Reid, Schumer split on Warren for vice president

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has urged Hillary Clinton to select Elizabeth Warren as her vice presidential nominee, but the idea doesn’t have buy-in from his deputy, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

The split between Reid and Schumer is highly unusual. Schumer is a close friend and ally of Reid, who is retiring at the end of this Congress. Schumer is widely expected to replace Reid as the Senate’s top Democrat next year.

{mosads}A senior Democratic source familiar with Reid’s behind-the-scenes moves said the minority leader has recommended Warren (D-Mass.), a progressive, rising star who could rev up the party’s base, to Clinton’s campaign. Some Democrats maintain that Warren would be able to woo disappointed backers of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is expected to bow out of the Democratic presidential primary soon.

The Boston Globe earlier this month reported that Reid had asked Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election lawyer, to review the process under Massachusetts law for filling Warren’s seat should it become vacant.

The memo subsequently drafted by Elias made Reid more comfortable about the prospect of Warren serving as Clinton’s running mate, and leaving the Senate early if successful, according to two senior Democratic sources.

“She has the potential to be a force multiplier and offers the benefit of unifying the party very quickly and with a very tremendous amount of energy. She has proven appeal with Bernie’s crowd,” said one senior Democratic source.

A source close to Reid said, “He feels she’s someone who can unify the party. She’s shown she can take on [GOP presumptive nominee Donald] Trump very effectively.”

Schumer, however, is worried about putting Warren’s seat in Republican hands — at least temporarily, according to a senior Democratic source. Under Massachusetts law, the state’s GOP governor, Charlie Baker, would appoint Warren’s successor, according to a senior Democratic source.

Schumer would become the first Jewish Senate majority leader in history if Democrats were to recapture the upper chamber. The Senate majority is up for grabs this year; the GOP is defending 24 seats to the Democrats’ 10. Republicans now have a four-seat majority.

Elias noted in his memo that Baker would be required by state law to hold a special election to replace Warren between 145 and 160 days after her seat is vacated. That means Republicans would control the seat during the first few pivotal months of a Clinton presidency, assuming Democrats retain the White House.

Schumer has said in private conversations that he is worried about this possible scenario, according to a senior Democratic source familiar with internal deliberations.

A central finding in Elias’s memo was that Warren could create the Senate vacancy by writing a letter of resignation immediately after Democrats take the White House.

If she were to do that on Nov. 9, the Wednesday after the Election Day, Baker, the Republican governor, would have to call a special election no later than late April.

Reid is now confident Democrats would win the seat back in the blue state, senior Democratic sources said. 

Yet, it is noteworthy that Schumer has done nothing to publicly push Clinton to pick Warren.

A spokesman for Schumer on Tuesday denied that his boss has expressed any opposition to Clinton selecting Warren as a running mate. 

The Clinton campaign and Reid’s and Warren’s offices did not comment on the record for this article.

A longtime Senate Democratic aide said, “Reid and Schumer rose to the pinnacle of party leadership on cunning not charisma, and this is textbook positioning genius right out of the Reid-Schumer playbook. It is a win-win for them. Either Warren is picked for VP and they rid themselves of [someone] who holds Schumer accountable for Wall Street, or they elevate Warren as a progressive star whose fundraising helps win back the majority. Regardless, they burnish their own lefty credentials. It’s masterly Machiavellian in every way.”

Democrats were confident in 2010 that they would easily win the Massachusetts special election to replace the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D), who died of brain cancer during President Obama’s first year in office.

But Scott Brown, then a little-known Republican state senator, shocked the political establishment by winning Kennedy’s seat. His surprising victory broke up the Democrats’ 60-seat Senate majority, which Schumer had labored hard to achieve as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman.

The loss of Kennedy’s seat had significant implications for the rest of the 111th Congress.

As a result of the upset, Democrats had to negotiate with GOP moderates to pass the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and abandon some of their top priorities, such as a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions and a proposal known as card check making it easier for unions to organize. 

Some of Schumer’s allies in the Senate question the wisdom of a Clinton-Warren ticket.

One Democratic senator who requested anonymity said Warren’s ability to pull Sanders’s liberal supporters over to Clinton is overrated. The senator argued that many on the left are still angry that Warren refused to endorse Sanders, even though his stance on regulating Wall Street is closer to hers.

Centrist Democratic senators, who tend to fall into Schumer’s camp, think Clinton’s path to victory lies in picking up centrist Republican voters who are turned off by Trump. They view Sen. Tim Kaine (D) of Virginia as more likely to help in that area than Warren, an outspoken liberal.

Reid initially shared the view that putting Warren on the ticket is a bad idea because it could imperil future Democratic control of the Senate.

Last month, he told MSNBC “hell, no” when asked about putting Warren or Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) on the ticket.

Warren, Brown and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), all promising vice presidential candidates, hail from states with Republican governors. If Clinton were to pick any of them, a Republican governor would get to fill the Senate seat left vacant if the former secretary of State succeeds Obama.

“If we have a Republican governor in any of those states, the answer is not only no, but hell, no,” Reid said in late May.

His adamant dismissal of the idea, however, prompted a backlash.

“He received criticism for what was seen as quashing the prospects of other senators,” said a source familiar with the blowback.

Brown, regarded as one of the Senate’s most down-to-earth members, didn’t seem to have much a problem with it, but the same can’t be said about Warren.

Brown says he hasn’t had any formal discussions with the Clinton campaign about being vetted for vice president.

“Not officially. I talk to people there all the time, I’ve never talked about vice president,” he said.

Warren had a high-profile private meeting with Clinton on Friday, setting speculation into overdrive.

She has also appeared to audition for the part by ratcheting up her attacks on Trump, providing Clinton with a glimpse of how effective she could be in the vice president’s traditional role of attack dog.

Another Democrat who has worked with Reid said that his initial comment of “hell, no” is “classic Harry Reid.”

“He can be a little rash and then his staff has to dial it back a little,” the Democrat said.

A few days later, the Boston Globe reported that Reid was actively reviewing Massachusetts regulations for filling a Senate vacancy. The paper in Warren’s home state reported the vacancy issue “is not as significant an obstacle as Reid previously feared.”

A few days after that, The Huffington Post reported that Reid believes Warren should be Clinton’s running mate, citing four Senate sources familiar with Reid’s thinking.

When asked for an explanation as to why he initially said no but later said Warren would make a good vice president, Reid responded abruptly to The Hill: “I never said that.”

Pressed if he had shifted his opinion on Warren becoming vice president, he said: “Here’s the deal, I do not make the choice. The choice is made by Hillary Clinton. The decision is hers. Whatever she does I won’t criticize.”

Asked about The Huffington Post’s report, he said, “I’ll say no more on that. It’s Hillary’s choice.”