2026 Senate Preview - Part 1
22 Republican Senate seats will be on the ballot next year. Let's take a look.
Next year, there will be elections for 34 Senate seats. 22 of them are currently held by Republicans, so I wanted to talk about them a bit. This will take more than I want to put into a single post, so I’ll tackle these in alphabetical order, focusing on six states in this post.
Alabama: Tommy Tuberville, Age: 70
Tuberville is running to succeed term-limited Kay Ivey as governor of Alabama, and will almost certainly win. With the governor's mansion in Montgomery all measured up and furniture ready to move in, Tuberville's seat is open, and the number of people vying for the Republican nomination is so large that it's simply impossible to make an informed guess, aside from the question of whether the fascist flavor of the GOP will still play in the Heart of Dixie a year from now. It's also unclear whether the Democratic establishment will make a serious play for the seat, or if a charismatic progressive candidate will bring Alabama’s disillusioned voters out of hibernation. I personally doubt a Democratic groundswell in Alabama, which is a shame, because ad buys in Alabama's media markets are some of the least expensive in the US, and like every state, the majority of Alabama’s people are left of center, and just don’t usually turn out to vote. Given that, I'd say the lack of participation by the national Democratic Party will likely throw this seat pretty handily into the Republican column.
Alaska: Dan Sullivan, Age: 60
Ohio-born Marine veteran and Attorney General of the Palin Administration, Sullivan has managed in his two terms to keep his head down during one of the most explosive times to be a Republican Senator in the Chamber's history. He opposes a right to abortion, which is probably a solid fundraising opportunity for him, representing one of only nine states that allow abortion at any stage of pregnancy. He, like most establishment Republicans, opposed Trump's initial rise to power, but fell in line over time, and is now walking the walk and talking the talk like a real MAGA supplicant. Alaska has a nonpartisan ranked choice election system for all offices lower than President. Sullivan faces a challenge in the fight to hold his seat from both the right and the left. Moderate former Blue-dog Congresswoman Mary Peltola hasn’t ruled out running, though neither has she ruled out running for her old seat in the House, which I personally think is more likely. It's very early to tell. But I would say that Sullivan will survive the state’s jungle primary, and his seat will be a Toss-up in the general.
Arkansas: Tom Cotton, Age: 48
Two-term Senator Tom Cotton isn't going anywhere. He's in the prime of his career, and like his neighbor Josh Hawley, he's gifted in becoming whatever he needs to be to stay in power. Hallie Shoffner is mounting a people-powered campaign to unseat him, but Cotton’s mountains of money will be difficult to overcome. That said, the campaign ads against someone so entrenched in the donor-candidate ecosystem will write themselves. I think Shoffner may pull a rabbit out of a hat and give Cotton’s slippery sneaky brand of public service the kick in the pants that it needs. I think Cotton is still favored, but Shoffner is a charismatic, principled outsider who can speak directly to the struggles faced by Arkansans in 2025, very much unlike the profoundly disconnected swamp-creature Tom Cotton.
Florida: Ashley Moody, Age: 50
Ashley Moody has been instrumental, despite her relative youth, in turning Florida into a MAGA stronghold, despite the lack of popular support among its residents for it being one. She was appointed to the Senate by Governor Ron DeSantis-- a close ally --after Senator Marco Rubio joined the Cabinet as Secretary of State. She worked tirelessly in the 2024 election season to fight the addition of a ballot measure to ask voters to codify abortion rights in the Sunshine State. As Florida's Attorney General, she was also behind the effort to send out brute squads to arrest (mostly) people of color on spurious charges of election fraud, in an effort to depress turnout among their opponents' voters in the 2024 election. In short, Ashley Moody is as MAGA as they come. She will happily get down in the dirt if there is a political advantage in it. Despite her status as a good, faithful, trusted soldier in Trump's army against freedom and the will of the people, it's looking like she will face a primary challenge, though at this point none appear strong. Josh Weil, the Democrat who swung the vote 19 points to the left in Florida's blood-red 6th district special election has announced his candidacy, and I think he will give her a real fight next year.
Iowa: Joni Ernst, Age: 55
A foreign policy hawk until Trump allied his government with the Kremlin, Joni Ernst was desperate to find a new distinguishing attribute, and found one. At a town hall hecklers complained of the human cost of her support for Trump’s budget that would slash a trillion dollars from Medicaid. “People are going to die!” She callously responded with an exasperated, "well we're ALL going to die," Ernst doubled down on offending her constituents with a phone video she shared on social media, in which she belittled opponents of the budget's savage cuts as being unaware of mortality and the existence of the Easter Bunny, or lack thereof, and capped it off with a stapled-on awkward hat-tip to fundamentalist Christianity. Since then, people on both sides of the aisle have been clamoring for a run at her seat. She will face a primary challenge that she may or may not survive, and there is a stable of excellent Democratic candidates who would love to tear her rehearsed condescending rhetoric apart. I place even odds on Joni Ernst not even running for re-election, as a blue wave sweeps across Iowa, including her seat, the Governor's mansion, and at least two of Iowa's 4 House seats.
Idaho: Jim Risch, Age: 82
In the before-times, Jim Risch was a moderate who, like Joni Ernst, strongly supported Ukraine, NATO and a rules-based world order, as opposed to the "might-makes-right" outlook that Putin and Xi projected in their pre-Olympic, pre-invasion summit in Beijing in February 2022. He faces a potential primary challenge from a Libertarian named Joe Evans, whose positions on various issues(drugs, prisons, and immigration for example) are starkly at odds with those of the current Republican Party. I personally think he’s my kind of Republican, and where I hope the Party is going. Risch is not getting any younger, and his foreign policy priorities have been steamrolled and summarily dismissed by the President. As such, I have a strong suspicion that Risch will announce his intention not to seek re-election before the year ends, placing the Republican Party in the uncomfortable position of having to spend money to hold a seat in Idaho. And with a Republican like Joe Evans on the ballot, traditional Republican voters will have a very interesting choice to make. I think that like as not, if Risch declines, the national Party will send a Trump sycophant to run as a carpetbagger in Idaho. David Roth is running for the Democratic nomination, and currently has $26 in his war chest. It’s unclear if his challenge will be serious, but Todd Achilles is running as an independent who would caucus with the Democrats in the Senate. If Jim Risch maintains his intention to keep his seat, he will probably be reelected. But if he doesn’t, then Idaho will be in play for the first time in a very long time.