As promised, we’re focusing this morning on the two Senate leaders as part of our semi-regular Leader Look series. In case you missed it, our examination of House leadership ran in yesterday’s AM edition.
Chuck Schumer
The Senate majority leader is coming off yet another government funding fight where his position won out — a clean bipartisan bill free of poison pills.
Schumer didn’t take the bait on Speaker Mike Johnson’s six-month CR with the SAVE Act gambit. It helped that Senate GOP leaders and the White House had no interest in Johnson’s plan either. But Schumer has been able to keep his caucus unified through consecutive bicameral negotiations.
Yet the lame-duck session might not be as kind to Schumer. Congress will have only five weeks to hammer out a huge FY2025 spending package. Lawmakers also need to pass the annual defense authorization bill once the Senate and House versions are reconciled. Each of those could take at least a week of floor time.
Schumer has already shown he wants to prioritize confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees. He also held a handful of messaging votes over the summer. But this came at the expense of passing individual appropriations bills or the Senate’s version of the NDAA, drawing strong rebukes from Republicans.
The New York Democrat reasoned that judicial nomination votes were a better use of the Senate’s time. As a result, Democrats and Biden are close to eclipsing former President Donald Trump’s 234 judicial confirmations. But floor time could be difficult to come by given the legislative demands in the lame duck.
Schumer’s majority on the line: Be honest. Did anyone really think that, one month out from Election Day, we’d be looking at this year’s Senate map and conclude that none of the vulnerable Democratic incumbents can be entirely written off?
That isn’t to say Schumer will remain the majority leader in the next Congress. Right now, it’s a safe bet that Republicans will win the Senate next month. After all, they really only need to flip one seat because West Virginia is already going to turn red thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin’s (I) retirement. Plus, there’s an argument to be made that Democrats are only wasting money in Texas and Florida. (As of now, they’re only in for just short of $3 million in Texas, as we reported Thursday evening).
But the narrative has changed. Republicans’ fundraising struggles are real, and Democratic candidates continue to rake in millions of dollars. While Montana looks to be trending away from Democrats, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is holding firm and continues to raise boatloads of cash.
So the fact that it’s not all doom and gloom a month out from the election is a positive development for Democrats. Whether that translates to holding onto the Senate majority is an entirely different question. But Democrats could stem their losses to prevent Republicans from having a wider — and more workable — majority.
A 51-49 GOP majority — regardless of who’s in the White House — isn’t the worst possible result for Democrats, especially considering Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) will still be around as swing votes. A 52- or 53-seat Republican majority, however, makes it harder for Democrats to have influence.
On the home front: Schumer played a prominent role in the internal Democratic deliberations that ultimately saw Biden end his reelection bid.
Schumer’s 30-minute meeting with Biden in Rehoboth Beach, Del., was a pivotal moment. His pitch had more sway with Biden not only because they’d served together, but because of the affection Biden has for the Senate and this particular crop of Democratic senators.
Schumer seems to have delivered the message that Biden had lost his home turf — his cherished Senate. For Biden, that had an impact.
Mitch McConnell
The Kentucky Republican is nearing the end of his record-breaking tenure as Senate GOP leader.
The Republican Conference has changed dramatically in recent years as retirements of McConnell-aligned senators gave way to younger members who are more Trump-like. As a result, McConnell’s influence within the conference has waned.
But let’s not lose sight of what McConnell has been able to accomplish in the seven months since announcing he wouldn’t seek another term as GOP leader.
As we’ve noted previously, McConnell was instrumental in getting the foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan across the finish line. He successfully beat back a small but powerful group of Trump-aligned Republicans who tried to kill the measure.
And McConnell isn’t going quietly. He’s still taking swings at the “America First” worldview, part of his broader effort to push back on what he sees as a growing isolationist streak in his party.
McConnell is also continuing to make the case against the dramatic changes to the leadership structure that some of the candidates vying to succeed him have embraced. He’s publicly slammed the notion of term limits, and we’ve scooped that McConnell has been laying out his case for maintaining leadership power during closed-door GOP meetings.
