Senator Chuck Schumer

Contact Senator Chuck Schumer

CHUCK SCHUMER was elected to the New York State Assembly at age 23—making him one of the youngest members since Theodore Roosevelt. Six years later he was elected to Congress at the age of 29. In his eighteen-year career in the House of Representatives, he accumulated an impressive slew of accomplishments, from the Brady Bill and assault weapons ban to the Violence Against Women Act and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, from the Omnibus Crime Bill, which is the law that put 100,000 cops on the beat, to credit card and other consumer protection laws.

In 1998, he ran for Senate from New York State, challenging and defeating the three-term incumbent, Alfonse D’Amato. In the Senate, he hit the ground running. His first-term accomplishments included bringing low-cost air service to upstate New York, passing college tuition deductibility for middle-class families, working to expand access to generic drugs, fighting predatory lending, leading the fight to keep extreme judges off the bench and securing $20 billion to rebuild New York following the September 11th terror attacks. In 2004, he was reelected to the Senate with the largest percentage of the vote in New York State history.

For the 2006 election cycle, Chuck was the senator in charge of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC), the organization responsible for electing Democrats to that chamber; he has been widely recognized for crafting the successful strategy to win the majority for the Democratic Party.

In the newly formed 110th Congress, Chuck will again be in charge of the DSCC and, in his new role of vice chairman of the Caucus, is now the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate.

A graduate of Madison High School, Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Chuck was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he still lives with his family. This is his first book.