Chuck Schumer Parties with New York Elite on Election’s Eve

As Democrats across the country readied there 11th-hour midterm election push, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was partying the night away with New York City’s elite.

Schumer joined Salman Rushdie, Tory Burch, Gay Talese, and Lally Weymouth, to celebrate the 2018 NYPL’s Library Lions event at New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. This year’s honorees included Francis Ford Coppola, opera singer Jessye Norman, poet Claudia Rankine, and historian Ron Chernow.

Organizers of the annual event honoring patrons of the arts had sure to keep “wine and cocktails continued flowing,” according to Women’s Wear Daily. Reporter Maxine Wally writes the interior design of the event was “truly a sight to see” as “cascades of vines” draped the historical building’s entrance.

“On the third floor, the Rose Main Reading Room was transformed into a dining hall for the guests, where a live band played jazz tunes and the tables were festooned with alternating floral arrangements of orchids and white lilies. The whole night smacked of some bygone era of New York, when people wore fedoras and Mackintoshes and elbow-length gloves,” per the magazine.

Unlike leading Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez, Schumer has struck a tempered tone about his party’s prospects about retaking Congress. While he wouldn’t express certainty about the Democrats retaking the Senate, Schumer did call the election “neck and neck” during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last month and said the Republicans’ recent moves on health care were a “gift.”

“Let me just say this. Mitch McConnell gave us a gift in the last three days. He showed who the Republican Party really is. Day one, cut Medicare, Medicaid, social security; day, two remove 30 million people from health care; day three, join a lawsuit that gets rid of pre-existing conditions,” said Schumer. “Health care, you know my mother used to tell me when someone shows you who they are, believe them. That’s a game changer. what McConnell did in the last three days is a game changer for us.”