Democrats’ crises begin to play out in early Senate recruitment and first campaigns

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

(CNN) — Democrats’ panic over what they stand for and whether they can credibly compete beyond the bluest states is already erupting in the rush to recruit Senate candidates across the country for next year — a desperate effort to dig out from years of losses that have them far from power at a moment they need it most.

Will Democrats, indeed, compete everywhere in 2026? Will leaders allocate money even in tough races, or will they consolidate conservatively around their best bets? How will they handle what could be candidates who range from being aligned with Bernie Sanders to occasionally voting with Donald Trump?

Even this early out from the 2026 elections, these questions are all playing out against the toughest set of Senate races Democrats have faced in decades.

“On its face, the Senate map does not look great, but if this is a wave election, Democrats can compete in places they normally can’t,” said Jaime Harrison, who before his recently completed term as Democratic National Committee chair ran for Senate in South Carolina in 2020. “The goal has to be: recruit a Democrat for every damn seat.”

Harrison failed in his attempt to turn a red state blue. While he raised $130 million, he still lost to Sen. Lindsey Graham by 15 points.

But hopes of a major backlash to Trump, fed by internal poll numbers that operatives say show his popularity dropping, has Harrison and two dozen other Democratic operatives and candidates across the country who spoke with CNN arguing that next year’s elections could be more in line with the Democratic wave of 2006.

Democrats have three incumbent senators who announced they won’t run again next year and anticipate at least one more will follow. They also have to defend a senator in Georgia, where Republicans keep running strong. Their most obvious opportunities to put Republicans on defense are in Maine and North Carolina, the two states that have crushed Democrats’ dreams of winning Senate races cycle after cycle.

And even if they manage to win those three races, that won’t be enough to get them the majority.

That leaves operatives looking beyond prime Democratic territory in states such as Alaska and even Kentucky and Mississippi, or nursing fantasies of revivals in once-competitive states like Ohio, where local leaders are waiting for Sherrod Brown to decide whether he’ll try a comeback from his 2024 loss to run for the state’s other Senate seat, or go for governor instead.

And across the country, voters have doubts about what Democrats even stand for. “That’s a question I’m getting a lot,” said Wiley Nickel, a former congressman now running for Senate in North Carolina — even as many Democrats push for former Gov. Roy Cooper to enter the race against Sen. Thom Tillis.

More than on ideology, voters are pushing Democratic candidates on what they’re doing to push back against Trump and whether they’d support Chuck Schumer to remain the party’s Senate leader.

‘A huge opportunity for us to write a new Democratic Party’

While strategists draft preliminary plans to blast Trump on the economy and thrash Republicans as rolling over for him no matter what, Schumer and fellow New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, chair of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, have been feeling out the strength of prospective candidates and working with local leaders to find more.

But the Senate leadership is not alone in recruitment efforts. Abdul El-Sayed, who last week launched his campaign for the Democratic primary for the open Senate seat in Michigan with the immediate endorsement of Sanders, is just one of the prospective candidates around the country whom the progressive icon has encouraged into running. Smaller groups of operatives and activists are forming quiet partnerships to boost their own candidates, eager to blow past whatever decisions come out of Washington.

Comparing what he’s hearing from voters to the cynicism that takes root in chronic pain patients he has worked with, El-Sayed told CNN, “It’s the morass of, ‘Everything kind of sucks,’ and our job is to take it down to its key elements.”

“For too many voters in Michigan who narrowly elected Donald Trump, they didn’t know what the Democratic Party stands for,” said Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state senator also running in the primary for the US Senate seat.

Morrow said her campaign is about “success, safety and sanity” rather than the status quo.

“This is a huge opportunity for us to write a new Democratic Party and really put a stake in the ground, show through our race this is what the new party can look like and sound like and act like,” she said.

The stakes in the Senate are much higher than just winning the majority. For those who see checking Trump’s power as an emergency for the republic, every Democratic seat makes a huge difference: Even narrowing the GOP’s 53-47 margin would amplify the pressure on the few remaining Republicans willing to buck the president.

One measure of how sparse the Democratic bench is in states where they need to compete next year: Only a few House members are in the mix for Senate runs. New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas has already launched his campaign, though Rep. Haley Stevens is expected to join the open race in Michigan and Rep. Angie Craig is in the middle of a swing of town halls in her state’s Republican districts as she readies a campaign for the open seat in Minnesota.

All three are in more reliably Democratic states, but Pappas said being a lifelong Democrat does not mean he is at all satisfied with how the party got to where it is.

