CNN
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The decision not to seek reelection from New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen shows the latest tough luck for Senate Democrats, who are facing an increasingly challenging midterm election map when fighting to climb from the minority.
After losing four seats in 2024 and taking control of the Senate, Democrats entered the 2026 cycle, facing a 53-47 Republican majority and a difficult map that appears to have little offensive opportunities.
The retirement of three incumbents from Minnesota, Michigan and now New Hampshire is just more complicated. President Donald Trump has won Michigan two of his last three election cycles, and all three open seats require money and resources to protect the Republicans, hoping to expand their majority.
For parties that should be looking at a favorable cycle, it is a challenging reality. Midterm elections have historically been a bright spot for the White House’s unpowered party. This will mark 2026 as a key cycle for the Democrats. Democrats are on the net next year, the best shots to get the Senate back in their future cycle.
David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senate Election Committee, spokesman, spoke about the party’s importance as it seizes opportunities for next year. “This Senate map is ripe for offensive opportunities available to Democrats,” Bergstein said. “The state’s open seat GOP hasn’t won for decades. They don’t change the basics of the cycle. Republicans have more seats to protect. They do that in a hostile political environment.”
Republicans portray the trio of retirements as a sign that next year they can ignore past trends.
“Incumbents don’t retire when they think they’re trying to re-elect easily,” said GOP strategist Cory Bliss. “The incumbent retires when he thinks, ‘Holy sh*t, this environment will smoke.’ ”
The possibility of weathering the Democratic cycle could depend in part on the challenges of continuing recruitment of Republicans. GOP is a controversial Trump-backed candidate, including Herschel Walker in Georgia, Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and Lake Kari in Arizona, who have lost a winning seat in recent years.
Democrat McKenna may not want to run on the cycle when potential Republican recruits may have to defend federal workers cuts that could potentially cut programs like Elon Musk’s Doge initiative, Medicaid and the Department of Education.
“Why would a reasonable and moderate Republican want to run for the Senate in 2026?” McKenna said. “It’s going to be impossible for them to explain it.”
Reflecting this sentiment, DSCC’s Bergstein said, “Our approach at this stage is to secure strong candidates for these states, to build infrastructure to identify weak locations for Republicans incumbents and to take advantage of as many realistic opportunities as possible.”
The first blow to Democrats came in late January when Michigan Senator Gary Peters, the resigned chairman of the Democratic Senate Committee, announced he was retiring. A few weeks later, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith announced her own retirement.
Smith explained her personal decisions about her retirement and her colleagues’ retirement and how she will spend the next decade. The three of them have “big confidence” that there is a bench of strong candidates in the state, she said in an interview on CNN on Wednesday.
“I don’t think of the three of us who feel that we are the only one who can do this job in this moment, but it’s important to know that when I finish this job, a strong Democrat believes he will hold his seat,” she said.
Incumbents are a powerful advantage, and losing it in these states is a blow to the party. With Shaheen’s departure, Democrats are suddenly facing the prospect of fighting for three open seats, including two in the Midwest, heading towards the Republicans in the recent election cycle.
In New Hampshire, Democrats are trading Shaheen, a former governor and three-term senator who won his last re-election bid with 16 points while Republicans are invading the granite state. Former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayott scored nine points in the 2024 governor race, and Trump improved his margin of loss from over 7 points in 2020 to under 3 points in 2024.
“It’s an earthquake and I’ll definitely play this,” New Hampshire-based Republican strategist Jim Merrill said of Shaheen’s retirement. “There’s no doubt about that. The seats are now absolutely competitive.”
Having received potential benefits for Republicans, former GOP New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu told a Washington examiner earlier this week that he hadn’t ruled out a run to the seat.
Josh Holmes, a past staffer of Republican strategist and former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, said that while Democrats’ retirement made some seats more competitive for his party, it is for Republicans to reach the same page when it comes to recruiting, which is why Republicans reach the same page.
