A normally even-keeled Democratic congressman wants Chuck Schumer to feel the heat. If the Senate minority leader doesn’t adopt a tougher line in the next big Washington negotiation, Rep. Glenn Ivey said, “maybe he needs to go.”
Ivey spoke to POLITICO Wednesday morning, hours after facing a raucous town hall in his suburban Washington district, where he first suggested that Schumer should consider stepping aside. Ivey expanded on his view of the top Senate Democrat — and delivered an ultimatum amid the widespread frustration with the party leadership’s approach to opposing President Donald Trump.
“If he can get himself together and come — you know, get right on this vote and we get another shot at it, okay,” Ivey said. “But if he’s going to do the same thing again when this bill comes up six months from now, we can’t afford that.”
Ivey, a second-term Congress and member of the House Appropriations Committee, expressed confidence in his own caucus leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who was able to persuade all but one Democrat in the House to vote against a Republican-drafted spending bill. But Ivey said the fissures that were exposed when the two Democratic leaders took separate approaches to measure were unacceptable and can’t happen again.
“We’ve got a limited number of shots at being able to fight back against the Trump administration and what they’re doing,” Ivey continued. “We can’t afford to miss the moment again.”
“Hakeem met the moment last week,” he added. “Schumer missed it.”During Ivey’s town hall Tuesday inside a crowded high school auditorium, he faced a series of pointed questions about Democrats’ ability to push back on the Trump administration, as well as his own ability to fight for his constituents — many of whom identified themselves as federal workers or contractors impacted by the Trump administration’s mass firings and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government spending. They also lobbed broader questions over why the party doesn’t have a clear strategy.
A few jeered when Ivey repeatedly pointed to the midterm elections next year as the party’s best opportunity to constrain Trump. This enraged some in the crowd, with some heading for the exits before the town hall officially wrapped, telling this reporter on the way out the door that they weren’t hearing enough.
Ivey pushed back on those characterizations, which rankled many in the audience. The congressman, whose district includes much of majority-Black Prince George’s County, said he understood the frustration from constituents, but reiterated there are few levers for Democrats to pull while they are in the House minority.
During the interview, he praised several House Democrats for taking the lead in standing up to Trump and pushing party leaders to fight hard. They included Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, as well as Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the top Oversight Committee Democrat, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Ivey admitted these elected officials don’t always exhibit the type of “fire and brimstone kind of stuff” some in the Democratic base want to see.
“Everybody doesn’t have to do the same temperament, everybody doesn’t have to do the same messaging,” he said, “as long as they’re doing what they need to do to win their seats.”
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