By Joseph Morton, The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., upset many of his fellow Democrats earlier this year when he backed a Republican plan to extend federal spending through the end of September.
Critics charged he should have stood firm against President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers, demanding they make concessions to Democrats even if the move risked a government shutdown.
Schumer will face a similar decision shortly as government funding is set to expire at the end of September.
Internal dissatisfaction with Schumer has been showing up in Democratic Senate primaries, including in Texas where Democratic candidate Terry Virts recently called for Democrats to replace Schumer as leader.
Virts, a retired NASA astronaut and Air Force veteran, highlighted how Democrats have failed to win a statewide race in Texas for more than three decades.
“If the Democratic Party were the Dallas Cowboys, Chuck Schumer is our Jerry Jones,” Virts told The Dallas Morning News. “Both want to win but neither has won in 30 years.”
The Texas Democratic primary for U.S. Senate could be shaped in part by how the candidates talk about Schumer, who supported former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, in his unsuccessful 2024 campaign against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Allred, who lost to Cruz by about 9 percentage points, is running for Senate again, this time for the seat held by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who faces a robust Republican primary challenge from state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
In response to questions, Allred spokesperson Dan Gottlieb provided a statement that did not call for Schumer to step aside. It also did not commit Allred to supporting him for leader.
“Colin doesn’t believe the answers to our problems will come from Washington insiders — they’ll come from real people demanding change,” Gottlieb said in the statement. “That’s why he believes Congress needs new energy and ideas, and that leadership has to rise to the moment we’re in.”
Texans are focused on issues rather than Washington power games, he said, and “Colin will back leaders who are ready to fight for Texas families.”
Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, who is considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat, has been critical of Schumer and urged him to step aside.
In an interview with CBS News, O’Rourke said Schumer had seemed to indicate Senate Democrats would unite in opposition to the Republican spending plan earlier this year.
“And then at the 11th Hour, he stepped back and he submitted,” O’Rourke said. “He bent the knee to the president.”
Schumer is not “the man for the moment” when Trump is doing so much that demands opposition, O’Rourke said.
“And if we didn’t learn anything else in 2024 we should have learned that being polite, not offending people’s feelings, deferring to seniority, just going along to get along, doesn’t get us to where we want to be, and, in fact, helped to produce the crisis that we now find ourselves in,” he said.
Schumer has defended his decision, saying Republicans would have refused any demands made by Democrats.
Shutting down the government would have been devastating and played right into Trump’s hands by giving the administration the power to cut whatever programs it wanted, he has said.
Schumer aides did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Virts said the Democratic party has a deep bench of leaders who could step up.
He said Democrats need to do more than just criticize Trump. They need to tell voters what the party will do to help the middle class. He said waiting until after the midterms to change leaders would be too late.
Schumer’s backing of the spending extension was enraging at a time when the party needs fighters, Virts said.
“That was a moment where Democrats needed to fight and Chuck Schumer chose to cave and that is, in my mind, unforgivable,” he said.
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