Senate Democratic Leaders Back Moderates in the Primaries. Progressives Say That’s a Mistake.

The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is facing a potential credibility problem heading into the 2026 midterms: In three important Senate primaries, the candidates it is backing are lagging behind other rivals. And the primaries are creeping close.

In Maine, a state that Democrats are confident they can flip, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is not hiding its preference for Gov. Janet Mills. It’s helping her raise money in the Democratic primary in the hopes she gets the nomination to run against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the only GOP senator representing a state Donald Trump lost in 2024.

But polling shows Mills, who is 78, badly trailing Graham Platner, who is 41 and a progressive Marine veteran and oyster farmer. An Emerson College poll from late March shows Platner up 27 percentage points over Mills. Platner has also held a significant fundraising edge, raking in $7.8 million in 2025 compared to Mills’ $2.7 million.

Then the picture in Michigan: Rep. Haley Stevens, who was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand’s private preference to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters, had a rough start in the Democratic primary and isn’t gaining any clear traction. The latest public polling shows Stevens in nearly a dead heat with her more progressive Democratic rivals, progressives state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and former county health official. Leadership has not officially endorsed in this election.

In Minnesota, Rep. Angie Craig is widely seen as Democratic establishment’s pick to be the party’s nominee to replace Sen. Tina Smith, who is retiring. But Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a progressive who has consolidated support from the party’s progressive wing, has picked up endorsements and steam.

For Democratic leadership, the stakes could not be higher. Democrats need to net four seats in November to retake the Senate. A loss in any of these primaries by the DSCC’s preferred candidates would put them in an uncomfortable position: explaining to their own base why the party’s instinct to back centrist candidates still makes sense in the Trump era.

In interviews with a dozen Democratic strategists and lawmakers, some folks have expressed frustration that perhaps leadership, specifically Schumer and Gillibrand, may have the wrong strategy about what kind of candidate the Democratic base wants in these primaries.

In cycles past, the DSCC would have been able to clear the field and head off costly competitive primaries, said Amanda Litman, executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits young progressives.

“The fact that these primaries are happening at all tells you that they don’t have the juice anymore,” she said.

The committee wasn’t able to clear the field, she added, “because they have no credibility to prove they can win.”

“I think it’s been a miscalculation and the Democratic primary voters in these states are responding,” said one prominent Democratic senator who requested anonymity to speak freely. “Clearly the backing of Schumer and the DS has been a negative in these primaries. I think the voters in the Democratic primaries, but also the voters in the general election, are looking for candidates who want to shake things up.”

When asked who is behind the picks for establishment Democrats, the senator responded: “I think this is the case [where] Schumer’s calling the shots.”

There is, however, a genuine strategic argument underneath the DSCC’s position. Former Sen Jon Tester, who once ran the Senate’s campaign arm, defended the current picks for who could win the competitive primaries — because winning the general election is the end goal.

“I think what Chuck is doing, or Gillibrand, or whoever’s calling the shots, maybe a joint effort, is that they’re looking at the landscape, and they’re saying, ‘Who can best win the general?’ And that’s who they’re helping,” Tester said.

Another Democratic strategist who has done work with the DSCC completely dismissed there’s any issue with how the campaign arm is targeting races.

“I’m not sure what the argument is to not to give [the DSCC] the benefit of the doubt here,” this strategist said, adding that they don’t believe the Michigan and Minnesota primaries are an issue. “Their posture of going out and trying to recruit the best candidate has been helpful to them every cycle since Trump burst onto the scene.”

However another well-known Democratic strategist, who also requested anonymity to speak freely, said the DSCC’s preferences reveal a lot about the disconnect after the 2024 loss for Democrats of what the establishment believed about primary voters and how they actually want outsiders in these states to represent them in Washington.

“We are in a moment where people are angry at the status quo, and they are angry at Washington, D.C.,” the strategist put it. “Picture yourself a highly engaged Democratic primary voter. You just spent so much worrying about Donald Trump, who Democrats told you was a fascist and going to destroy this country. And you gave your money and your time, and you looked up to the leadership in D.C. who was leading the way, and then you lost. How would you not be furious at those people?”

The committee is “behind the times” by being more focused on traditional fundraising methods than authentic grassroots messages, said Shaniqua McClendon, senior vice president of political strategy at Crooked Media, a progressive political media organization.

“I think they really think that raising money is how you win elections now,” she said. “Of course, money matters and will continue to matter, but I don’t think it solely matters as much as they think that it does.”

McClendon said her confidence in the DSCC began to fade during the 2020 cycle when then North Carolina state Sen. Jeff Jackson, now state attorney general, passed on a run for U.S. Senate after disagreeing with Schumer on how to campaign. Cal Cunningham was on the Democratic ticket instead and lost to Sen. Thom Tillis.

“Long before this year, [the DSCC has] been facing a credibility issue,” she said. “I don’t think a lot of average political consumers even know what the DSCC is, but they do know who Schumer is, and anything connected to his support is not helpful. You see candidates being asked, ‘Are they going to support Schumer if they make it into the Senate?’ And once you hit that problem, I do think it creates a credibility issue.”

Frustration with Schumer on Capitol Hill and the committee’s potential missteps in this year’s primaries are bringing the committee’s influence into question. The DSCC says its goal remains taking the Senate back.

“The DSCC has one goal: to win a Democratic Senate majority,” said DSCC spokesperson Maeve Coyle in a statement. “We’ve created a path to do that this cycle by recruiting formidable candidates and expanding the map, building strong general election infrastructure, and disqualifying Republican opponents – those are the strategies that led Senate Democrats to overperform in the last four election cycles, and it’s how we will flip the majority in 2026.”

As fractures continue to grow in the Democratic Party, leadership may also prefer candidates who won’t buck leadership or make headlines.

“They are anodyne and kind of boring, and they are looking for people who won’t make waves, because they think that what voters want is moderate or centrist or non-offensive,” Litman said.

She expects the committee to ignore the wake-up call that the Maine and Michigan Senate primaries should be.

“I think they’ll snooze it.”

When asked what Democratic leadership should do when it comes to the candidates they’ve privately backed for the primaries, the Democratic senator told NOTUS: “They should have stayed out from the beginning, and they should get out of them now.”