United States Senator
In 1998, Schumer ran for Senate. He won the Democratic Senate primary with 51 percent of the votes against Geraldine Ferraro (21 percent) and Mark Green (19 percent). He then received 55 percent of the vote in the general election, defeating three-term incumbent Republican Al D'Amato (44 percent).
In 2004, Schumer won re-election against Republican Assemblyman Howard Mills of Middletown and Conservative Marilyn O'Grady. Many New York Republicans were dismayed by the selection of Mills over the conservative Michael Benjamin, who held significant advantages over Mills in both fundraising and organization. Benjamin publicly accused GOP Chairman Sandy Treadwell and Governor George Pataki of trying to muscle him out of the senate race and undermine the democratic process. Schumer defeated Mills, the second-place finisher, by 2.8 million votes and won reelection with 71 percent of the vote. Schumer won every county in the state except one, Hamilton County in the Adirondacks, the least populated and most Republican county in the state. Mills conceded defeat minutes after the polls closed, before returns had come in.
A SurveyUSA poll from April 2009 placed Schumer's approval rating at 62%, with 31% disapproving.
Read more about this topic: Chuck Schumer
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or senator:
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.”
—A.J.P. (Alan John Percivale)
“That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Helicon: “It takes one day to make a senator and ten years to make a worker.”
Caligula: “But I am afraid that it takes twenty years to make a worker out of a senator.””
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)