Charles Ellis Schumer (; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as the Senate Majority Leader since January 20, 2021. A member of t...
Charles Ellis Schumer (; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as the Senate Majority Leader since January 20, 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Schumer is the senior United States senator from New York, a seat to which he was first elected in 1998. He is the current dean of New York's congressional delegation.
A native of Brooklyn and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Schumer was a three-term member of the New York State Assembly from 1975 to 1980. Schumer served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1999, first representing New York's 16th congressional district before being redistricted to the 10th congressional district in 1983 and 9th congressional district ten years later. In 1998, Schumer was elected as a U.S. Senator after defeating three-term Republican incumbent Al D'Amato. He was subsequently reelected in 2004 with 71 percent of the vote, in 2010 with 66 percent of the vote, and in 2016 with 70 percent of the vote.
Schumer was chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2005 to 2009, during which time he oversaw 14 Democratic gains in the Senate in the 2006 and 2008 elections. He was the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, behind Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Whip Dick Durbin. He served as Vice Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the Senate from 2007 to 2017 and was chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee from 2011 to 2017. Schumer won his fourth term in the Senate in 2016 and was then unanimously elected Democratic leader to succeed Harry Reid, who was retiring. In January 2021, Schumer became Senate Majority Leader, and the first Jewish leader of either chamber of Congress.
VS
Steve King
Steven Arnold King (born May 28, 1949) is an American politician and former businessman who served as the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressi...
Steven Arnold King (born May 28, 1949) is an American politician and former businessman who served as the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressional district from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Iowa's 5th congressional district until redistricting.
Born in 1949 in Storm Lake, Iowa, King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970 but left without graduating. He founded a construction company in 1975 and worked in business and environmental study before seeking the Republican nomination for a seat in the Iowa Senate in 1996. He won the primary and the general election, and was reelected in 2000. In 2002 King was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa's 5th congressional district after the incumbent, Tom Latham, was reassigned to the 4th district after redistricting. He was reelected four times before the 2010 United States Census removed the 5th district and placed King in the 4th, which he represented from 2013.
King is an opponent of immigration and multiculturalism, and has a long history of racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric and white-nationalist affiliations. The Washington Post described King as "the Congressman most openly affiliated with white nationalism." King has been criticized for alleged affiliation with white supremacist ideas, and has made controversial statements against immigrants, and supported European right-wing populist and far-right politicians accused of racism and Islamophobia.For much of King's congressional tenure, Republican politicians and officials were silent about his rhetoric, and frequently sought his endorsement and campaigned with him because of his popularity with northwest Iowa's conservative voters. Shortly before the 2018 election, the National Republican Congressional Committee withdrew funding for King's reelection campaign and its chairman, Steve Stivers, condemned King's conduct, although Iowa's Republican senators and governor continued to endorse him. King was reelected, but after a January 2019 interview in which he questioned the negative connotations of the terms "white nationalist" and "white supremacy", he was widely condemned by both parties, the media and public figures, and the Republican Steering Committee removed him from all House committee assignments. King ran for reelection but, campaign funding and support having declined, lost the June 2020 Republican primary to Randy Feenstra.
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!