The Dealmaker

The fate of immigration reform was up for grabs in early June when Chuck Schumer jumped on the phone with an unlikely ally.

The bipartisan proposal to rewrite U.S. immigration law had cleared a key Senate committee and then just as quickly hit a snag. Marco Rubio was telling conservatives that the measure couldn’t pass without tougher border security. Some Democrats scoffed, but Schumer wanted to accommodate the Florida Republican. Let me know what changes you want to make, he told Rubio over the telephone. I’m willing to listen if it will help bring Republicans along.

For most of his three decades in Congress, Charles Ellis Schumer has been better known for skewering Republicans than for bringing them to the bargaining table. But this year the 62-year-old Democrat is emerging as Washington’s top dealmaker, an architect of both the immigration bill that is poised to win approval in the Senate this summer and the gun-control pact that stumbled there in the spring. In a city where Barack Obama’s clout seems to be evaporating by the day, much of the President’s second-term agenda hinges on Schumer’s ability to swap his feel for the jugular for the lost art of compromise.

Sinking into a plush striped chair in his Hart Senate office, the Brooklyn native says the secret to doing a big deal is simple. “You have to walk in the other guy’s moccasins. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them.”

But first you have to get to know them. Schumer and Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander launched a series of wine-and-cheese summits two years ago, turning a room on the first floor of the Capitol, dubbed the Inner Sanctum, into a social club where Senators could mingle. To grease the gun deal, he courted conservatives at beer-and-pizza fiestas aboard West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s yacht, the Black Tie, anchored on the Potomac south of Washington. Schumer invokes the ghosts of the late Ted Kennedy and Dan Rostenkowski, two legendary legislators, when he talks about his new role. “Compromise is not a dirty word to me,” he says. “If you want to be a knight on a white horse, always espousing 100% purity, then you shouldn’t be in the Senate.”

If it reaches the President’s desk, the immigration bill would provide a path to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants, beef up border security and regulate the flow of future immigrants to the U.S. Each of the eight Republicans and Democrats who helped craft the original proposal has had a role in selling it. But Schumer is the group’s Krazy Glue. His contributions have been “pivotal,” says Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, one of four Republicans in the group. “He’s the lead negotiator on the Democratic side.”

Some allies have groused that the desire to do a deal has spurred Schumer to give away too much. But if he can steer the bill through the Senate and survive a showdown with the Republican-controlled House, he’ll do more than prove that Congress is still capable of big things. He will go a long way toward cementing his role as the next Democratic Senate leader–a job that eluded even the iconic Kennedy.

“My Life’s Work”

Until recently, Schumer was regarded as a soloist, not a Senator who did well in an ensemble. An old joke in Washington held that the most dangerous place in town is between Schumer and a camera. Colleagues coined a neologism–getting Schumed–for his habit of elbowing them out of the spotlight. He is tall, tireless and unusually well informed across a sweeping array of issues.

In a vast town of hustlers, Schumer’s hustle is renowned. In Washington he works from 6 a.m. to midnight, prowling the corridors of the Capitol and the fundraising circuit with an ancient LG flip phone pinned to his ear. At any given moment he is hawking a raft of ideas large and small, from expanded broadband access to better sunscreen standards. On a sparkling day in May, I watched Schumer crisscross the New York City area, holding three press conferences in about three hours to tout Hurricane Sandy recovery measures. At a Long Island pier, he beamed as local officials cracked open a briefcase labeled HURRICANE RELIEF KIT to reveal an image of his face. Schumer was squeezing shoulders and shaking hands when a weathered fishing vessel pulled into the harbor. The anglers on deck began catcalling him. “We’re getting you more fluke!” Schumer shouted back. He has a plan for that too. Notes Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf: “No one was ever better at retail politics. No one enjoys it more. And no one is as competitive.”

In 2006 and 2008, Schumer ran the campaign committee that raises millions for Senate hopefuls and ushered two classes of Democrats back into the majority. Then he stowed his knives and poured his energy into making peace. His zeal to get things done has both surprised Republican colleagues and confounded their constituents. The conservative base still perceives Schumer as the scariest liberal this side of Nancy Pelosi. Not so, says a senior Republican Senate aide. “He’s a big-league negotiator, but he is not a mindless partisan.”

After November’s election, Schumer teamed up with Republicans like John McCain to dilute Democrats’ proposal to overhaul the filibuster, which the GOP has wielded to grind the Senate to a standstill. The partnership carried over into the immigration debate. “McCain and I didn’t like each other,” Schumer recalls. But they became friends. When they visited an Arizona border outpost over Passover, McCain brought the matzo. “I don’t like the far right,” Schumer says. “And I don’t like the far left. Because I think they expect they have a monopoly on wisdom, and they don’t even attempt to look at the other side.”

On gun control, Schumer spent weeks negotiating with Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative nicknamed Dr. No, over a deal to expand background checks. When those talks stalled over whether private dealers would be required to keep records of their gun sales, Schumer threw his support behind compromise language reached by Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey. It was weaker than most Democrats wanted, but Schumer felt a pair of Senators with sterling grades from the NRA would be model ambassadors for what could become the first major federal gun law in a generation.

