In Alaska, Ohio, North Carolina and Maine, Democrats have fielded Senate candidates who won statewide office before, raising hopes of flipping seats.
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Democrats have recruited Senate candidates who previously won statewide office in four key states they would need to swipe from Republicans to gain control of the chamber.
The most recent recruitment coup came Jan. 13 with the entry of former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, of Alaska, who four years ago defeated former Gov. Sarah Palin to become the first Native Alaskan and woman elected to the state’s lone House seat.
Peltola joins other proven winners on the Democratic side looking to leverage their appeal in states President Donald Trump won during the 2024 contests, such as former Sen. Sherrod Brown running in Ohio against GOP Sen. Jon Husted and former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper joining the fray to fill the Tar Heel State seat left open by the retirement of Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
In Maine, which former Vice President Kamala Harris carried in 2024, Gov. Janet Mills was successfully courted by Senate Democratic leaders to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
While Democrats are considered favorites for control of the narrowly divided House of Representatives after the November midterm elections, taking over the Senate would give the party far more tools to combat what it sees as Trump’s power grabs.
“Amazingly and hearteningly there was a common thread through all of those who decided to run, which was patriotism,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, told USA TODAY in a Jan. 21 interview. “I said to one of them, you have a great family, you’ve had a great career but if you sit on the sidelines and we lose the Senate by one seat, you won’t have a happy retirement.”
While it remains an uphill climb − the current 53-47 GOP majority requires Democrats to flip seats in Republican-leaning states, defend Democratic seats in Georgia and Michigan and oust a deeply entrenched moderate in Maine − strong performances in the 2025 off-year contests and Trump’s sinking approval ratings give the party a glimmer of hope.
“There was a lot of pessimism from Democratic partisans as well as outside observers that Democrats would have a snowball’s chance in hell of flipping the Senate,” said David de la Fuente, a senior analyst at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “But while the map is the most important thing, the second most important thing is candidate recruitment and candidate quality, and Democrats, including Schumer, kind of knocked it out of the park.”
But there is also trouble brewing on Schumer’s left flank. He has been pilloried by left-leaning groups and activists for a perceived lack of urgency and effectiveness in blocking Trump’s agenda. At 75, he is seen by some as the epitome of an aging cadre of party leaders.
Recruiting Cooper, 68, and Brown, 73, will not dispel that notion.
While primary challenges on the left are mostly running in safely Democratic congressional districts, Mills, 78, faces Graham Platner, a 41-year-old insurgent who has excited the party’s progressive wing.
Meet the crop of contenders
Peltola, 52, raked in $1.5 million within the first day of her campaign launch, outpacing the $1.2 million that GOP incumbent Jack Sullivan raised in the third quarter of 2025, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Peltola gained notoriety in 2022 when she won Alaska’s at-large House seat in a special election. She eventually lost reelection two years later when Trump brought a red wave through the state, but political observers point out the former tribal judge performed better than Harris on the ballot.
In Ohio, Brown is waging a comeback bid that will lean on his close ties to labor and appeals to the white working-class voters brought into the Republican fold by Trump. Brown aims to articulate voter’s economic frustrations and draw contrasts against Husted, who was appointed by the governor after JD Vance became vice president.
“Voters didn’t vote to lose their Medicaid,” Brown told the Columbus Dispatch last August. “Voters didn’t vote to have drug prices go up. Voters didn’t vote for higher grocery prices. I think that it’s a very different year in that sense. Voters just think they’ve been shortchanged and the system’s rigged, and it’s only gotten worse.”
Similar to other red-state Democrats, while a MAGA tidal wave toppled Brown, he lost by about 4% whereas Harris lost Ohio by roughly 11%.
North Carolina is a swing state that Trump won by approximately 3% over Harris, and one that Democrats showcase as a potential pickup in every Senate election cycle.
They’ve come up short since 2008, but Cooper, who was first elected governor in 2016 and served two terms, is considered a moderate who can compete with Michael Whatley, a close Trump ally and former chair of the Republican National Committee.
Map favors GOP, but Democrats confident in environment
Historically the midterms provide the president’s party with a cold shower and Trump’s redistricting war launched in various states last year foretold how worried Republicans are about anticipated losses in the House.
The Senate doesn’t always follow suit.
In Trump’s last midterm cycle in 2018 during his first term, for example, Republicans lost 40 House seats but gained two in the Senate. Similarly when former President Joe Biden faced voter’s backlash in 2022, Democrats coughed up nine House seats while gaining one in the Senate.