“It’s an interesting environment for Republican candidates to want to participate,” Holmes said. “I think alignment is key. We need to make sure we have a president in the White House. The White House sees the world exactly the same as majority leaders and Senate committees.”
Republicans need to recruit strong candidates in open seats and protect their incumbents from key challenges. Some Republicans, including Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Tom Tillis of North Carolina, already face major challenges. Elon Musk and other Trump allies have threatened to support key challengers to Republicans wandering off the president’s agenda.
Trump himself has publicly acknowledged that Republicans who did not vote with him could be primary. And Musk has shown an appetite to spend on the campaign as he spent more than $500 million to help Trump return to the White House in 2024.
The retirements of Peters, Smith and Shaheen create the possibility of a crowded, controversial primary for the Democrats, which can divide the party and further hurt that opportunity.
There are indications that the process is already in progress. The announcement of Peters’ retirement generated a rush of statements from prominent candidates expressing interest in the race, including Attorney General Dana Nessel. Rep. Haley Stevens, Rashida Tribe and Hilary Scholten. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow; Former Transport Secretary Pete Battigigue, who was considering a bid, announced Thursday that he would not run for Senate or governor.
A similar story took place in Minnesota. Lt. Colonel Peggy Flanagan moved quickly and declared his intention to run a few hours after Smith’s announcement. Meanwhile, the team of progressive representative Ilhan Omar issued a statement saying that lawmakers would “talk to Minnesotan.” The list of potential candidates also includes Attorney General Keith Ellison and former U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips.
Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Rep. Chris Papas, who represents the state’s first congressional district, said he was “strongly considering” after Shaheen’s announcement, but former Democrat Anne Custer also said he would “look serious” in the Senate race.
Kaitlyn Legakki, a Democratic strategist who has worked on the Senate campaign for Shaheen and other candidates, said that now is the time for Democrats to retire.
“If you look at the big picture, it would be better to have a seat race that was open at these locations in the first midterm of the Trump administration, but six years from now, it’s President’s Year, and I don’t know what the dynamics will be,” she said.
The crowded, rough primary could be a good test basis for the state’s final Democratic candidates, but the 2024 losses have led to the easy split of partisan factions already on their best path.
The primaries drawn out could trigger a campaign budget that has already been set to be tested in what is expected to be one of the most expensive midterm election cycles in history.
In 2022, the most expensive Senate race, the most recent midterm election cycle, was Georgia, which reduced AD spending more than $385 million. The top five Senate races that year cost more than $1.4 billion in total. Additionally, in 2024, the top five races in the Senate cost more than $1.6 billion in parties totaling.
Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senators Committee, predicts eye-catching totals for some of next year’s top races. At a donor event in early February, Scott told participants that he could protect more than $200 million in competitive seats held by a competitive Republican party.
Resignation creates new or better opportunities for Republicans, but their best chance to turn their seats upside down remains in Georgia, with Senator John Ossoff seeking re-election.
Ossov’s early 2021 victory helped Democrats secure the Senate ahead of Biden’s inauguration. However, the recent elections have been a disappointment. Democrats lost more than seven points in Georgia’s 2022 governor race, with Trump scoring around two points last year.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ best opportunities to cut their Republican majority are also a high challenge.
One is Maine, with Republican Sen. Susan Collins serving his sixth term. The Democrats succeeded in statewide races that didn’t feature Collins. He won the governor’s office in 2018 and 2022, but independent Sen. Angus King, who conspires with Democrats, won his third term in 2024.
In North Carolina, Democrats aim to knock off Tillis, who won by less than two points in 2014 and 2020, in a battlefield condition that is repeatedly annoyed at the presidential level. Many Democrats hope that former two-term governor Roy Cooper will run.
“There are so many things I love about what’s going on in North Carolina,” Legacki said, referring to the Democratic statewide victory in 2024, “It’s just a question of whether we can pick up a Senate seat, and if anyone can do that, it’s Roy Cooper.”
