Congress
‘I think we win’: Schumer sets the tone as Senate Democrats grow more confident about November
A tidal wave of Republican money is threatening to soak Democrats in the final stretch of the midterm campaign, and Chuck Schumer has a message for his party: Keep your sheets dry.
While the Senate minority leader warned in an interview Wednesday that they shouldn’t be “overconfident,” he painted a rosy picture where Democrats have the “wind in our sails” and are well positioned to overcome an “almost obscene” GOP funding advantage.
“Here’s how I’d sum up the election: Can enormous amounts of Republican money beat a Democratic enormous advantage in much better candidates and a much better political climate?” Schumer asked in his Capitol Hill office. “I think we win.”
Those assurances are emblematic of the rising confidence many Senate Democrats are now expressing as they prepare to leave for a seven-week recess. After months where a tough GOP-tilted map and a series of nasty primary battles cast a shadow over their battle to retake the majority, some are more openly acknowledging they could return to Washington as victors.
“It certainly feels like it’s going to be a wave election, and not for good reasons,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview. “This president’s domestic and foreign policy has gone off the rails. People are paying more than ever before for basic necessities like gasoline, and we have the most corrupt White House in the history of the country. So that’s where we are.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he was “increasingly hopeful,” while Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) said Democrats are “in a position to earn the trust of voters across the country, win majorities in both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.”
Schumer, like most Senate Democrats, is being careful not to predict outright they will flip the chamber. They need to win four seats on net, including several that President Donald Trump won at least once.
But party leaders and strategists see an increasingly rosy political environment as high energy costs associated with the Iran war drive voter dismay, and Republicans grow publicly anxious about their prospects. They also believe they have landed on a winning message after more than a year in the messaging wilderness following Trump’s 2024 victory — “costs, chaos and corruption,” as Schumer put it Wednesday.
“I helped spread this in the caucus,” he said.
Schumer declined to handicap the national map in detail, but the party has expanded the range of states it is spending in. The main Schumer-affiliated super PAC announced this week it would spend more than $50 million in Texas — a place it had once been reluctant to invest in.
Brushing off questions about specific investments, Schumer said, “We’re in much better shape in state after state after state, whether they be states that are a little more purple or states that are a little more red.”
Republicans are striking a different tone, telegraphing that they hope to hold on to their majority by the skins of their teeth. In one sign of the deep anxiety, GOP leaders kept the Senate in session this week to hold a vote on an affordability-related measure championed by one of their endangered incumbents, Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) put the GOP’s odds of success at “between 60, 70 percent,” acknowledging that any resulting majority would be “slim, maybe a net reduction.”
Asked Wednesday if he believed his party could hold on, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said, “I don’t know. … I’m doing everything I can.”
“I try to see the world as it is,” he added. “They’re all going to be close races.”
Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) said there was a “really, really good chance” at least one of the chambers would flip, “and if Republicans aren’t concerned that it could very well happen in both, they’re living in a cave to me.”
The November battlefield is coming into clearer focus for both parties. They now largely agree that Georgia, once expected to be a top GOP pickup opportunity, is now safely in the hands of incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Democrats haven’t locked things up, however, in two other states where they are defending seats — Michigan and New Hampshire, where Sens. Gary Peters and Jeanne Shaheen, respectively, are retiring — though Democratic nominees lead in most polls there.
Even if Democrats hold on in those three states, they still need to win four seats currently held by Republicans.
The North Carolina seat Tillis is vacating is viewed as most likely to flip. After that, Democrats will need to cut a path through states like Maine, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas, with Kansas and Nebraska also seen as within reach by party leaders. Trump won all but Maine in 2024.
Schumer is facing pressure from some Democratic activists to go even deeper into GOP territory and invest serious money in Mississippi, Florida and South Carolina — where some polls show underfunded Democratic nominees nipping at the heels of GOP incumbents.
But some party strategists are leery of sinking donor cash into stretch races given the need to keep up with the flood of Republican spending in core states. Asked about that trade-off, Schumer said only Democrats would do “whatever it takes to win” and that he expects to spend the next five weeks fundraising.
“We have lots of different paths to victory, and we’re not going to turn any of them down,” he said.
There is plenty personally at stake for Schumer, who has been feeling heat from the party base for the better part of two years as they’ve bristled against the limits of Democrats ability to check Trump. As pressure has grown, Schumer has repeatedly touted his campaign recruiting successes as proof of his leadership skill.
He downplayed any divisions Wednesday, saying his caucus is “totally unified” going into the midterms and that he would seek to continue in the top spot regardless of the outcome.
“I am running for reelection for leader,” Schumer said. “Period.”
Calen Razor contributed to this report.