Schumer says voters ’worried’ that ‘MAGA Republican Party was different than the Republican Party that they knew’

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Tuesday that voters were concerned that the “MAGA Republican Party was different than the Republican Party that they knew” during the November midterm elections, referencing former President Trump’s acronym “Make America Great Again.”

“Even some Republicans and independents in all of these races said, ‘I may be a Reagan Republican, I may be a Bush Republican, but I am not a MAGA Republican, and I can’t tolerate this assault on democracy,’” Schumer said at the headquarters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

“In June people, saw that. They saw it in the Dobbs decision, and abortion was a huge issue for us. They saw it in the hearings … about Jan. 6 where they saw these hooligans invade the Capitol and beat police officers up,” Schumer continued. “And they saw in the extremist comments of so many Republicans, which too much of the Republican leadership never rebutted. So they began to say, ‘This is not my Republican Party.’”

Schumer’s comments come as the November midterms delivered key wins to Senate Democrats, who retained their majority in the upper chamber. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s (D-Nev.) victory in her reelection bid, projected on Saturday, secured the party’s 50th Senate seat in the next Congress.

Many of the GOP candidates — including for the Senate — who prevailed in their primaries were Trump endorsees who had been pushed to take more controversial positions on issues such as abortion and the 2020 election before backtracking on their comments going into the general election. With some of the party’s candidates still reeling from bruising Republican primaries and others facing negative headlines, many ultimately failed to cross the finish line Tuesday.

At the same time, Democrats were criticized by both Republicans and members of their own party during the midterm cycle for elevating far-right and Trump-aligned candidates in the primaries. Though the strategy proved to pay off for Democrats, critics have argued the tactic was hypocritical in light of the Jan. 6 hearings spotlighting threats to democracy and could have put controversial candidates closer to being elected.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), up for reelection, is heading into a runoff against Trump-endorsed Republican Herschel Walker on Dec. 6 after neither candidate received at least half of the vote outright. Should Warnock win, Democrats would expand their majority in the Senate.