate leaders in Washington who struggle with the base of their parties. Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell was deeply distrusted by the Republican’s MAGA base — a problem inherited by his successor, Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota.

Schumer’s standing among Democrats slipped precipitously last spring when he sided with Republicans to avert what would have been the first government shutdown of the second Trump era, leaving progressives seething — and searching for a replacement both in Washington and at home. He became a bogeyman in Senate Democratic primaries, with progressive and insurgent candidates turning rejections of his leadership into a rallying cry. Criticism crested again when eight members of his caucus broke rank to help reopen the government from a record shutdown last November.

Progressives’ tour de force Tuesday in New York renewed calls among the left for Schumer to step aside from his leadership post next year and retire in 2028.

“If I’m Chuck Schumer right now I’m quaking in my boots — as he should,” said Amit Bagga, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Gov. Kathy Hochul. “This is a very clear signal that the politics of possibility that Mamdani and the left represent — as opposed to the strongly worded letters of the past — are what Democratic voters expect and demand from their leaders.”

But progressive groups have never reached a consensus on an alternative, and no serious threat to Schumer’s leadership has ever emerged from within his caucus. The calls to replace him also lost steam as Schumer picked headline-grabbing fights over health care and immigration funding and led opposition to GOP cuts to safety-net programs. Schumer, in an interview with POLITICO earlier this month, argued those strategic battles have strengthened Democrats’ position in the midterms.

Some on the left even acknowledged Wednesday that some of the heat on Schumer will fade if he can deliver Democrats the Senate — which his allies argue he’s well-positioned to do after he helped recruit a slate of battle-tested and competitive candidates in several critical states. And, even as they clamor for a change in leadership, several progressive strategists and organizers insisted on Wednesday that their goal for the moment was to help Schumer win back the Senate — and that 2028 was a later conversation.

New York’s institutional Democrats, though, insist the far-left candidacies have taken the party’s focus off fighting Trump. Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters Tuesday the goal should remain beating Republicans in November — including in crucial New York swing seats that stand to determine control of the closely divided House. And as the GOP have made some modest gains in statewide races in recent election cycles, some Democrats warned that a left-wing Schumer challenger would give a boost to Republicans in a state where they are otherwise badly outnumbered.

“I don’t see them winning in anything that’s not deep blue,” said Queens Rep. Greg Meeks of the political left. “When I see a statewide scenario, I remember when we had [Republican] George Pataki as governor.”

Madison Fernandez contributed to this report.