We are making a habit of talking about Senate retirements on the blog, and we're getting our first Republican stepping down this cycle today with the announcement of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former Senate Majority Leader and the second-longest serving member of the Senate, deciding to step down as US Senator at the end of his current term. With that, let's talk about what this means for 2026.
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| Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) |
Sen. Mitch McConnell's long career came very close to not happening. In 1984, McConnell was in a weird position, as the only Republican to flip a Senate seat in a night where Ronald Reagan was winning a landslide national victory, defeating incumbent Sen. Walter Dee Huddleston (Democrats did weirdly well during the Reagan landslide, picking up seats in Iowa, Illinois, & Tennessee in the same night, and even odder-all three of those new senators-elect would unsuccessfully run for president). Unlike most Southern states, Kentucky was not a state that was totally averse to electing Republicans to the Senate, but thanks to Sen. Huddleston and Sen. Wendell Ford, the Democrats had dominated the Bluegrass State for much of the 1970's. McConnell was a scrappy campaigner, though, winning the race by less than half a percentage point, attacking Huddleston for being "out of touch" with Kentucky, something that would prove a bit ironic for McConnell, one of the most consistent "creatures of DC" for virtually all of my lifetime (McConnell was elected to the Senate the year I was born, so I don't remember a time he wasn't in Congress).
McConnell's legacy will be complicated, less so because of McConnell, an ardent Republican famous for securing a conservative Supreme Court majority not just for the rest of his life, but for the rest of all of our lives at the current rate, but more so because of Donald Trump. McConnell recently made headlines for voting against Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, & Robert Kennedy, Jr. to Trump's cabinet, something unthinkable when he was Majority Leader, and likely spurred by his fervent support of NATO and countries like Taiwan, Israel, & Ukraine. His retirement means that the Republican Party is losing its highest-profile supporter of the post-WWII democratic order that GOP presidents like Eisenhower, