Democrats believe they now have “multiple paths” to flipping the Senate this year, touting strong recruits in some deep-red states and a message focused on costs and health care. And, for the first time, the party’s Senate campaign arm is outlining its top targets.
“We now have this opportunity that I don’t think we imagined at the beginning of this cycle,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in an interview, in which she also defended the committee from critics in her own party.
Democrats face a difficult combination of the Senate map and the Senate math this election cycle. They must net four seats to take control of the Senate, which would require defending several competitive states while ousting Republicans in at least two states Donald Trump won by more than 10 points in 2024.
DSCC Executive Director Devan Barber writes in a new memo that there are “multiple paths to flip the majority in 2026,” listing potential pickup opportunities in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio. Barber also writes that Democrats are building strong campaigns in states the party is defending, including Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire.
Gillibrand said there is “a very strong likelihood” that Democrats will control the Senate next year, noting that she continues to recruit candidates in other states.
She said voters will side with Democrats “because of the strength of our candidates, because of the weakness of the Republican recruits and the Republican primaries and because of the climate that President Trump has created with his very toxic policies of tariffs that are raising costs of everything and his cuts to health care.”
Joanna Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement, “After four years of Democrat failure, Republican senators are fulfilling their promise of safer communities, more money in voters’ pockets, and more opportunities for working families.”
Primaries loom
The DSCC touted top recruits in a handful of key races in which the party has avoided fights for the nominations, including former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, former Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio and former Rep. Mary Peltola, who announced Monday that she is running in Alaska.
But primaries have emerged in other states, and Republicans believe those intraparty fights will damage Democrats.
“Democrats’ battleground map is littered with failed career politicians no longer aligned with the values of their states and messy, nasty primaries that will leave [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer with a majority of candidates that have all pledged to vote him out,” Rodriguez of the NRSC said in her statement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.Al Drago; Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
One of the most notable Democratic primary fights is in Maine, where Democrats are looking to defeat Sen. Susan Collins, the only GOP senator representing a state Trump lost in 2024. The DSCC is backing Gov. Janet Mills and helping her raise money, while Mills faces a primary against Graham Platner, a progressive veteran and oyster farmer.
The DSCC praised Mills in the memo as someone who has “consistently overperformed” other Democrats in the state and made no mention of Platner. He has blamed the party establishment for circulating his past Reddit posts that included a slew of controversial and offensive comments.
Asked whether Democrats can still win the Maine race if Platner is the nominee, Gillibrand said, “I’m confident we will have the best nominee, and I’m confident that we will win.”
The committee’s support for Mills has drawn pushback from some other Democrats, including members of a so-called fight club of Democratic senators who are looking to engage in those races.
The group, first reported by The New York Times, includes leading progressives like Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Apart from Mills, the group was also concerned about the DSCC’s quietly boosting Reps. Haley Stevens of Michigan and Angie Craig of Minnesota in their primaries, although the party committee has not endorsed in those races.
Warren, who has backed Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in the Minnesota race, blasted the DSCC in a speech Monday, suggesting the committee backs candidates who do not support systemic change. Warren said in a brief interview that she has shared her concerns with the DSCC, saying, “The evidence shows that candidates more acceptable to the billionaires are also more acceptable to the DS.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a former DSCC chairman and “fight club” member, also told NBC News that there is an “ongoing concern” that the committee is backing “the more establishment candidate, even though that candidate was not necessarily the best for the general election.”
Gillibrand said those concerns were “totally” unfounded.
“I’m only focused on winning and finding the best, most formidable candidate,” Gillibrand said. “And we are looking for fighters. And what we have been able to recruit are people who have a track record of winning, a track record for fighting against Trump’s toxic policies, and people who I believe will win because they understand their state, they understand their constituents, better than anybody else.”
Gillibrand has previously not ruled out boosting preferred candidates in contested primaries, though the committee so far has publicly done so only in the Maine race.
Asked about a Politico report that the DSCC was discouraging consultants from working with two Democratic candidates in Iowa, state Sen. Zach Wahls and military veteran Nathan Sage, Gillibrand said: “I certainly haven’t articulated any preference in Iowa. And I’m excited about the candidates that are running.”
Expanding the map
Democrats are also navigating a primary in Texas, featuring Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico.
The DSCC’s memo did not list Texas among the states in the party’s paths to the majority, though it was later referred to as an example of a problematic primary for the GOP, with Republican Sen. John Cornyn facing off against state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.
“We’ve highlighted our top targets, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have more targets,” Gillibrand said. “It means the map has deeply expanded, and there’s opportunities in states that do have primaries, like Iowa, like Texas, and maybe even some others that we’re still working on recruits.”
Gillibrand said she is actively recruiting candidates in “at least three other states,” which she declined to list. She even optimistically pointed to Mississippi — where Democrats have lost 15 consecutive Senate races over four-plus decades — as potentially competitive, name-checking Democratic candidate Scott Colom, a district attorney. Asked whether she expected Democrats to spend resources in the ruby-red state, Gillibrand said, “No state is off the table.”
Gillibrand also stressed that Democrats can expand their Senate battlefield by focusing on the “right message” of combating high costs and protecting access to health care, which the DSCC memo also listed as key issues on the campaign trail this year.
Democrats, meanwhile, are also debating how to respond to Trump’s immigration and deportation policies, with some growing calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those calls have continued after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis last week.
Gillibrand said Democratic candidates’ focus on immigration or deportation policies could vary “depending on the state and the candidate and what’s happening.”
Gillibrand — who wrote on Facebook in 2018, “We need to abolish ICE” — said in the interview that she “wanted to talk about how to make it better. And I think that our candidates will have their own ideas about that.”
Gillibrand does expect Democrats to stay laser-focused on costs and health care in Senate races across the country this year, arguing that Trump’s policies have driven up costs and threatened health care access.
“I just don’t see President Trump turning that around between now and the election, because he doesn’t seem to care,” Gillibrand said. “And I think that will be extremely damaging to the Republican Party.”
