FREMONT, Neb. — Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., likes to joke that he’ll be whatever his candidates need him to be in order to win their races.
“I tell all of our candidates, I’ll come out for you or against you, whichever helps you the most,” Thune told Fox News Digital.
Thune’s tongue-in-cheek response came just before he attended a roundtable in Nebraska alongside Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., who is running a tight race against independent Dan Osborn. That stop inside a corrugated metal building nestled among row after row of cornfields was among several visits the top Senate Republican has made across the country this cycle.
Since the Senate left Washington, D.C., last month to hit the campaign trail, Thune has been busy, hitting key states like Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and Ohio. But as Thune racks up miles on the road, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has been largely absent.
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Schumer has shifted to virtual events while high-profile surrogates, like former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris and others have descended upon battleground states that could make or break his ambitions of Democratic control of the Senate.
His most recent event came earlier this week: a virtual fundraiser for Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, the Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated nominee running against Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla.
Many candidates running in key races across the map from Michigan to Mississippi have tried to distance themselves from Schumer or outright said they wouldn’t support him to lead Senate Democrats.
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One of those candidates includes Scott Colom, a district attorney in Mississippi running against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss. The Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC closely aligned with Schumer, has teed up $1.2 million in advertising in the state, but Colom isn’t welcoming the top Senate Democrat with open arms.
When asked by Fox News Digital if he would support Schumer should he win his race, Colom said, “I don’t want to get into hypotheticals, because I don’t know what the options are, who the options are.”
“But I’ll say this, I don’t like that our party is represented by two people that live in the same borough,” Colom said, referring to Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
“We need to have people that understand rural America. You know, that’s part of the problem is we don’t have enough rural voices in leadership in the Democratic Party, because we have values and we have a vision that might not be the same as the people in New York,” he continued. “And we need to make sure our values and visions are part of the Democratic Party.”
Others, like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan or Adam Hamilton in Kansas, have been more explicit in saying they won’t support Schumer if they make it to the Senate.
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Republicans have leaned into that growing schism between Schumer and the ones who could make his wish of a Democratic-controlled Senate come true.
“If you look at Republicans, there’s not a single Republican running nationally that’s saying, ‘Hey, if you elect me, I’ll vote against John Thune as leader,’” Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said. “On the Democrat side, you have virtually every candidate running saying, ‘If you elect me, I will vote against Chuck Schumer.’”
“They’re going to have a huge problem, because the Democrats are really, really pissed off about Schumer,” he continued. “So he’s the problem.”
Meanwhile, as the outlook for control of the Senate remains in the air, Thune has dedicated his time to showing up wherever his candidates need him.
“We’re getting out and about — It’s whatever we can do to help,” he said.
On the other side of the political coin, Thune argued that the Democratic Party was struggling to find its identity in an election with high stakes for both parties.
He contended that socialists were the rising faction within the party, which was “creating problems for their leadership. And I think it’s in both the House and the Senate, you’re having to decide, is that what we want to be? Does that really represent us?”
And that ascendant left flank of Schumer’s could cause problems in a political environment that could be leaning Democrats’ way, Thune said.
“They’ve gotten so far left that they really are out of the mainstream of where the country’s at,” Thune said. “And I think that’s going to hurt them in this election in what otherwise might be arguably a decent political environment for them, but I just — their party has really, really drifted.”