On a recent Sunday night, about a dozen liberal New York real estate activists gathered for a virtual meeting with Senator Chuck Schumer. Although the newly anointed majority leader served in Congress for four decades, several participants barely interacted with him before, and some considered him an uncertain ally.
But Mr. Schumer was eager to offer guarantees. At one point, he described himself as a former tenant organizer who was now in a position to work on a large scale on housing issues, several participants recalled.
“He did a lot of homework and knew everything we were going to ask and made a number of commitments to us to make it happen,” said Cea Weaver, strategist for the New York Housing Justice for All coalition. “He was like: I’m talking to Ilhan Omar, I’m talking to Bernie Sanders, I’m talking to AOC”
The January meeting was one of a series of steps that Schumer took to win leftist leaders in New York and Washington before his campaign for re-election in 2022. Armed with a broad set of political promises, he is courting activists, organizers and elected officials of the next generation in New York who would likely form the backbone of an effort to dethrone him, should any arise.
He is facing an extraordinary balancing act in the coming days, while simultaneously seeking to forge a huge relief bill to contain the coronavirus pandemic while administering the impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. Both tasks are seen as urgent, practical and moral imperatives by the Democratic Party’s electoral base.
Schumer, 70, has tried to channel his party’s impatient sense of purpose: in recent days, he has publicly asked President Biden to “be big and bold” with his economic policies and executive actions, defying pressure from Republicans and some Democrats center to reduce campaign promises.
Last week, Schumer supported a new push to decriminalize cannabis; signed Senator Cory Booker’s proposal for Baby Titles, a plan to address the racial wealth gap; and appeared with Senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressives to ask Mr. Biden to cancel student debts.
On impeachment, too, Schumer took a breach approach, demanding Trump’s removal from office the morning after the January 6 attack on the Capitol and considering the approaching trial as a crucial responsibility ritual, even if it is highly unlikely that two-thirds of the Senate vote for the conviction.
Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Party of Labor Families, said Schumer was emphatic in private conversations that he plans to “do great things” despite the Senate’s frightening math. Mitchell said he spoke to Schumer frequently, but had not yet discussed the 2022 campaign with him.
“He will have to use all the tools at his disposal to keep his caucus together; he understands that, we all do, it’s not a surprise, ”said Mitchell. “I think he is also very clear that the alternative is unacceptable – that he absolutely has to comply.”
The new Senate leader seems to recognize that his political manual requires updating. A compulsive retail prodigious and prodigious fund-raiser, Schumer came to power less as a legislative engineer and author of great ideas than as a financial strategist on Wall Street with a keen eye for finding the political midpoint among liberal New York. and its historically conservative suburbs.
David Carlucci, a former state senator from Rockland County who lost a primary election in the House in 2018 to a more progressive candidate, Representative Mondaire Jones, said that a diverse new generation is transforming state politics. Schumer seems relatively safe, he said, but no Democrat should feel immune.
“Any politician who is part of the old guard has to worry a lot about a possible primary,” said Carlucci.
This is a lesson that progressives have given Democrats established in the past two election cycles, when the defeats of Joseph P. Crowley and Eliot L. Engel, two senior members of the House, marked consecutive advances for leftist politics within the state. New York. .
Unlike Crowley and Engel, the Senate leader remains an ubiquitous presence in New York. But his ability to respond to his own party’s passions is another matter.
Schumer has attracted periodic complaints from the left over the Trump years for taking a generally cautious approach to messages and campaign strategy, including in major Senate contests last year, where Schumer chose moderate recruits who ended up losing in states like Maine and South Carolina. North. There is limited patience now among Democrats for the kind of incremental maneuver and horse trading that is traditionally needed to pass laws in the Senate.
In a statement, Mr. Schumer said he was trying to “do the best job for my constituents and for my country” and acknowledged a change in the scope of his government goals.
“The world has changed and the needs of families have changed,” he said, “income and racial inequality has worsened, the climate crisis has become more urgent, Trump has attacked our democracy – all of these things require big and bold action and that is the that I’m struggling to deliver to the Senate ”.
At the moment, the most serious potential opponents for Mr. Schumer – Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, chief among them – have not taken steps towards a campaign. Ocasio-Cortez, the 31-year-old legislator from Queens, told associates that she has not yet decided whether to run, but that she believes the possibility of a challenge serves as a constructive form of pressure on Schumer, people who have spoken to her said.
