Democrats have previously fielded statewide Senate candidates in Alaska, Ohio, North Carolina and Maine, raising hopes that the seats will be flipped.
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Democrats fielded Senate candidates who previously won statewide office in four key states they need to take from Republicans to control the chamber.
The most recent recruiting coup occurred on January 13, with the addition of former Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola to the party. She defeated former Gov. Sarah Palin four years ago to become the first Alaska Native woman elected to the state’s only House of Representatives.
Mr. Peltola joins proven winners on the Democratic side who are looking to capitalize on their appeal in states won by President Donald Trump in the 2024 race, including former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running against Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, and former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who is entering the race to fill the Tar Heel state seat vacated by the retirement of Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
In Maine, where former Vice President Kamala Harris will take office in 2024, Governor Janet Mills successfully lobbied Senate Democratic leadership to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Democrats are seen as favorites to take a narrowly divided House majority after November’s midterm elections, but taking control of the Senate would give the party far more tools to counter what it sees as Trump’s power grab.
“Surprisingly and reassuringly, all of the people who decided to run had one thing in common: patriotism,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) 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, and if you sit on the sidelines and we lose a seat in the Senate, you’re not going to have a happy retirement.”
With the current Republican majority at 53-47, Democrats will need to flip seats in Republican-leaning states, defend Democratic seats in Georgia and Michigan, and oust deep-rooted moderates in Maine.Although it’s still an uphill climb, a strong showing in the 2025 off-season elections and President Trump’s declining approval ratings give the party a glimmer of hope.
“There was a lot of pessimism, not only from outside observers, but also from the Democratic Party partisans, that Democrats would have a hell of a snowball’s chance to flip the Senate,” said David de la Fuente, senior analyst at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “But while the map is most important, the second most important thing is candidate recruitment and candidate quality, and Democrats, including Schumer, have kind of knocked that out of the park.”
However, Shurmer’s left side is also experiencing problems. He has been shamed by left-wing groups and activists who see a lack of urgency and effectiveness in blocking Trump’s policies. At 75, he is seen by some as the epitome of an aging cadre of party leaders.
The hirings of Mr. Cooper, 68, and Mr. Brown, 73, do not dispel that notion.
Most of the left’s main challenges are playing out in safe Democratic House districts, but Mills, 78, is facing off against Graham Platner, a 41-year-old insurgent who has excited the party’s progressive wing.
meet a large number of candidates
Mr. Peltola, 52, raised $1.5 million in the first day of his campaign, surpassing the $1.2 million raised by Republican incumbent Jack Sullivan in the third quarter of 2025, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Peltola gained notoriety in 2022 when he won Alaska’s at-large House seat in a special election. Although she ultimately lost reelection two years later as President Trump brought a red wave to the state, political commentators note that the former tribal judge did better than Harris in the polls.
In Ohio, Mr. Brown is making a comeback, relying on his close ties to labor to appeal to white working-class voters who were coaxed into the Republican Party by President Trump. Mr. Brown aims to highlight voters’ economic grievances and draw a contrast with Mr. Husted, who was appointed governor after J.D. Vance became vice president.
“Voters did not vote to lose Medicaid,” Brown told the Columbus Dispatch last August. “Voters didn’t vote to raise drug prices. Voters didn’t vote to raise food prices. I think it’s been a very different year in that sense. Voters think they’re shortchanged and the system is rigged, and it’s only made it worse.”
Like other red-state Democrats, Mr. Brown lost by about 4% in the MAGA surge, while Ms. Harris lost by about 11% in Ohio.
North Carolina is a battleground state where Mr. Trump won by a margin of about 3 percentage points over Ms. Harris, and it is also a state where Democrats have touted the possibility of an improvement in the race in each Senate election.
They have been on the losing side since 2008, but Cooper, who was first elected governor in 2016 and served two terms, is seen as a moderate who can compete with Trump ally and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley.
Map favors Republicans, but Democrats are confident in the environment
Historically, midterm elections have poured cold water on a president’s party, and the redistricting wars that President Trump launched in various states last year foreshadowed how worried Republicans were about their expected losses in the House.
The Senate does not always follow suit.
For example, in the last midterm election cycle in 2018 during President Trump’s first term, Republicans lost 40 House seats but gained two Senate seats. Similarly, when former President Joe Biden faced voter backlash in 2022, Democrats lost nine seats in the House and gained one in the Senate.
This year, Republicans are holding a total of 22 Senate seats, most of them in states that Trump won by more than 10 points when they voted two years ago. Alaska and Ohio, two states that Trump carried by about 13% and 12%, respectively, are among the states that Schumer and Democratic officials are touting as their best chance for an upset.