This year Republicans are defending 22 Senate seats in total that are mostly in states Trump won by more than 10 percentage points when he was on the ballot two years ago. Two − Alaska and Ohio, which Trump carried by roughly 13% and 12%, respectively − are among those that Schumer and Democratic officials are trotting out as their best chances to flip.
That means liberals will need an almost perfect election outcome in November given the uphill electoral reality: Ohio and Alaska have moved decisively to the right in recent years; and North Carolina is a tight battleground state, but Republicans have won every presidential and Senate election since 2008. In Maine, Collins is a five-term incumbent who has successfully walked a tightrope down the center and survived previous wave elections.
Meanwhile, Michigan and Georgia, where Democrats must win seats in states Trump won, are rated toss-up contests by prognosticators such as the Cook Political Report.
Joanna Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Schumer’s battleground map is “littered with failed career politicians no longer aligned with the values of their states,” including contenders such as Cooper, who GOP strategists plan to jab on immigration and a host of other hot button issues.
“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,” she said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Despite the structural advantages for the GOP, Schumer believes this year’s Democratic candidates can pull it off by focusing on the perceived failures of Republicans in power − especially on the economy and Trump’s unkept promise to lower the cost of living.
In Ohio, where Trump has won three consecutive presidential elections, for example, a Bowling Green State University poll showed he is underwater with Buckeye State voters, holding a 51% disapproval job rating.
Similarly in North Carolina, where Cooper’s moderate positions helped him win the governor’s office, a survey conducted by the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank, found the president holding a roughly 53% disapproval rating.
“We had to make sure people knew how bad Trump was and the Republicans going along with them, and the issue we chose to focus on above all is costs,” Schumer said.
Peltola’s entry immediately changed Alaska’s rating from a “safe” Republican seat to one that merely “leans Republican” according to Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia.
In her campaign announcement video, Peltola said Alaska used to be a “place of abundance” but now, “we have scarcity” because of higher grocery prices.
Schumer is promising a relentless focus on different costs throughout the year, from higher food prices because of monopolies to the current housing market, where studies show the average first-time buyer is now roughly age 40, the oldest on record.
“It’s not only better Democratic candidates, but letting the whole country know − not just the blue states or the purple states − why Trump is causing them such anguish and such trouble,” he said.
Maine’s divisive Democratic primary could spoil 2026 hopes
No place has the animosity between the party’s establishment and progressive base shown up more than in Maine, where Schumer is backing Mills in the Democratic primary over Platner, a political newcomer, who is supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and a constellation of other more liberal groups.
The same battle lines are drawn in Michigan, where a Sanders-backed contender, Abdul Abdul El-Sayed, a medical doctor, is running against Rep. Haley Stevens, who has praised Schumer’s leadership, for the Democratic nomination.
Platner, an oyster farmer, told USA TODAY in an interview late last year that opposing Schumer’s leadership is “fairly paramount” for those wanting to take the party in a more progressive direction on issues such as Medicare for All.
Groups supporting Platner and El-Sayed say Senate Democratic leaders caved on the shutdown and are ducking other fights, too. They point out that Schumer isn’t whipping votes, for instance, on opposing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s budget ahead of a critical Senate vote later in January, a move that recent surveys show 93% of Democratic voters favor.
Groups such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an influential activist organization supporting Platner, point out that Schumer doesn’t have the best track record in terms of leveraging the Pine Tree State. In 2020, the Democratic leader put significant resources behind Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, who ultimately lost to Collins by about 8%.
“Chuck Schumer’s hand-picked candidates have famously lost swing race after swing race,” Adam Green, the organization’s cofounder, told USA TODAY. “That’s because he’s a creature of the system voters despise, spends his time with big corporate donors and is not equipped to recognize the shake-up-the-system economic populists who voters want to elect.”
Third Way and other more centrist-aligned Democratic groups warn against going too far left on ICE and other issues, however. In a Jan. 13 memo, the group said calls to abolish the agency risk “squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years” for meaningful reforms to the agency and give Republicans the fight on their terms.
“You look at the 2026 map and include the holds, [Maine and Michigan] are the two states that I think Democrats have the most to worry about through the primaries that poor nominee choices could endanger those seats,” de la Fuente, the Third Way analyst, said in an interview. “Democrats would be wise to look at the people running in their primaries and try to choose a common-sense moderate.”
Asked if these messy primary battles could alienate the base and benefit the GOP down the line, Schumer said Democrats are united, particularly on the issue of costs, “from one end of the party to the other.” He avoided weighing in when pressed on the potential for intraparty competition from unproven progressive challengers to undermine their chances.
“We have to keep our Democratic states. We’re doing a good job of that, and we have to win the four battleground states,” Schumer said. “I believe we will win Maine.”
