Progressive lawmakers and activists are hoping to harness momentum from last week’s sweeping Democratic victories to install inspiring new congressional leaders.
Many have looked at the Senate and found their guy: a 67-year-old father of three from an affluent Washington suburb who has held public office continuously since 1991.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has emerged as the alternative of choice for a swath of Democrats who believe Chuck Schumer, the longtime Senate Democratic leader, should step aside despite presiding over massive midterm gains.
It’s the culmination of a remarkable resurgence for Van Hollen, who spent years inching up the Democratic leadership ladder in the House only to ditch his seniority there for the back benches of the Senate in 2017.
Over the past two years, he has emerged as an increasingly strident critic of the Democratic party establishment and its approach to President Donald Trump, as well as its positions on populist economic policies and the U.S. relationship with Israel — and members of the party’s left flank have noticed.
A wave of House Democrats, outside activists and even at least one newly elected senator are effectively trying to draft him into what could be an uphill race to unseat the 75-year-old Schumer as majority leader.
“I have been very impressed by Senator Van Hollen’s leadership,” said Sen.-elect Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, who beat a more centrist Democrat in her state’s primary and has said she will not back Schumer.
Van Hollen has wavered on whether he is pursuing a role in Senate leadership or perhaps instead a 2028 run for the presidency. He said Tuesday he is “actively listening” as he keeps the door open to a majority leader bid ahead of the early December caucus elections.
“I’m trying to talk to our members, and I think it’s important to reach out to everybody,” he said in the Capitol halls.
Flanagan said she had not had “formal conversations” with Van Hollen, but another younger Democrat — Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — met with him this week as she called for a leadership shakeup.
Outside the building, at a gathering of progressive groups charting an agenda for the coming Democratic majorities, Van Hollen was sharply critical of the existing Senate Democratic power structure — and Schumer in particular.
“We just saw democracy in America in action — we should bring a little more democracy to the United States Senate,” he said, before later accusing Schumer and the Senate Democratic campaign arm of having “sided with the crypto industry and AIPAC” to oppose more progressive candidates in this year’s primaries.
That outspokenness has gotten Van Hollen noticed on the left — and it has been especially striking coming from a son of prominent U.S. diplomats who spent decades dutifully rising through the Democratic Party establishment and chaired both the House and Senate campaign committees.
“Van Hollen represents a bridge between the old guard — people who’ve been in office for a long time with a more moderate orientation — and the new generation that is coming into office,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution.
His rhetoric and actions have evolved dramatically, however, since Trump returned to office in 2025. The administration’s spending cuts decimated Van Hollen’s constituency — particularly in his political base of Montgomery County — and his posts on the Appropriations and Foreign Relations committees gave him a front-row seat to Trump’s elimination of USAID.
Meanwhile, he became an outspoken critic of the White House’s mass deportation agenda and was the first U.S. lawmaker to visit the El Salvador prison where the administration was sending scores of deportees — including a Maryland man, Kilmar Ábrego García, who had been mistakenly deported in contravention of a court order.
Van Hollen has also become increasingly critical of the U.S. posture toward Israel, joining early Democratic pushes to restrict arms sales to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as its war on Gaza after the 2023 Hamas attacks grew increasingly brutal.
“He’s been correct,” said Jeff Cohen, founder of RootsAction, a group pushing its members to back Van Hollen over Schumer. “He’s been with the base of the party on most issues: redefining the U.S.-Israel relationship is one. Taxing the wealthy is another, standing up to AI — all of these issues that Schumer is wrong on.”
Van Hollen’s approach to the Senate leadership race has evolved in recent days. He downplayed a bid for top leader earlier this year, including saying in a recent interview that it has “not been my focus.” The day after the election, Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed appeared to believe he had passed on a run, calling Van Hollen “my white whale” in response to a question about his ideal Senate leader.
But he did not completely rule out. Asked about the matter Tuesday as the drumbeat for his candidacy grew, Van Hollen said there should not be a “coronation” for Schumer as he described his ongoing listening tour.
“We should not support anybody for leader without a very clear plan and as you know, there are many people who think that a change is required,” he said.
A Senate aide who was granted anonymity to describe Van Hollen’s thinking said the senator has been influenced by the scale of his party’s midterm victory and the calls he has heard for change — as well as the public outreach he is getting. The aide said Van Hollen is not coordinating the outside effort to nudge him into challenging Schumer.
Senate Democrats still broadly expect Schumer to be reelected as leader, and some are openly warning Van Hollen away from jumping into the race.
“I'm going to vote for Schumer. He helped recruit a great class, and I can't imagine why you would vote for someone like Van Hollen with no record of doing anything,” pro-Israel Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told reporters.
Asked about whether Van Hollen will run, Fetterman added, “I dare him to.”
Schumer’s backers point to his decades of fundraising experience, deep well of relationships within the caucus and across the party, and his work to unite his colleagues and battle Trump over the past year. And with Democrats poised to pick up as many as nine seats — a once-unthinkable outcome — they are questioning why senators would depose the leader who helped make it happen.
"When the manager takes you to the World Series, you give him another contract,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said Tuesday at a joint news conference with Schumer.
But those arguments are carrying little water with those who view Schumer as out of touch with the direction of the party. They note that while he supported the incoming freshmen with hundreds of millions of dollars of general-election spending, he opposed some of them during the primary.
Van Hollen could be using his flirtations with a bid to influence some end-of-year decisionmaking. He is pushing Congress to cut off Iran war funding as they head toward a Dec. 11 government funding deadline, and he wants a provision mandating cooperation with Israel stripped from the annual defense policy bill.
Those stances could help push Schumer and the party into a more confrontational posture, which Van Hollen signaled he wanted in an interview earlier this year.
“It’s going to be very important that Democrats let voters know not only what we’re against but what we stand for,” he said. “And I think a lot of voters, you know, think Democrats have been too much finger-in-the-wind. They’ve been too wishy-washy.”
Grace Yarrow and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
