Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Thursday he will run against Chuck Schumer for Senate majority leader, the first contested race for the job in decades. “That’s why I’m running for Senate Majority Leader,” he said, after arguing that “the American people called for change.”
The vote will be held behind closed doors, by senators alone. Black voters, the most loyal bloc Democrats have, will not be in the room. Their senators will be, and the senators-elect from the midterms are the ones whose commitments are still open.
Schumer answered within hours. “I have the votes to continue serving as Democratic Leader,” he said, as CBS News reported. Van Hollen called himself the “underdog” but said in an interview with MS NOW that more than 10 senators have pledged to support him. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont endorsed him quickly. Abdul El-Sayed, the senator-elect from Michigan, backed him a week ago, saying he would be “an amazing Senate majority leader.”
Several incoming senators have so far declined to back Schumer, according to reporting this week. They include Juliana Stratton of Illinois, a Black senator-elect, along with Annie Andrews of South Carolina, James Talarico of Texas and Adam Hamilton of Kansas. Declining to endorse is not the same as backing Van Hollen, and none of them has said how they will vote.
Van Hollen’s case rests on how Schumer has used the party’s leverage. He criticized the leader’s handling of government funding deadlines against the Trump administration, and his involvement in Democratic primaries. Moderates such as Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan remain uncommitted, saying they want concrete policy differences before they choose.
That is where our readers should press. Democrats won this Senate with Black votes in places such as South Carolina and Mississippi, where Annie Andrews and Scott Colom won. A party that wins on that turnout owes its voters a leader who will use the majority on what they asked for: health care, wages, voting rights, police accountability. Neither candidate has yet said what he would do first on any of them.
Black senators and senators-elect should say publicly, before the vote, which of those priorities they are asking for and which candidate has committed to them. A secret ballot is how a leader gets chosen. It should not be how voters find out what was promised.
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