Do we like Chuck Schumer?
Our score: 7 out of 10. He has a record of backing LGBTQ+ marriage protections and a pro-environment voting record, but plenty of his own side doubt his leadership.
Schumer is the New York Democrat who has led his party in the Senate for years, and he's now in the minority. He isn't up for re-election until 2028, so his seat is safe even if his leadership isn't. Most of the heat on him comes from his own side, not from scandal.
The big stoush was March 2025. He voted to advance a Republican-backed spending bill to avoid a shutdown, and many Democrats and progressive activists were furious. He told NBC he acted “out of pure conviction” and wouldn't step down. He also called it “a vote of principle”, which didn't calm anyone down.
Round two came in November 2025, when the Senate voted to end the longest shutdown in US history. Democrats had held out over health insurance subsidies. Seven Democrats and one independent voted to advance the deal. Schumer didn't vote for it, but critics such as Ro Khanna and Rashida Tlaib still blamed him, and Khanna said he should be replaced. House leader Hakeem Jeffries defended his fight as “valiant”.
On the harm test, we found nothing nasty in his own words. In 2022, as majority leader, he filed to bring the Respect for Marriage Act to a vote, which would protect same-sex and interracial marriages, and the Human Rights Campaign praised it. On climate, Inside Climate News reported a 91 percent lifetime League of Conservation Voters score in 2015, though experts said he was never a leader on the issue. That article is old, and we didn't open a current voting scorecard.
The recent drama is about whether he stays on. AP reports he says he's running for another term as leader, and quotes him saying “I think our caucus is strong, it's united.” Sen. Elissa Slotkin has called for a “new generation” of leaders, and Troy Jackson, Adam Hamilton and Abdul El-Sayed have said they won't vote for him or are noncommittal. Some senators reportedly want him to say this is his last term as leader.
So would we support him? Yes, on the evidence we could open. He's a long-serving leader who has pushed marriage protections through the Senate and has a strong environmental voting record. The knock is tactical judgement, which is a gripe about strategy, not a reason to cringe at who he is. Our searches were thin on how he treats staff, so that part is a gap.