One man is fighitng to keep his thin Senate majority intact. The other man wants to make history.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Republican rival Joe Pinion will face off Sunday in an exclusive debate on Spectrum News 1 and NY1 in what is expected to be the only televised debate of the campaign.
The debate will be held at Union College in Schenectady and starts at 7 p.m.
As he runs for re-election this year, Schumer is touting the big and small ways he says he's been able to deliver for New York. That includes the passage of the CHIPS Act this summer that is meant to spur high-tech job creation across the state.
"We will bring these jobs back to our shore and finally once and for all end our dependence on foreign-made chips," Schumer said on Thursday while in Syracuse with President Joe Biden.
This year is twice the challenge for Schumer. The deal-making Brooklynite is also at risk of losing the power he wields as majority leader in the closely divided U.S. Senate. On Thursday, standing next to the president, Schumer sought to draw a contrast with Republicans.
"It was only because of a Democratic majority in the Senate and in the House and a Democratic president," he said. "If (Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell was leader this bill would never have seen the light of day."
His opponent is Republican Joe Pinion, a business consultant and former anchor at the conservative cable channel Newsmax. Pinion has said he's running on issues like crime, but also pledging to help disadvantaged communities he says have been left behind by Democrats.
"All of these issues are not partisan," he said. "We actually in many ways need to re-address and re-orient what we prioritize in our politics if it was ever to become the vehicle it was intended to be, which is to bring people together."
If elected, Pinion would be the first Black man to represent New York in the U.S. Senate. But polls have also shown the little-known Pinion has his work cut out for him in this campaign with Schumer holding double-digit leads.
"We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to plant a flag here in the Empire State to say now concretely that the people of New York deserve better," Pinion said earlier this year, "and that America as our founders intended has been betrayed."