Van Hollen challenges Schumer for Senate Majority Leader

“I am planning to run for the Senate Majority Leader,” he said, “and let me tell you why.” Senators Bernie Sanders and Elissa Slotkin have already said they would not back Schumer for Majority Leader. Incoming freshman Senator and trans kids advocate Peggy Flanagan also said she would back Van Hollen over Schumer.

“This is not about any one individual, but it is about answering the call of the American people. We saw a huge outburst of democracy on Election Day — red states, blue states, purple states — and it wasn’t only a rejection of Donald Trump and his corruption and his wars and his cruelty, it was also about a call for a larger change to take on a broken economic system that’s rigged in favor of the very wealthy against working people, led by a corrupt political system.”

Election Day, he said, was a message from voters to “reject the status quo” which he believed means the Democrat Party needs “new leadership.” He believes he and the party have “a generational opportunity for the Senate to respond to the call of the American people for change.”

“But it should be very clear,” he told Psaki, “while, you know, voters have rejected the Trump policies, they’ve not yet hired Democrats — they’ve given us a chance, we have to earn their trust. And my view is that you can’t earn that trust with old leadership. You need to move on to new leadership.”

Schumer has been head of the Senate Dems for almost 10 years and has been in the Senate as a leader of his party for over 30 years. Colleagues have rallied around him, such as Arizona’s Ruben Gallego, who said “When the manager takes you to the World Series, you give him another contract. And this has been a, you know, a really good election cycle for us. At the end of the day, these are historic numbers. It’s time for us to unify.”

Van Hollen has been in the Senate since winning his 2016 election after serving Maryland’s 8th district for 14 years. His counter to Gallego is that the Democrats’ blue wave “wasn’t orchestrated from Washington, D.C., or the DSCC — it was a people-powered movement. That’s why we won in places like South Carolina. That’s why we won in Mississippi.”