Other potential opponents seem more focused on putting together a proposal to oust Governor Andrew Cuomo.
However, Schumer seems to want to stop even a quixotic opponent who can become an unpleasant distraction or worse. He started using Twitter and news interviews to demand that Biden take bold executive action on issues like student debt and climate change.
And by assuming the expanded powers of the Senate majority, Schumer is turning to new and old alliances to help him govern.
Beginning last spring, Schumer called several conference calls to work out plans to alleviate the pandemic with some of the Democratic Party’s great political minds. They included more centrist voices, such as former Treasury Department employee Antonio Weiss; progressive economic thinkers like Felicia Wong of the Roosevelt Institute and Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook University; and leaders of liberal thought groups Heather Boushey and Michael Linden, who now serve in the Biden government.
Mr. Schumer’s regular meetings with national liberal advocacy groups have intensified in recent weeks, and he has spent time with a group of New York progressives elected last year. In December, he met state senator Jabari Brisport, a 33-year-old democratic socialist elected last fall, at a bar in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and emphasized his support for addressing climate change.
“We joke about me being a socialist in Brooklyn,” said Brisport, recalling that Schumer noted that he works well with Sanders, who is also a Brooklyn socialist.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, a 32-year-old progressive who won a seat in the Bronx House of Representatives last fall, said Schumer was the first officer to contact him after Torres won a primary dispute; shortly afterwards, Mr. Schumer visited his district for a meeting on the expansion of the federal child tax credit.
Torres said he intended to support Schumer in any contested primary. “Without a doubt, he deserves to be re-elected,” said Torres.
If Schumer finds it difficult to enact his overwhelming endorsements for bold action, or comes to be seen as an obstacle to certain confrontations with Republicans, a serious challenge may arise. Mr. Schumer faces a dense ideological minefield on issues ranging from economic recovery legislation to abolish obstruction and achieve statehood for Washington, DC
“The pressure now is that he is one of the most powerful politicians in the entire country,” said Rep. Ron Kim, a progressive lawmaker. “If he can’t do it, it’s not just him – it’s the party he’s going to suffer in two or four years.”
State Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Queens Democrat who defeated a conservative president in a primary election in 2018, said she believed Schumer had reacted to liberals, but that she expected difficult results before endorsing him. She said she was “disappointed” because Schumer did not take a tougher line in her power-sharing negotiations with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.
“We have to face those people who don’t mind proposing legislation that is humane and that takes care of the people of this country.” Said Mrs. Ramos.
People who spoke to Mr. Schumer about a possible primary challenge say that he is confident about his chances against Ocasio Cortez or anyone else; he points out his support in the suburbs and among black voters in New York City, arguing that it would be difficult for a leftist opponent to overcome these advantages. As the first leader of the Jewish Senate majority, he would likely have considerable strength among an important population of white, left-leaning.
But Schumer certainly knows that coalitions can be fleeting and flexible. It is said that he followed Senator Edward Markey’s campaign in the Massachusetts primaries last year against Joseph P. Kennedy III. Mr. Markey, a seventy-year-old companion, defeated his youngest and best-known rival by campaigning as an advocate for environmental justice and by closely allying himself with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and groups like Sunrise.
A few days after Markey won the primaries, Congresswoman Yuh-Line Niou, a liberal Democrat from Manhattan, spoke briefly with Schumer at a 9/11 memorial event in her district. Frustrated by Cuomo’s opposition to raising taxes on the wealthy, Niou said he appealed to Schumer for help in raising the much-needed revenue. He supported it, she said, but at the time the Republicans controlled the Senate.
Ms. Niou said she supported Mr. Schumer and believed it was “very important that New York had the majority leader as a member”. But she said she intended to put pressure on Schumer to get the most out of the job.
“Every thing I asked for, I will ask for five thousand times more difficult,” she said.
John Washington, a Buffalo-based housing organizer who attended the January meeting with Schumer, said he saw a marked change in the senator. In the past, he said, Schumer would seek support for his own priorities and offer “radio silence” about the activists’ goals.
“I think it is clear to everyone that there is a kind of new era of politics,” he said.