Senate Democrats locked in 2026 proxy war
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Sens. Bernie Sanders (left) and Chuck Schumer. Photos: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images; Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty images
The fight for the future of the Democratic Party will take place in nearly every Senate primary this cycle, pitting party leaders against progressive icons.
🥊 Why it matters: 2026 Dem-on-Dem battles will also provide an early look at the broader showdown the party will have in its 2028 presidential primary.
- Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have preferred candidates in Michigan, Maine and Iowa.
- But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), still the vanguard of the American left, is having none of it and campaigning for insurgents on a megawatt scale.
🥰 Zoom out: Schumer is reported to prefer Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan. In Maine, he is urging Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine) to run. And in Iowa, leaders are partial to state Rep. Josh Turek.
- But the new group of progressive darlings includes former public health official Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, oyster farmer and military veteran Graham Platner in Maine, and car mechanic and Marine veteran Nathan Sage in Iowa.
- "Any serious candidate, from school board to president of the United States, has got to address the massive levels of income and wealth inequality that we are seeing," Sanders told Axios.
- A number of those progressives have left it as an open question as to whether they'd back Schumer for leader.
😤 Zoom in: "When they go low, we don't go high," El-Sayed told a cheering crowd of roughly 2,000 people last month at a Sanders "Fighting Oligarchy" rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
- "We take them to the mud and choke them out," El-Sayed said.
- "I think what the Democratic Party is starting to realize is that unless you are aggressively for working people, it is nearly impossible to win an election at a time when it's getting way too damn hard to survive," El-Sayed told Axios.
Just last week, Platner joined Sanders for another tour stop in Maine, with more than 6,500 people in attendance.
- Platner raised over $1 million in the first nine days of his campaign. El-Sayed raised nearly $2 million in the second quarter of the year (versus $2.5 million for Stevens.)
Between the lines: Schumer also has to deal with Democrats who crave a more confrontational approach to Republicans like President Trump.
- Mallory McMorrow, running for Senate in Michigan, is one example. She says she wouldn't vote for Schumer as leader.
