Senator Chuck Schumer of New York is accustomed to getting his way in Democratic primaries for Senate.
But even as Mr. Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate for nearly a decade, has successfully recruited a number of nominees in marquee races this year, he is getting a clear message from his party’s voters, candidates and local leaders in all-important Maine: Stay away.
In Maine, a pivotal battleground in the fight for control of the Senate, Democrats are trying to flip the seat of Senator Susan Collins, a five-term Republican. In the spring, they soundly rejected Mr. Schumer’s choice, Gov. Janet Mills. Graham Platner, an oysterman running on a progressive and anti-establishment message, forced Ms. Mills out of the race weeks before Primary Day.
Now that Mr. Platner has ended his campaign after a rape allegation that he denies, voters and state party leaders are warning Mr. Schumer and other Democratic leaders in Washington, D.C., not to intervene in the process the state party is using to replace Mr. Platner. All the leading candidates running to replace Mr. Platner have signaled interest in replacing Mr. Schumer as leader after the midterms.
“Do you want Maine to decide for you if you vote in New York?” said Paige Zeigler, the chair of the Waldo County Democrats in Maine’s Midcoast region. “Do I want Washington to decide for me? No. Christ no.”
Mr. Schumer’s aides say he will accede to Maine Democrats’ requests.
“Leader Schumer has been clear that he will play no role in selecting Maine’s new Democratic nominee,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Schumer, Allison Biasotti, said in a statement. “He has full faith in Maine Democrats to choose their nominee. Once they do, Democrats will unite to defeat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.”
Candidates vying to replace Mr. Platner have sought to separate themselves from Mr. Schumer, with several saying he should not stay on as leader after the midterms. They have been united in their calls for Mr. Schumer not to play a role in the race to replace Mr. Platner on the ballot.
“This is a process for Maine and Mainers,” Dr. Nirav Shah, a former public health official who is competing to replace Mr. Platner, said in an interview on Saturday.
Dr. Shah, who lost in the state’s primary for governor last month, also said he would want to press Mr. Schumer to advance a more progressive vision for the Democratic Party before he could support him remaining as leader.
“As currently constituted,” Dr. Shah said, “I’m a no.”
Jordan Wood, who is running to replace Mr. Platner and narrowly lost a House primary last month, echoed Dr. Shah, saying in an interview, “We have made it clear in our state that this is a decision that should be made by the voters of Maine.”
Mr. Wood has long said that Mr. Schumer should not remain as party leader. Other candidates, including Paige Loud, a social worker; Dan Kleban, a founder of a brewery; and David Costello, an environmental policy consultant, also favor replacing Mr. Schumer as leader, their campaigns said.
The campaigns of two other candidates, Troy Jackson and Shenna Bellows, who both ran for governor this year, said it was time for Democrats to have new Senate leadership.
“Washington, D.C., is broken and has all the wrong priorities, with the working class being left behind while corporations and billionaires get all the special favors,” Ms. Bellows, the Maine secretary of state and the party’s Senate nominee in 2014, said in a statement. “We clearly need new leadership.”
The opposition to Mr. Schumer in part reflects the anti-establishment mood among many Democrats in Maine and other states. That sentiment helped propel Mr. Platner to victory in the primary.
The replacement for Mr. Platner will be decided by about 600 delegates at an unusual nominating convention in late July.
Mr. Schumer, who has at times angered the Democratic base with his approach to Mr. Trump’s second term, finds himself in a delicate spot. As the party leader in the Senate, few Democrats have more riding on the result in Maine.
Still, Democratic leaders and candidates in Maine say they believe Mr. Schumer has so far followed through on his pledge to stay out of the race. Mr. Wood said he thought Mr. Schumer had “learned a lesson” from Ms. Mills’s failed bid.
Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist in New York, said Mr. Schumer’s approach was “unusual.” But Mr. Schumer was “reading the room,” Mr. Reinish added.
Some Democrats have said the implosion of Mr. Platner’s insurgent campaign supported an argument that experienced Washington hands should play a role in finding — and vetting — candidates. And Mr. Schumer’s favored candidates have won or are well on their way to the Senate nominations in competitive races in North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska.
But he has hit snags, first in Maine, and now in Michigan, where his preferred candidate, Representative Haley Stevens, trails in some polls against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive running an anti-establishment campaign. (Dr. El-Sayed says Mr. Schumer is not his first choice for leader after the midterms, but has not ruled out supporting him.)
“Chuck Schumer has no idea,” said Carl Wilcox, the chair of the Androscoggin County Democrats in southwestern Maine. “He’s too distant. He’s about as distant as Mitch McConnell.”
Mr. Wilcox said many Democrats had been asking him if Washington Democrats were influencing the process to replace Mr. Platner. But he said he had not seen any indication that they were.
Although many Democrats are now critical of Mr. Schumer, the eventual nominee is likely to be reliant in the general election on some of the tools that Mr. Schumer and his vast political network can provide. He holds immense influence over strategy and spending decisions by national Democratic groups and donors in the most competitive Senate races.
Some Democrats argue that Mr. Schumer represents an old guard that they say has not fought Mr. Trump hard enough, and that he is too focused on appealing to the political center at the expense of advancing progressive causes. Mr. Schumer enraged some Democrats last year when he supported a Republican-written bill to avert a government shutdown.
Griffin Scott, 27, a Democrat from Portland, Maine, said that Mr. Schumer had shown a “lack of judgment in trying to prop up Janet Mills without really understanding where Maine voters are coming from.”
He said that he believed Mr. Schumer held a “Clintonian view” that Democrats could win by peeling off moderate voters, but that Mainers were hungry for progressive policies. He urged Mr. Schumer to stay away from the search for Mr. Platner’s replacement.
“He’s completely out of touch with where Democrats are,” Mr. Scott said of Mr. Schumer. “He’s acted as a force that is counter to the will of the party constituents.”