That means the Liberals need a near-perfect election result in November, given the difficult realities of elections. Ohio and Alaska have moved decisively to the right in recent years. North Carolina is a battleground state, but Republicans have won every presidential and Senate election since 2008. In Maine, Collins is a five-term incumbent who successfully walked a centrist tightrope and survived the last wave of elections.
Meanwhile, Michigan and Georgia, states won by Trump but in which Democrats need to pick up seats, are rated as close races by forecasters such as Cook Political Report.
Joanna Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Schumer’s battleground map is “littered with failed career politicians who no longer align with the state’s values,” including candidates like Cooper, and that Republican strategists plan to attack immigration and a number of other hot-button issues.
“After four years of Democratic failure, Republican senators are delivering on their promise of safer communities, money in voters’ pockets, and more opportunities for working families,” she said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Despite the structural advantages for Republicans, Schumer believes this year’s Democratic candidates can do well by focusing on perceived failures of the party in power, particularly the economy and President Trump’s unfulfilled promises to lower the cost of living.
For example, in Ohio, where Trump has won three consecutive presidential elections, a Bowling Green State University poll found that Trump is unsupported by voters in the Buckeye State, with a 51% disapproval rating.
Similarly, in North Carolina, Mr. Cooper’s moderate stance contributed to his victory in the governor’s race, but a poll conducted by the conservative think tank John Locke Foundation found Mr. Cooper’s disapproval rating was around 53%.
“We needed people to understand how bad President Trump is and how Republicans are aligned with them, and the number one issue we focused on was cost,” Schumer said.
According to University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Peltola’s entry changed Alaska’s reputation from a “safe” Republican seat to just a “Republican-leaning” seat.
Peltola said in a campaign video that Alaska was once a “place of abundance” but is now “starved” due to soaring food prices.
Mr. Schumer has promised a relentless focus on costs throughout the year, from monopoly-driven food price hikes to the current housing market. Research shows that the average age of first-time buyers is now around 40, making it the oldest on record.
“It’s important that the Democratic candidates are not only good, but that they let the whole country know, not just blue states and purple states, but why President Trump is causing them so much pain and trouble,” he said.
Maine’s divisive Democratic primary could derail 2026 hopes
Nowhere is the animosity between the party establishment and its progressive base more evident than in Maine. In Maine, Mr. Schumer is backing Mr. Mills in the Democratic primary over Mr. Platner, a political newcomer who is backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other more liberal groups.
Similar battle lines are being drawn in Michigan, where Sanders-backed physician Abdul Abdul El-Sayed is running for the Democratic nomination against Rep. Haley Stevens, who has praised Schumer’s leadership.
Mr. Platner, an oyster farmer, said in an interview with USA TODAY late last year that opposing Mr. Schumer’s leadership is “pretty important” for those who want to take the party in a more progressive direction on issues such as Medicare for All.
Groups supporting Mr. Platner and Mr. El-Sayed say the Senate’s Democratic leadership is bowing to the government shutdown and avoiding other fights. They point out that Mr. Schumer is not gathering votes by, for example, opposing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget bill ahead of a key Senate vote in late January, a move that recent polls show 93% of Democratic voters support.
Groups like the Campaign Committee for Progressive Change, an influential activist organization that supports Mr. Platner, point out that Mr. Schumer does not have the best track record when it comes to leveraging the Pine Tree State. In 2020, Democratic leaders threw significant resources behind Maine House Speaker Sarah Gideon, who ultimately lost to Collins by about 8 percentage points.
“Chuck Schumer’s hand-picked candidates have famously lost one swing race after another,” Adam Green, co-founder of the group, told USA TODAY. “That’s because he is an establishment figure that voters despise, who spends his time with big business donors, and who is incapable of recognizing economic populists who undermine the establishment voters want to elect.”
But Third Way and other more centrist Democratic groups have warned against going too far to the left on ICE and other issues. The group said in a Jan. 13 memo that calls to abolish the agency risk “wasting one of the clearest opportunities in years” for meaningful reform of the agency, leaving Republicans to fight on their own terms.
“If you look at the 2026 map, which includes some holds, (Maine and Michigan) are the two states that Democrats should be most concerned about going through the primaries, and a poor candidate choice could jeopardize their seats,” Third Way analyst De La Fuente said in an interview. “Democrats would be wise to look at the people running in the primaries and try to elect common-sense moderates.”
Asked whether these messy primary battles could alienate the base and ultimately benefit Republicans, Schumer said Democrats are united “from one end of the party to the other” especially on the cost issue. When pressed about the possibility that intraparty competition among unproven progressive challengers could hurt his chances, he declined to comment.
“We have to keep the Democratic states, which we’re doing well, and we have to win the four swing states,” Schumer said. “I believe we will beat Maine.”
