Chris Van Hollen

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 lon