It was a promotion amid crisis - and by the slimmest possible margin.
The nation, still gripped by a pandemic, had just endured a divisive national election, capped by an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
That is when, in early 2021, Democrats pulled off victories in two runoff elections for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, taking control of the chamber for the first time in six years.
With those wins, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer got the job he had long sought, and the one that allies expected he would eventually secure: majority leader.
In the four years that followed, Schumer used his leadership post to usher several major pieces of legislation through the Senate, successfully navigating the chamber’s razor-thin margins. At other times, he came up short.
Now, in a matter of weeks, depending on how elections play out in a few key battleground states, Schumer could lose that job he long-coveted.
‘I try to involve everybody’
When Sen. Schumer became Majority Leader in January 2021, the chamber he inherited left him with little margin for error.
The Senate was split evenly, 50-50. Forty-eight Democrats plus two Independents who caucused with them, alongside 50 Republicans.
If Democrats hoped to pass their agenda and take advantage of a rare trifecta in Washington - running the Senate, House and White House - Schumer would have to be creative.
Schumer had been preparing for the role for years. As a freshman senator, the ‘lions’ of the chamber, including Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, took him under their wing.
Schumer says they taught him that “there’s a time and a place to be bipartisan and get things done, but there's also a time and a place to stand up when we think the other side is taking advantage - doing the wrong thing for the country.”
“You have to do both as leader. You can't just do one or do the other, or you're not doing your job fully,” he continued.
As he took on the majority leader job, those two approaches were on display.
He oversaw passage of the first gun reforms in decades, a bill to spur the domestic production of semiconductors, and an infrastructure law - all with bipartisan support.
At the same time, Democrats went it alone on a major climate bill.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s junior senator, calls the 2021-2022 congressional term “a culmination of [Schumer’s] greatest ambitions.”
“He's a visionary, and he's somebody who's very practical minded. So he has the big vision, but then he does the practical things to make that happen,” she continued.
Former Schumer aide Polly Trottenberg, who now serves as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said she worked for Schumer “for about five minutes before I realized he was probably the most driven and relentless person I had ever met - with an ability, in some ways, to shape reality.”
Schumer, in an interview with Spectrum News NY1, said he did not emulate his Democratic predecessor as majority leader entirely.
“Harry Reid was more of a solo type guy, and he'd make up his mind - I'd be the person he talked to before that. I try to involve everybody,” he said.
Asked to compare himself to Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Schumer argued he is a “much more open leader” than the Kentucky Republican. And, he said, “I would laugh at other people’s jokes.”
Schumer keeps in contact with his diverse caucus constantly, gauging each member's unique needs back home legislatively and politically.
His old-school flip phone is a constant presence. He has his colleagues’ numbers memorized.
“Chuck made it his job, even before he was leader, to try to understand what everybody's challenges were. And I had a basket full of them," former Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln said.
Ideologically, the Democratic caucus ranged from Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the left to Joe Manchin of West Virginia on the right. Achieving unity was not easy.
Schumer, though, relishes the legislative process. He “loves” it, one former aide said.
Schumer put it this way: “To get a caucus to work together, even though we're from different states with different viewpoints, it's like almost baking a beautiful cake. You feel good about it.”
A ‘workhorse’ and a ‘show horse'
Some Senate Republicans, particularly those with ambitions to rise up the ranks of power, paint Schumer as a fiercely partisan warrior who is willing to put Republicans in a tough spot if it is to his party’s advantage. A New York Nancy Pelosi.
“He's just a partisan hack,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida told Spectrum News.
Stumping on the campaign trail recently, Republican vice presidential contender JD Vance lumped Schumer in with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, accusing them of not being “interested in making policy.”
“They’re interested in ridiculous show votes so they can win elections,” he said.
His efforts to flip key battleground Senate seats have also at times generated tensions with possibly useful Republican allies. He and Sen. Susan Collins, for example, reportedly had a frosty relationship in the aftermath of his unsuccessful efforts to deny her re-election in 2020.
Republicans who have worked across the aisle with Schumer offer him praise, even if they say they would prefer to see a member of their own party leading the chamber.
Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, who collaborated with Schumer on semiconductor legislation before turning to artificial intelligence policy, said there are two types of legislators on Capitol Hill: workhorses and show horses.
“And then,” he said, “occasionally, there are legislators like Sen. Schumer, who can be both.”
“He has a lot of deeply held convictions - convictions that I don't always share,” Young continued. “But that said, there's another part of his personality that's really important, and that's of a legislator, that's someone who understands how to negotiate and come up with compromise.”
Despite his legislative wins on climate change and infrastructure, Schumer did not succeed in all of his goals for the Democratic trifecta.
President Joe Biden’s so-called ‘Build Back Better’ agenda was pared down in order to muster support from more moderate Democrats in the chamber.
Also notably left undone: passing new protections for voting rights, which became mired in a fight over the Senate filibuster. Then-Democratic Sens. Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona objected to modifying the 60-vote procedural threshold.
Casey Burgat, who heads the legislative affairs program at The George Washington University, says leaders are only as powerful as their majority members allow them to be.
“They are strong when the party is united and they want to do something, but they look weak and ineffective if their party is not united behind them,” he said. “The filibuster was one of those instances, given the fact that they didn't have votes to spare, where he didn't have the votes to do it.”
When Republicans took control of the House last year, leaving Congress split, much of the major legislative work on Capitol Hill ground to a halt, though Senate Democrats did confirm many more of the president’s judicial nominees.
‘Always be happy, never be content’
These days, Schumer has taken to invoking Robert Caro, the acclaimed biographer of former President and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Caro, Schumer says, has called him the ‘Jewish LBJ.’
“Ironically, I started out in politics protesting the Vietnam War and disliking Lyndon Johnson,” Schumer said. “But I came to respect Lyndon Johnson as a guy who got things done.”
It is that drive to do things, Schumer’s former aides argue, that defines him.
According to one of those former aides, one of Schumer’s favorite axioms is: “Always be happy, never be content.”
Asked when he will be content, Schumer said, “God knows.”
“My staff will tell you, I’m happy. I love them. They’re great, but I’m always pushing myself,” he said. “I think I push myself harder than I push anybody, but I push my staff pretty hard, too.”
Does he have any plans to retire? When will he know?
“No,” he said. “I have not had a master plan … I just did my job, and it all worked out. So I'm just doing my job. Lord knows what’ll happen next.”
The November election, which will decide the next president and whether Democrats can hold on to the Senate majority and thus if Schumer can remain majority leader, will help write that next chapter.
This is the third and final part of a three-part series profiling Sen. Chuck Schumer as he marks 25 years in the U.S. Senate. Part one, retracing the Brooklynite’s rise to Senate majority leader, can be found here. Part two, examining what he’s gotten done for New York, can be found here.