Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, a hard-core liberal, is seen by insiders as a leading contender to succeed the retiring Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois as the Senate Democratic whip in the next Congress.
Schatz has served in the Senate since December 2012 and currently serves in a party leadership role as the chief deputy whip.
Two other Senate Democrats, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Patty Murray of Washington, are also seen by some Senate insiders as potential candidates for the No. 2 position in the Senate Democratic Caucus. Schatz, 52, is thought to be a strong contender given his relative youth. Klobuchar and Murray are 64 and 74, respectively.
If Senate Democrats choose Schatz as their next whip, they would be doubling down on the sort of uber- liberalism that was rejected by voters in the 2024 elections.
Schatz was a proponent of same-sex marriage even before the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling legalizing it nationwide in 2015. Just last month, he opposed federal legislation that would have banned transgender biological males from participating in girls and women’s sports nationally.
“What Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other,” Schatz said on the Senate floor. Prominent female athletes who have had to compete against biological males, among them Riley Gaines and Payton McNabb, see it differently.
McNabb, of North Carolina, was left with a serious concussion after a trans-identifying male athlete spiked a volleyball into her face at an estimated 65 mph at a high school volleyball game when she was 17 in 2022.
The Hawaii lawmaker has been a co-sponsor of the pro-LGBTQ Equality Act, which critics say would adversely impact religious freedom in the United States. He has received several perfect scorecards from the pro-LGBTQ Human Rights Campaign and has been endorsed by its political action committee.
Schatz opposes all restrictions on abortion. Additionally, he supports funding Planned Parenthood and voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act that would have codified the rights of babies who are born alive after an abortion to have the same legal protections as other newborns born at the same gestational state.
On health care, Schatz supports Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the latter’s single-payer health care proposal. He has also proposed a plan to expand Medicaid to let every American buy into the federal program if their state permits it, which would move the U.S. closer to a single-payer system.
Before entering politics, Schatz taught at his alma mater, the prestigious Punahou School in Hawaii, of which former President Barack Obama is another notably alumnus. After some time in the nonprofit world, Schatz successfully ran for a seat in the Hawaii House of Representatives in 1998. He served in the state legislature until 2006. That year, Schatz ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, but lost to his future Senate colleague-to-be, Mazie Hirono.
After his failed bid for Congress, Schatz became an early supporter of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and he chaired the state Democratic Party in Hawaii. Schatz served as lieutenant governor of Hawaii from 2010 to 2012, until he was appointed to fill the remainder of Democrat Sen. Daniel Inouye’s term after the latter died in office.
Schatz was elected in his own right to the Senate in 2014 in a special election and again in 2016 in a regularly scheduled general election. He was reelected in 2022 by a supermajority of Hawaii voters, garnering more than 71% of the vote.