“We have to recognize that in order to confront the damage that the administration is causing, in order to win elections and stop what the administration is doing right now, we need a coalition of folks that are able to step forward, run and win,” he told CNN. “The Democratic Party was flat-footed at the beginning of the Trump presidency. This is a moment where we need to be thinking about how to make a difference, using every tool we have to hold Republicans accountable and trying to establish some guardrails.”

‘I know it’s an uphill battle’

In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff has started building his campaign around an approach he believes worked well for him in the past — talking common sense over chaos, railing against Trump’s authoritarian impulses and blasting corruption. When he spoke out against cuts to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was not to defend the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that Trump targeted, but to point to possible effects on public health.

He’s also raised $11 million already and has had thousands at his rallies in a state that Trump won again last year. He hopes that some of what he’s built can be a model for others looking to flip seats in traditionally red states.

Some prospects are emerging.

In South Carolina, Annie Andrews — a pediatrician who lost a 2022 House race against Rep. Nancy Mace — has been having conversations about taking on Graham this time, convinced that the demographics in the state are shifting to make him vulnerable. In Alaska, Democrats are urging Mary Peltola — who flipped the statewide House seat in 2022 but lost it in 2024 despite running double digits ahead of the presidential ticket — to jump in against Dan Sullivan, hoping the state’s ranked-choice voting system could give her an edge. In Mississippi, District Attorney Scott Colom — whose nomination by Joe Biden to be a district court judge was blocked by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith — has been gearing up for a likely run now against her.

In Maine, a former Capitol Hill chief of staff who worked at the Democratic group End Citizens United has told multiple people he will soon launch a campaign, but most eyes remain on Rep. Jared Golden, the four-term congressman whose most recent break with his party was being the sole House Democrat to vote for Trump’s budget bill. He’s still weighing what to run, leaving Maine Democrats thinking of 77-year-old Gov. Janet Mills as their possible backup.

In Nebraska, Dan Osborn — the local labor leader and industrial machinist who attracted significant Democratic interest and money for his 2024 Senate run as an independent — is nearing another run. Across the Missouri River, Nathan Sage last week launched a likeminded but still Democratic campaign against Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst.

“This is shaping up to be an incredibly interesting election cycle where anything’s possible,” said South Carolina’s Andrews, who said she expects to make a final decision about running within weeks. “I know it’s an uphill battle — but the moment we find ourselves in, we have to run everywhere and do what we can to get this country back on track.”

In Texas, after 2018 and 2024 races that fizzled despite national buzz, Democrats are trying to decide whether a GOP primary could get their hopes up for 2026. Within minutes of the race kicking off, state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn were attacking each other as unfit for office and failing to serve Texans.

Former Rep. Colin Allred, the Democratic nominee last year, has been having conversations and attending events around the state as he seriously considers launching another campaign, and he expects to make a final decision by the summer.

“I don’t care anymore about the DC game of proving to people that we can do this, or we can’t do that,” Allred told CNN. “This is a time of crisis — and that’s where I think it’s been where people are feeling that we need to do something.”

Searching for candidates who can overcome how voters think about Democrats

National Senate campaign operatives are in the early stages of deciding where they will focus, but they acknowledge that in most places, much of that will be candidate-driven, since winning will require overperforming in regards to how voters think about Democrats. In some cases, they say, that will mean pushing the most famous Democrat they can find to run, but in others it will be hunting for an unknown unicorn who can talk about shared values rather than partisanship.

“Better candidates, stronger campaigns, a winning message, and a building midterm backlash against Republicans driven by their threats to Social Security and Medicaid are going to power Senate Democrats into the majority this cycle,” Gillibrand said in a statement provided to CNN. “Republicans have more seats to defend — and they’re doing it in a bad political environment.”

But for all the history of midterm elections tending to go against the party that controls the White House, the Democrats gearing up for these races know they’re going to need more than a bad political environment — even in Kentucky, the one race where a Republican incumbent isn’t running for another term, as former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell retires in a state that has a two-term Democratic governor but not much other recent history of supporting the party.

“Somebody has to stand up, and I’ve done it my entire life,” said Pam Stevenson, an Air Force colonel and the minority leader of the state House who’s hoping to do better in her 2026 Senate campaign than in her 2023 race for attorney general. “It’s not too early. Especially if you’ve got to raise $25 million. It’s never too early to start giving people hope.”

In Kansas, which also has a Democratic governor but hasn’t had a Democratic senator for decades, state party chair Jeanna Repass told CNN on Friday that while she’s already been part of several interviews with prospective opponents to Sen. Roger Marshall, she still is not sure who will run.

But with new organizing already underway in rural parts of the state, Repass predicted there’s enough energy that there will even be a primary.

“Being a Democrat in a red state, if you don’t lead with optimism,” she said, “you’re done from the get-go.”

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