Chris Van Hollen Is Challenging Schumer For Senate Majority Leader

After a week of speculation about his intentions, Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen announced on Thursday that he plans to challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for the position of Senate Majority Leader in the 120th Congress.

The Democrats’ historic sweep of both legislative chambers last week emerged from an electorate desperate for change. Schumer, a 75-year-old fixture of the Democratic establishment, has had higher disapproval than approval ratings among Democratic voters in polls—38 percent of Democratic likely voters approved of Schumer’s performance as Minority Leader in a pre-election Economist/YouGov poll, with 42 percent disapproving. Van Hollen, at 67, is only eight years younger than Schumer—but his backers see him as a candidate that will, as Van Hollen put it in a speech in Denver on Friday, “shake things up.”

A major part of the Senate Majority Leader’s power stems from determining which bills come to a vote, and Van Hollen is known for, among other things, being one of the party’s most consistently vocal members on blocking weapons shipments to Israel. He’s also positioned himself as an advocate for defunding ICE, having traveled to El Salvador to meet with kidnapped and illegally deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego García in 2025. (Abrego García is now living with his family in Maryland while he battles another potential deportation, this time to Liberia.)

So far, four senators and senators-elect have committed publicly to supporting Van Hollen for the position: Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Minnesota Senator-elect Peggy Flanagan, and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley. At least three senators-elect—Maine’s Troy Jackson, Kansas’ Adam Hamilton, and Illinois’ Juliana Stratton—have said they will not back Schumer for leader, according to the group Primary Democrats. Fifteen senators and senators-elect have announced their support of Schumer. With at least 55, and maybe 56, Democratic senators come January, Van Hollen has a long way to go to win majority support.

After Van Hollen announced his candidacy Thursday night, Schumer released a statement on social media saying that he welcomed “any discussion about the future of our caucus and the important work ahead. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together—55 seats and counting is an amazing result—and I have the votes to continue serving as Democratic Leader.”

Van Hollen, speaking Thursday at a conference sponsored by the moderate PAC Majority Democrats, talked about his candidacy and received thunderous applause: “We’ve been given a chance, and now it’s up to us to meet this moment,” he said.

Voters, Van Hollen said, have elected a new class of Democrats who ran not on “the tired Washington labels of progressive versus moderate—they ran on an economic populist message” to “end the war, protect health care, [and] stop our neighbors from being sent to foreign gulags.”

The left-leaning Democratic-aligned Working Families Party has already urged Schumer to step down as leader and asked the incoming Democratic caucus to support Van Hollen as his replacement.

“Voters demanded change last week, and Chris Van Hollen is the right choice to make sure Democrats in the Senate deliver,” said Maurice Mitchell, the party’s national director. “His bold stands on guaranteed health care, confronting a lawless ICE, and cutting off weapons sales to Israel show he’s the fighter we need to lead a new caucus in a historic moment.”