Who

Chuck Schumer has been New York's senior senator since 2000. His wife is Iris Weinshall.

Backstory

A Sheepshead Bay native and the son of an exterminator, Schumer was that kid in school: He earned a perfect 1600 on his SATs before heading off to Harvard. After graduating in 1967, he re-upped and attended Harvard Law. But he never practiced the profession, choosing to go straight into politics instead. At 23, the wunderkind won a seat in the New York State Assembly; by 29 he was a member of Congress, representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Schumer spent eight terms in office, never attracting much competition for his seat but generating plenty of airtime on the local news all the same, thanks to his penchant for championing inane issues as well as dramatizing more serious ones. When Schumer helped write the 1994 crime bill, he carried an assault rifle onto the floor of the Senate and hoisted it in the air as he made his remarks.

In 1998, Schumer ran for the Senate, facing off against Geraldine Ferraro and Mark Green in the Democratic primary before going head-to-head with incumbent Al D'Amato in the general election and pulling off an upset. When Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan retired in 2000 and Hillary Clinton replaced him, Schumer became the state's senior senator. He's now the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate and sits on the Finance Committee, the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the Judiciary Committee, and the Rules Committee. In 2004, he was re-elected against nominal Republican challenger Howard Mills III, earning more than 70 percent of the vote.

Of note

Schumer has never been shy about his political ambitions and in 2004 talk swelled that he would depart the Senate to challenge Eliot Spitzer in the Democratic primary for governor. Senate Democrats had other ideas. As a skillful fundraiser with strong ties to the Wall Street titans who contribute millions to political campaigns every year, Schumer was too valuable to lose  to state politics. (Nor were state party officials thrilled by the notion of having two Democratic heavyweights slug it out in public.) To keep Schumer in the Senate, then-minority leader Harry Reid offered him two sweet positions: the chairmanship of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which would allow Schumer to exploit his fundraising prowess and, perhaps more appealingly, earn more press time; and a seat on the Finance Committee, which would help him raise even more money for Dems as well as funnel billions of dollars to various state interests.

Schumer accepted the offers, of course, and had epic success in his first term as chair of the DSCC, raising record sums, convincing incumbent Democrats in Red states not to retire, and handpicking new candidates who could actually win. Ultimately the Democrats picked up six seats in the Senate, giving them control of the chamber for the first time in over a decade.

Since orchestrating the Democratic takeover of Congress, Schumer has received yet more publicity for being the first (and ultimately loudest) senator to call for Alberto Gonzalez's resignation over the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys. (He got his wish in September 2007.) But the PR-hound has been feeling a little less comfortable in the spotlight as of late: When his fellow Dems pushed to raise taxes on private equity and hedge fund managers, Schumer found himself boxed into a corner, struggling to simultaneously demonstrate his purported support of the middle-class as well as keep the finance guys who give him so much money happy.

In person

Chuck has always been adept at getting press, and he has a rep for taking on pretty much any issue if he thinks it might snag him some air time. Case in point: In 1995, he issued a report of increases in breakfast cereal prices and demanded—on camera, of course—that the Justice Department investigate "breakfast cereal antitrust violations." He's often ribbed for his attention-seeking ways: famously, Bob Dole once deadpanned that the most dangerous place in Congress is in between Schumer and a TV camera. Among his fellow members of the Senate, "getting Schumed" refers to the phenomenon whereby Chuck talks to the media and takes credit for your legislative accomplishment.

Grudge

It's no big secret that Chuck doesn't get along very well with Hillary Clinton. While they're all smiles in front of the cameras, staff members for both pols have described the relationship as especially frosty. Schumer was diplomatic in his 2007 book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time: "One of the open secrets in Washington is that senators of the same party and same state rarely get along. Hillary and I are both ambitious hard working politicians who occasionally step on each other's toes. We have had our high point and our low points."

Personal

Schumer is married to Iris Weinshall, who until recently headed up the city's Department of Transportation. (She's now a vice-chancellor at CUNY.) They have two daughters, Jessica and Alison. Schumer divides his time between his modest Park Slope home and an even more modest (and very messy) crash pad in Washington, D.C. that he shares with Rep. George Miller, Sen. Richard Durbin, and Rep. Bill Delahunt.

Family ties

Schumer's brother, Bob Schumer, is one of the city's most powerful attorneys. He's co-head of the M&A group at Paul Weiss and was named "Dealmaker of the Year" in 2005 by The American Lawyer.