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Happy Thursday morning.

Congress is gone until mid-November, and we’re only 33 days from Election Day.

For us at Punchbowl News, that means it’s the perfect time to look at the Big Four – Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

We’ll start today with Schumer and McConnell, then we’ll cover Pelosi and McCarthy on Friday.

Chuck Schumer: The 71-year-old Schumer faces two challenges – keeping his razor-thin Democratic majority intact and winning a fifth term in the Senate for himself (thus becoming the longest-serving senator in New York State’s history). On the latter issue, Schumer is doing just fine, thanks so much. But on keeping his majority, it’s still a jump ball.

Schumer came into the post-Labor Day period riding high. Senate Democratic candidates and incumbents were in good shape, flush with cash and generally polling well. President Joe Biden’s approval ratings were rising, thanks in part to legislative victories that Schumer helped engineer, including passage of the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act. Falling gas prices aided Democrats too.

Schumer came out of September still doing pretty well. There were some hiccups on same-sex marriage legislation and permitting reform, although these largely weren’t Schumer’s fault. Backers of the same-sex marriage bill, led by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), needed more time to round up GOP votes.

On permitting reform, part of the problem was Sen. Joe Manchin-specific. Schumer promised the West Virginia Democrat he’d attach Manchin’s permitting reform proposal – which included a provision to greenlight the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline project – to a stopgap funding bill that would keep federal agencies open until mid-December. Schumer stuck by his deal, but he was forced to strip the Manchin permitting proposal from the continuing resolution due to GOP opposition.

Politically, Schumer has helped put his candidates and incumbents in a position to win. He’s raised a ton of money for the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic leadership-aligned super PAC. Schumer transferred $15 million from his campaign to candidates and the DSCC. And he’s provided them with a legislative record to run on this fall. Schumer has done his part.

Back home, Schumer is touting an enormous new semiconductor chip-making facility in Syracuse, an investment by Micron worth as much as $100 billion. IBM will announce today that it plans to spend $20 billion more at a Poughkeepsie site that Biden is visiting, the White House says. Joining Biden will be two House Democrats from New York: Reps. Sean Patrick Maloney and Pat Ryan. Schumer helped craft the CHIPS bill that made all this possible.

Schumer is also doling out other federal largesse everywhere across the state, demonstrating that it’s really good to be the majority leader.

Whether he keeps the majority or not, Schumer will have to navigate what could be a treacherous lame-duck session of Congress. Add this to the mix: A federal appeals court in Texas ruled Wednesday that DACA is unlawful. Immigration reform advocates are going to push very hard to pass some sort of immigration legislation in the lame duck session, while Democrats still control all of Congress. With the future of hundreds of thousands of DACA participants at stake, the pressure here is going to be intense.

Mitch McConnell: Let’s give this to McConnell right now – everything the Kentucky Republican said about “candidate quality” was true. You can see it in Senate races in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and elsewhere.

Yet if Senate Republicans do take the majority or stay at a 50-50 split, McConnell will have played a huge role in that success. The McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund is pumping tens of millions of dollars into swing state races, seeking to prop up Republican hopefuls as they struggle against better funded Democratic opponents. The NRSC also has suffered cash-flow problems late in the cycle after spending heavily early on.

McConnell, of course, has clashed repeatedly with NRSC Chair Rick Scott (Fla.), an unprecedented situation for the longtime Senate GOP leader that hasn’t helped either man.

McConnell and Scott were unsuccessful in their efforts to recruit GOP governors to run for the Senate in Arizona, New Hampshire, Maryland and Vermont. In others, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Georgia, former President Donald Trump endorsed candidates who ended up winning their nomination.

However, several of these Trumpian candidates turned out to have huge problems in the general election, potentially costing Republicans a chance for a pickup – or even losing a GOP-controlled seat.

Yet it’s Trump’s continued attacks on McConnell, including a recent racist comment aimed at Elaine Chao, the former Transportation secretary and McConnell’s wife, that have most shocked Republicans. Few Republicans will discuss it publicly for fear of getting hit by similar broadsides from Trump, although in private, they’re stunned. Some Republicans even see this as Trump’s attempt to deflect from the fact that his handpicked candidates are in trouble, particularly former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia.

What Trump doesn’t seem to get – or just ignores – is that these incendiary comments help McConnell’s standing among Senate Republicans, as offensive as they are. McConnell shrugs the attacks off – at least in public – and goes about trying to win. That makes most of his colleagues even more loyal to him.

McConnell spent September trying to get Republicans out of town without giving Democrats anything more to run on, or to use against GOP incumbents. Senate Republicans dragged their feet on a same-sex marriage vote. They then blocked Manchin’s permitting reform proposal from passing, in part as payback over his Inflation Reduction Act vote.

McConnell and other top Senate Republicans have continued to support billions in military and economic aid for Ukraine as it seeks to defeat Russia’s invasion. This position, though, is becoming more difficult to maintain due to criticism from hardline conservatives on and off Capitol Hill, including Trump.

Regardless of whether Republicans win the majority or not, McConnell is likely to have new Senate colleagues who have never served in public office. Navigating that next year will be a challenge. McConnell has proven adept at keeping the majority of his GOP conference together.

The 80-year-old McConnell will break the late Sen. Mike Mansfield’s (D-Mont.) record as the longest-serving party leader in Senate history early in 2023. He’s already the longest-serving senator from Kentucky history, and come next Congress, he’ll be the second most senior senator overall, trailing only Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Meaning McConnell doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone. But he’d sure like to break that Mansfield record while serving in the majority.

– John Bresnahan

Next week: We’re looking forward to our first October event! Join us for a virtual one-on-one conversation with Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) on Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 9 a.m. ET about issues facing American workers and their impact on financial security. RSVP here!

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