But Toomey worried that Schumer’s presence at the press conference to unveil the deal would impede his ability to sell it to fellow conservatives. Manchin pulled Schumer aside at a 50th-birthday party for MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, on a rooftop terrace overlooking the Capitol, and asked him to step out of the spotlight. The New Yorker complied, handing the freshmen the reins. “Twenty years ago,” he says, “I never would have done that.”

The measure still failed by five votes. Schumer’s push to revive the deal has been hampered by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose ad campaign targeting Senators who voted against background checks could imperil the party’s majority. “Frankly, I don’t think Bloomberg’s ads are effective,” Schumer says, adding that he’s glad the mayor has emerged as a counterweight to the NRA.

It is on immigration that Schumer has most broken his own mold. The deal he struck last month with Utah Republican Orrin Hatch is a case in point. With a fast-growing tech hub in Utah, Hatch sought amendments that would make it easier for high-tech companies to hire skilled foreigners. Labor groups opposed the idea because of concerns that this could displace qualified American workers. But Schumer wanted to galvanize the tech industry to lobby for the bill. So he negotiated a compromise. “We needed high tech to win over Republican votes when we go to the floor,” he explains. “Now they’re going out and knocking on doors. CEOs of high-tech companies are calling Republicans who are undecided.” Schumer was also gambling that Hatch, a dealmaker by nature, could bring other Republicans into the fold. Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, has since joined the coalition.

As he has courted the right, Schumer has tried to keep the left from revolting. The Congressional Black Caucus, a reliable liberal bloc, threatened to withhold support for the measure because of fears that it would curb immigration from Africa and the Caribbean. So Schumer devised an amendment to make some immigrants from those regions eligible for another class of visa. And Schumer has been a steady emissary to a group of 16 female Democratic Senators whose age and outlook often put them at odds with the party’s 73-year-old leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. “Chuck is very interested in your unique perspective, and pretty tolerant” when it skirts the party line, says freshman Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, one of four Democrats to oppose expanded background checks.

Schumer has at times been ruthless about protecting compromises. Last month Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy wanted to amend the immigration bill to enable gay Americans to sponsor their foreign-born partners for green cards. Schumer supports the idea and had promised representatives of Immigration Equality, a group that lobbies for immigration benefits for gay couples, that he would ensure its inclusion. But Republicans warned it would blow up the bill. When the proposal came up in committee, Schumer opposed it.

“He looked me in the eye and said he would stand with us,” says Meghan Austin of Immigration Equality, who recalls Schumer’s breaking down in tears during a meeting at which he pledged his support. “Then he decided to use us as a bargaining chip.”

Schumer argues that GOP resistance left him no choice. “Much as it pains me, I cannot support this amendment if it brings down the bill,” he said in an emotional speech. “I’m a politician. That means I have chosen my life’s work in the constraints of the system to accomplish as much good as I can. I accept the tough choices.”

Mr. Leader?

Schumer has been plotting the opening days of the immigration debate like a football coach scripting a game’s opening drive. To make sure they kept reading from the same playbook, the eight negotiators gathered two days after the bill was sent to the full Senate in a room off the chamber floor. The first job: sifting through which floor amendments would lift the bill and which were designed to kill it. The second: finding a path to 70 votes, a formidable majority that Schumer believes will help push the measure through the Republican-controlled House.

By the time the Senate began debate June 11, they were near the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster. Rounding up 10 more will be trickier. Schumer will enlist the support of lobbying powerhouses to lend a hand: evangelicals, business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and hotel-, landscaping- and agricultural-industry groups eager for a new generation of workers. Within his party, some members question whether Schumer’s pursuit of a splashy number has made him too accommodating of Republican demands.

Threading any bill through the House is another matter. Many of its members hail from deep-red districts where the quickest way to earn a primary challenge is to vote for an 867-page bill that was largely written behind closed doors, has been likened to Obamacare and is famous on talk radio for offering “amnesty.” House Speaker John Boehner has pledged to let the House “work its will,” which means he probably has no idea how it will turn out. The House’s efforts to produce its own comprehensive immigration measure have sputtered. One alternative is for the House to pass limited measures to tighten border security and workplace enforcement, send its legislation to a conference with the Senate and refuse to endorse a path to citizenship. Boehner “has got 50 to 100 people who are at the hard right, which is rabidly against immigration,” Schumer admits, “but he’s the leader of the Republican Party, and he knows that if the Republican Party is blamed for no immigration bill after all this momentum, it will really hurt.”

Whether immigration reform is approved or falls short, Schumer is winning the debate inside his party about who the next Democratic leader should be. Having helped choose and elect more than one-third of the current caucus, Schumer is well positioned to ultimately replace Reid, who has led the party for nine years. “I don’t mind playing political hardball,” he says, “but what I’ve always wanted to do is legislate.” This year Chuck Schumer may prove that he can do both.