A year ago, even the most optimistic Democrats had to squint to imagine winning back the Senate in 2026. President Trump had just stormed back to power. The Democratic brand was damaged. And Republicans were up to 53 Senate seats — with Democrats facing an unusually daunting midterm map.
“Everyone was writing us off,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, recalled.
But now, after a series of candidate recruitment coups in red states, Mr. Schumer said that Democrats were poised to capitalize on rising anger from voters toward Mr. Trump over a cost-of-living crisis.
Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have slumped, and Democrats have won a series of elections over the last year. The political environment has so brightened for the party that Mr. Schumer was confident enough to name an exact path to victory: flipping Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio, while successfully defending all of the states Democrats now hold.
“We have a strong and clear path to winning the Senate in 2026,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
Mr. Schumer has made bold predictions of Democratic victories before. They have not always panned out, as in 2024, when the party lost control of the Senate.
He has also been under intense pressure from within his party, becoming a punching bag for many on the left and those who are desperate for younger leadership to take the fight to Mr. Trump. Now 75, Mr. Schumer faces questions about his future as the Democratic leader and about whether he will run for re-election in 2028, when some progressives are dreaming of a challenge from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But as he sat on Tuesday at the Senate Democratic headquarters across from the Capitol, Mr. Schumer was taking something of an early victory lap as he talked up an “internal gyroscope” that he has trusted for more 50 years in elected office.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” he said.
He had just landed the last in a series of blue-chip Senate recruits: Mary Peltola, a Democratic former congresswoman, who entered Alaska’s race on Monday after a monthslong courtship.
She joined former Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio and former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, two other top Schumer recruits who are running in states that Mr. Trump has carried all three times he has been on the ballot.
Political prognosticators immediately rated the Alaska race as more competitive.
“That’s the last piece of the puzzle,” Mr. Schumer said.
Echoes of 2006?
Taking the Senate remains a steep challenge for Democrats. The party would need to not only sweep the four states that Mr. Schumer identified as his top targets, but also hold seats in the battleground states of Michigan, New Hampshire and Georgia.Democrats also face an unusual number of fractious primaries — most notably in Michigan and Maine — and a Republican president with a super PAC that is flush with $300 million, a huge and unusual sum to be amassed by a second-term president.
Most Democrats still view the House as the main battleground in 2026, given Republicans’ paper-thin majority in the chamber and its historical tendency to swing against the party in power in midterm elections.
Joanna Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, mocked Mr. Schumer’s talk of his recruitment successes. “Democrats’ battleground map is littered with failed career politicians no longer aligned with the values of their states and messy, nasty primaries that will leave Schumer with a majority of candidates that have all pledged to vote him out,” she said.
In the interview, Mr. Schumer drew parallels to 2006, when Democrats took back power by winning seats even in red states like Montana and Missouri. At the time, Mr. Schumer was the ambitious chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
That year, voters recoiled from President George W. Bush’s proposals to privatize Social Security as well as the quagmire of the Iraq war. Today, Mr. Schumer described Mr. Trump as similarly distracted by “military adventurism” and weighed down by an affordability crisis.
“The pattern is so much the same now,” he said, adding, “The cost issue is much more trenchant than Social Security privatization because that was the future. People are having their health care costs, their electricity costs, their housing costs raised right now.”
Mr. Schumer argued that this year’s Democratic Senate candidates had entered their races out of a sense of patriotism. But in his pitches, he wasn’t afraid to layer in a little guilt-tripping.
“I said, ‘You know, you’ve had a great career, you have a wonderful family, but if you don’t run and we lose the Senate by one seat, you won’t be happy,’” Mr. Schumer recalled saying.
As he spoke, protesters could be heard rallying outside the Supreme Court, which was hearing a case about transgender athletes.
“The Supreme Court looms large,” Mr. Schumer said of the need for Democrats to take power and block Mr. Trump’s potential judicial appointments. “The court alone could take away our democracy.”
Democrat-on-Democrat Fights
Ugly primaries could upend Mr. Schumer’s plans.In Maine, he is backing Gov. Janet Mills against Senator Susan Collins, the lone Republican facing voters in a state Mr. Trump lost.
On paper, Ms. Mills, a two-term incumbent, would seem a strong challenger and a proven winner. But she is also 78 and would be the oldest freshman senator in history. Mr. Schumer’s fondness for older candidates — Mr. Brown in Ohio is 73 and Mr. Cooper in North Carolina is 68 — has irked some Democrats.
Many voters in Maine have rallied behind Graham Platner, 41, a blunt-talking veteran and oyster farmer. Mr. Platner has raised millions of dollars even after the emergence of incendiary old social media posts and a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol.
Asked about Mr. Platner’s chances, Mr. Schumer instead wanted to talk about Ms. Collins.
“Susan Collins is a very weak candidate, much weaker than she was six years ago,” he said.
Mr. Trump himself declared that Ms. Collins “should never be elected to office again” after she voted to advance a resolution to block further military action in Venezuela.
The perennial Democratic ambition to turn Texas blue is complicated by primary races, as well.
Republican groups have spent millions of dollars to ensure that Senator John Cornyn, the Republican incumbent, is the nominee rather than Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been dogged by investigations and ethics questions.
“Neither Cornyn nor Paxton is very popular, but Paxton — I don’t know if I want to say this on the record — so I won’t,” Mr. Schumer said.
Mr. Schumer also declined to comment on whether he favored either of the two leading Democrats in Texas: Representative Jasmine Crockett, an outspoken liberal star, and James Talarico, a state representative who has quickly built a national following with his religion-infused brand of Democratic politics.
In Iowa, Democrats face a multicandidate primary to try to win the seat of the retiring Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican. Republicans quickly coalesced behind Representative Ashley Hinson in that race.
Republicans notably missed out on two of their top potential recruits, Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia and former Gov. Chris Sununu in New Hampshire. “In both Georgia and New Hampshire, the most formidable candidate didn’t run because they didn’t want to serve under Trump,” Mr. Schumer said happily.
It’s the Economy, Still
Just about everywhere, Mr. Schumer sees the crushing cost of living as his party’s top issue.He even aimed to link accusations of malfeasance in the Trump administration to affordability. “We’re going to tie corruption with people’s costs,” he said, mentioning that Democrats could connect rising energy prices with favorable treatment for oil executives.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has rolled out several measures to address the cost of living, including the adoption of some Democratic proposals. He has announced a desire to prevent big investment companies from buying up single-family homes, and on Monday he called Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a prominent voice on the left, and talked about capping credit card interest rates.
“It shows he’s worried,” said Mr. Schumer, who will deliver his own speech on Thursday about housing costs.
Mr. Schumer also revealed that he planned to eventually roll out a Democratic proposal to address the cost of child care, which was a defining campaign issue for Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City last year.
Mr. Schumer would not say if he would mirror Mr. Mamdani’s approach, only that “we’re going to do something very significant.”
While Mr. Schumer said his party agreed across its ideological spectrum that it should focus on the economy, he acknowledged Democrats still had work to do to sell the public on their plans.
“We have to have a sharper, more pointed economic message,” he said.
One area of concern among some Democratic strategists is money.
The party is bracing for attacks from Mr. Trump’s lavishly funded super PAC, as well as from well-financed super PACs aligned with the cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industries.
Mr. Schumer declined to say what he was doing to keep those industry groups at bay.
“The issues, particularly the economic issues on cost, are going to outweigh anything else,” he said, adding of Republicans: “You can do all the commercials you want. If people sit each Friday night and can’t pay the bills, and they believe that we’re on their side and the Republicans are not, we’re going to win.”
