A(nother) Senate bombshell for Democrats 💣
Jeanne Shaheen is retiring.
Democrats began the 2026 election cycle with some vague — if somewhat far-fetched — hopes that they might be able to retake the Senate majority they lost in the last election.
After all, Republicans have to defend 22 seats to just 13 for Democrats. And midterm elections tend not to be great for the party in power in the White House.
Any hopes of a quick comeback for Senate Democrats, however, have been quickly extinguished in the first two-plus months of this year, with the latest hammer blow coming this morning as New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen announced she would not run again.
“It was a difficult decision, made more difficult by the current environment in the country — by President Trump and what he’s doing right now,” Shaheen told the New York Times Wednesday morning.
Shaheen’s retirement is the third from a swing state Democrat so far this year. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters shocked the political world by deciding not to run again at the end of January. Then in mid-February came the news that Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith would retire.
To date, none of the nearly two dozen Republicans up in 2026 have said they will not seek reelection.
The Shaheen news has both local and national implications. Let’s go through them — starting with the local.
New Hampshire is a swing-y state. It’s not as evenly divided as Michigan but it’s less Democratic-leaning than Minnesota.
Kamala Harris won the state 51%-48% over Donald Trump in 2024. Joe Biden won it by eight over Trump in 2020. But in 2016, Hillary Clinton edged Trump 47%-46%.
Shaheen had held a Senate seat since 2008 (she was governor before that). She won that year with 52% and won reelection with the same percentage in 2014. In 2020, Shaheen took 57% against a lackluster Republican opponent in a very good year for Democrats nationally.
Had she run again, she would have been a Republican target but would likely have started the race as the favorite due to her record of electoral success and the ever-so-slight Democratic lean of the Granite State.
An open seat race, however, is far more volatile — especially because Republicans have a popular former governor with a golden last name, Chris Sununu, waiting in the wings.
Less than 24 hours before Shaheen went public with her retirement, Sununu was signaling that, despite turning down the race earlier this year, he might, again, be interested.
“I have not ruled it out completely, but folks in Washington have asked me to think about it and to consider it, and that is just kind of where I am,” Sununu told the Washington Times on Tuesday.
Sununu, the brother of former New Hampshire Sen. John E. Sununu and the son of former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, spent eight years as governor — retiring at the end of 2024.
He left office extremely popular; a Morning Consult poll in January gave him a 65% approval in the state.
While there’s no doubt that Sununu would be the strongest Republican nominee in a general election, it’s far less clear he can win a GOP primary — even if he decides to run.
