Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer on Capitol Hill last Tuesday
Early on in this election cycle, things were going great for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. In nearly every contested Democratic Senate primary, Schumer and his caucus’s campaign arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), got the desired result, either clearing the field of competitors to his hand-picked preference before voting even began or winning comfortable victories.
Bloodless centrist Cal Cunningham triumphed in North Carolina over progressive State Sen. Erica Smith to take on shaky Republican Sen. Thom Tillis; Smith had been leading in polls before Schumer made his endorsement. Real-estate developer Theresa Greenfield triumphed easily in Iowa; the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC spent $6.7 million on her behalf in the primary. Schumer selection M.J. Hegar also cruised over multiple progressives in the Senate primary to take on Republican John Cornyn, though she still must finish the job in a run-off in July. Other races in Arizona and New Mexico saw the Schumer-backed candidate chase out all competition.
When Schumer stamps a candidate with DSCC approval, he also marshals big money in support of them. In other words, Schumer doesn’t just get what he wants because he’s good at picking moderates with broad appeal. He just picks people who are inoffensive to the DSCC donor base, and then uses their money to stack the deck in their favor. Bob Moser documented this highly dubious and clearly anti-democratic practice, in great detail, in a recent issue of the Prospect.
But almost three weeks into the nationwide protests and months into a now spiraling pandemic, several of Schumer’s high-profile picks are starting to falter, rapidly losing ground to underfunded progressive upstarts just ahead of election day.
The most prominent instance comes from Kentucky, where Schumer intervened in the primary early. Back in February 2019, Schumer was already actively stumping for former fighter pilot Amy McGrath to challenge Mitch McConnell, the case for her candidacy predicated almost entirely on a popular TV ad last cycle that propelled her within 3 points of winning a swing House seat in Lexington.
Almost three weeks into the nationwide protests and months into a now spiraling pandemic, several of Schumer’s high-profile picks are starting to falter.
McGrath is exactly the sort of moderate that only a Schumer could love. Her sales pitch so far has been her willingness to work with Trump once in office, which, if you believe in the Joe Biden campaign, or the Democratic Party at all, is an extremely confounding message. Of course, thanks to Schumer’s minting, McGrath was the immediate beneficiary of an incomparable torrent of cash, which initially prevented any meaningful primary challenge. She’s raised over $41 million, and spent $21.8 million to date. But last November, Charles Booker, a first-term progressive state senator from Louisville, announced a late bid for the seat.
Booker, despite having spent barely $500,000, is now ascending, racking up endorsements from national politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as popular eastern Kentucky sports radio host Matt Jones (an important figure in the state who almost ran for the seat himself) and the Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky’s highest circulation newspaper. Despite McGrath outspending him an astonishing 40 to 1, the race is somehow closer than ever, with recent polling showing him within a handful of percentage points. That certainly doesn’t bode well for McGrath’s attractiveness as a candidate.
Booker has assumed newfound national prominence with his participation in Louisville’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, repeatedly taking to the streets to protest the death of Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville PD, and Louisville restaurateur David McAtee by the Kentucky National Guard. McGrath, meanwhile, hasn’t turned out to a single protest. She’s instead training the DSCC’s funding firehose on television buys, hoping to extinguish the flames that are lapping up her campaign ahead of this month’s primary.
Meanwhile, another Schumer pick, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, finds himself embroiled in a new corruption scandal. A local news investigation just uncovered millions of dollars in off-the-books donations from corporations and private foundations to Hickenlooper’s office, dating back almost two decades. The startling revelation shows that during his eight years as governor, Hickenlooper expanded the “public-private partnership” program, which took corporate donations and used them to fund departments and positions in his administration with no oversight.
The donations ran in the millions of dollars during his two terms as governor. Among the biggest donors was Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, one of Colorado’s biggest fracking operators. In one instance in 2017, the company donated $25,000 to the governor’s office, just days after a deadly explosion in the state, caused by a leaky underground pipeline owned by the company. Over the course of four years, Anadarko gave Hickenlooper’s office more than $330,000, money that was then used for government activities, but of which there is little accounting.
Hickenlooper, who already bears the handle “Frackenlooper” for his role in expanding fracking as governor, is taking on Andrew Romanoff for the chance to do battle with Republican Sen. Cory Gardner in November, in what is almost certainly the most flippable Senate seat in the country. Hickenlooper, briefly a presidential candidate, was considered a prized recruit when Schumer talked him into running for Senate. (He’d previously said, “I’m not cut out to be a senator.”) But his reputation on environmental issues, along with this new corruption scandal, has imperiled his chances. Romanoff, former speaker of the Colorado State House, won April’s Democratic Assembly vote in dominant fashion, securing top-line designation in the June 30 primary. Schumer and the DSCC knew that Hickenlooper was weak as far back as August, when they began pressuring consultants from at least five firms not to work with Romanoff, according to The Intercept. If Hickenlooper pulls it off, it will only be because of the fundraising advantage bestowed on him by the DSCC.
In Texas, the story is the same. Last December, despite a crowded and extremely diverse field, Schumer endorsed M.J. Hegar, a former Republican military veteran who narrowly lost a House seat after gaining attention with a viral ad (sound familiar?). That endorsement, seen as hasty and unnecessary, did not sit well with state Democrats. Dallas-area State Sen. Royce West, who is now facing Hegar in a run-off, said at time that it was a “slap in the face” to black voters. The Schumer bump gave Hegar a massive fundraising advantage, allowing her to cruise through the first round of the primary.
But Hegar, too, has struggled to attract excitement, causing the DSCC to go out of its way to crush her primary challenger. On Friday, the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats sent a letter to Schumer confronting him about rumors that he had urged Texas donors not to donate to West. “If Black Democrats come to believe that the United States Senate primary was rigged against Senator West,” they wrote, “it will only hurt M.J. Hegar in the general election, if she wins the run-off election.”
The DSCC refuted the allegation, but, as Texas Observer writer Justin Miller reported, the West campaign promptly pushed back against that denial, saying they had personally been informed of that directive by a donor. Hegar beat West by a considerable margin in March’s primary, but the desperation of the DSCC bespeaks a lack of confidence in Hegar’s ability to close the job. Her main advantage over West is neither policy ideas nor experience, but once again, money from the DSCC: She had ten times West’s fundraising at the end of March.
For any of these progressive challengers to triumph would constitute an upset. But that’s only because Schumer’s anointed picks all enjoy such a profound financial advantage. And the fact that all of these races have become so close is a troubling portent of how the DSCC’s candidates will fare against Republicans. If they make it that far.
