Janet Mills, the 78-year-old two-term Democratic governor from Maine, did not want to run for Senate.
But Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, was dead set on her as his top recruit in a long-shot nationwide strategy for winning control of the Senate next year, long before there was any other real option in the race.
So he unleashed a relentless campaign to persuade her, including having senators bombard Ms. Mills with calls pleading with her to get into the race and telling her it was her patriotic duty to run. By October of last year, he finally got his way, making the sale to a reluctant buyer.
On Thursday, Ms. Mills announced she was suspending her campaign because she did not have the resources to finish out the primary against Graham Platner, the populist oysterman whom barely anyone outside of his hometown of Sullivan, Maine, had even heard of last summer.
It counted as a stunning miss for Mr. Schumer, the longtime party leader who prides himself on picking candidates who can win, in one of the most critical states that could determine control of the Senate in one of the most critical midterm election cycles in modern history.
And it came at a potentially massive cost: Ms. Mills had already released two scathing television ads against Mr. Platner, focusing on comments he made over a decade ago on Reddit about rape. Those attacks could leave Mr. Platner more vulnerable in a general election against Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, in which he must win support from older women to prevail.
The high-stakes mess in Maine reflected a disconnect between Mr. Schumer, an establishment figure, and many other Democrats both on Capitol Hill and around the country who worry that he is too conventional and out of touch with the progressive energy inside his party to continue as its leader. For them, Ms. Mills’s exit was proof that Mr. Schumer does not understand what is animating Democratic voters, and what is turning them off.
“It’s like the D.S.C.C. and Schumer looked at 2024 and doubled down on all the worst aspects of Biden’s candidacy,” said Lis Smith, a prominent Democratic strategist, referring to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Voters couldn’t have been clearer that they want to move on from the gerontocracy and status quo.”
Serious Democratic candidates for Senate across the country are now making opposition to Mr. Schumer’s leadership a key plank of their pitch to voters. And even within the Senate Democratic Caucus, where nobody has sought to challenge Mr. Schumer, some of his allies have been breaking with him to endorse candidates whom he is not supporting and who have said they won’t back him as leader should they win.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, for example, has been campaigning for Mr. Platner and backing Mallory McMorrow, a state senator in Michigan, who was the first candidate to say she would oppose Mr. Schumer staying on as leader.
Ms. Warren said she had been trying to convince Mr. Schumer to see the light on candidates who are building grass-roots campaigns on pledges to come to Washington and unrig the system.
So far, she has not been successful.
“Let me think of how to say this,” Ms. Warren said recently, before taking a long pause. “Leadership is well aware of my views.”
In the Illinois race to succeed Senator Richard J. Durbin, who is retiring, Juliana Stratton, the lieutenant governor, won the primary in part by telling voters she was opposed to Mr. Schumer’s continued leadership.
“I’ve already said that I will not support Chuck Schumer as leader in the Senate, and I’m the only person on this stage that has said so,” Ms. Stratton said during a debate.
Now, those comments are being featured in a television ad made by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
In Michigan, another Senate candidate energizing voters, Abdul El-Sayed, has also said he would oppose Mr. Schumer’s remaining on as leader after the midterm elections.
Mr. Schumer has not officially weighed in on that tight three-way race, but officials at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have consistently said they view Representative Haley Stevens, a centrist Democrat, as the candidate best positioned to win in a general election. That stance has enraged some progressives, who note that Ms. Stevens has struggled to generate enthusiasm or fend off outsider challengers, and was even booed by activists last month while giving a speech at a state party nominating convention.
None of it has appeared to have shaken Mr. Schumer’s confidence in his strategy, a cornerstone of which was building a stable of proven political veterans who he believed could win in key states.
He had early success last summer in convincing his first-choice candidates in Ohio and North Carolina — Democratic veterans Sherrod Brown, the 73-year-old former senator, and Roy Cooper, the 68-year-old former governor — to run. And he crowed about his success in getting Mary Peltola, the former congresswoman, to run for Senate in Alaska, potentially expanding the map.
He had far more trouble persuading Ms. Mills, whom he thought he needed to cement the clearest path for Democrats to return to power. In the months since, her campaign has struggled to gain traction as Mr. Platner has surged, headlining massive rallies, stockpiling a large fund-raising advantage and building a substantial lead in the polls.
On Thursday, Mr. Schumer quickly said he would work with Mr. Platner to defeat Ms. Collins.
“Leader Schumer is confident Democrats will win Maine and take back the Senate,” his spokeswoman, Ally Biasotti, said. “We’ve expanded the map and are running on a clear agenda to lower costs across the country — creating multiple paths to the majority.”
While Ms. Mills’s political demise may be the starkest example of a gulf between Mr. Schumer’s vision and the desires of Democratic voters, it is not clear what it will mean for his future. The New York Democrat’s job is leading his caucus, a largely middle-of-the-road group populated by Democrats who have managed to win statewide races — meaning many of them must appeal to centrist and even conservative-leaning voters to stay in office.
After an intense backlash against him at the start of President Trump’s second term, when Mr. Schumer declined to force a government shutdown, Democratic senators have been pleased in recent months with how he has guided them through a record-long shutdown last fall and the more recent shuttering of the Department of Homeland Security, using both as political leverage against President Trump. There is no appetite among his members to replace Mr. Schumer ahead of the midterm elections, and what happens after November will largely depend on the election results.
Democrats noted that winning is always the best cure for discontent, and that some of the anger directed at Mr. Schumer is simply the price of being leader.
“When you’re the leader, you’re an idiot until you’re not an idiot,” said Rahm Emanuel, the prominent Democrat actively exploring a run for president. He noted that Democrats were well positioned for victory in November because of strong candidates in second-tier states like Texas, Alaska and Iowa.
Maeve Coyle, a spokeswoman for the D.S.C.C., said Democrats were strongly positioned, using “the same strategies that led Senate Democrats to overperform in the last four election cycles, including in 2024, when Senate Democrats won four states that Harris lost.”
Still, the unease in the party about aligning with Mr. Schumer has been plain to see. Last month, Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat facing re-election in November, stopped short of committing to support Mr. Schumer as leader next year, though he added that if the party won the majority, “I think a lot of the critique of Chuck will go away.”
“Right now, we are united,” Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, said recently on CNN.
But when pressed about whether that was a vote of confidence in Mr. Schumer’s continued leadership, Mr. Kim hedged.
“I have been supportive of our leadership right now,” he said.
