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Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two Black men wrongly convicted of murder in rural Mississippi in the early 1990s, spent a combined 30 years behind bars before DNA evidence freed them. Still, the district attorney who brought the murder charges — a white man by the name of Forrest Allgood — used taxpayers’ dollars to fight to keep the two in jail.
Even after the prosecution’s key witness was exposed as discredited and the actual murderer confessed, Allgood fought to keep the innocent in jail. In 2015, Allgood lost his reelection bid to a 32-year-old by the name of Scott Colom. That year, in capturing nearly 54% of the vote, Colom became the first Black person elected DA in that part of Mississippi. A little over a decade later, he has defeated incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, the senator who once blocked his nomination to the federal bench in part because of his win over Allgood. In January, Colom will become the state’s first Black senator since the Reconstruction era.
In one sense, it all reads like a fairy tale, given Mississippi’s history.
In another, Colom’s historic victory is seen as an upset, given the Republican Party’s strong hold on the state.
However, when juxtaposed with the statewide results in similar Southern, traditionally red states such as Texas and Georgia, it is clear something more transformative is happening.
And that change is the reason Sen. Chuck Schumer’s leadership should be in question.
The New York Democrat has been a public servant since 1975, including 45 years in Congress.
He’s also been in politics for half a century.
The two sound like one and the same, but they’re not.
Public service unfolds in the lives of the people you were sent to represent. Politics happens inside: the caucus, the donors, the whip counts, the long memory of who owes whom. Schumer is a master of the inside game. That isn’t an insult. He recruited the candidates, and his allies’ super PAC raised a record $151 million at a time when Republican groups were outspending Democrats by more than $400 million. So of course Senate Democrats should make him majority leader in December, and by most counts they will.
But when Schumer swings and misses on the movement brewing in his own back yard, it’s clear he has significant blind spots. The 2025 election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor — without Schumer’s full-throttle endorsement — said a lot about this moment in public service versus politics. As do the historic elections of Colom and Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and the close but failed Senate bid by Florida’s Angie Nixon — who says national Democrats wrote off her state almost until it was too late, with Schumer directing some funds to Nixon’s race only “the day before the election.”
These aren’t candidates who waited their turn.
And just as Napster signaled the end of the music industry’s grip on who became a star or as content creators diverted the revenue stream away from traditional media, the 2026 midterms mark the end of industrial kingmaking.
Sens. Chris Van Hollen (Maryland) and Elissa Slotkin (Michigan) could challenge Schumer. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says he won’t support him. The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers sent Schumer a letter directly asking him “not to seek another term” as Senate leader and to let the next generation lead.
That’s a message that should hit home. When Schumer took his seat in Albany in 1975, he was the Assembly’s youngest member since Theodore Roosevelt. In some ways, he was the Colom of his day, the young man who wasn’t supposed to be there yet. Now he risks becoming the latest elected official to bookend a career that way: the face of change at the start, the resistance to it at the end.
There is leadership of the moment, and there is leadership of attrition. There is no one-size-fits-all equation. Each politician has to find their own moral balance. And my questioning of Schumer isn’t solely about age; there are 75-year-olds who should be running things. It’s about whether a member of Congress for 50 years treats succession to leadership as part of the job or as a threat. We’ve seen it too often recently — think of President Biden and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). They all make promises to move aside until it’s time to move aside.
That’s when they typically dig in. Sometimes that leads to being pushed out.
When it comes to the inside game of politics, Schumer is a master. But in this new political landscape, where voters are setting the agendas and choosing the leaders without D.C.’s blessings, it seems more often that the historic victories the Democrats are enjoying are happening whether Schumer wants them to or not.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The column argues that Chuck Schumer’s skill at caucus politics, fundraising and candidate recruitment is not enough to justify another term as Senate Democratic leader. Leadership, it contends, should be judged by whether it serves voters and recognizes political change beyond Washington.
- Pointing to Zohran Mamdani’s New York City victory and the campaigns of Scott Colom, Abdul El-Sayed and Angie Nixon, the piece says voters and newer candidates are increasingly setting the agenda without traditional party gatekeepers. It presents these races as evidence that Democratic leadership should adapt to a less top-down political era.
- The column’s criticism is not simply about Schumer’s age: it asks whether leaders treat succession as part of public service or as a threat. It argues that Schumer should make room for a new generation rather than risk becoming an obstacle to the change he once represented.
Different views on the topic
- Schumer’s defenders argue that his recent election record gives him a strong case to continue. He helped Democrats win a Senate majority, recruited candidates across a range of states and political styles, and his allies’ fundraising operation supported the party’s campaigns.[2][3][7]
- Schumer has also argued that Democrats are united around priorities such as lowering costs and addressing corruption and chaos, and that his focus should be delivering on voters’ expectations rather than on leadership disputes.[1][6]
- Some Democrats have voiced reservations about Schumer without endorsing an immediate replacement, while others have publicly supported him. Reporting also describes him as the clear favorite in the leadership vote, with no alternative having emerged as a consensus choice.[1][3][4]
- Critics of an extended leadership contest may argue that Democrats should turn quickly to governing after their gains. Schumer has said he wants to build a durable majority by demonstrating that Democrats can deliver results, while managing a diverse caucus and preparing for future competitive races.[5]
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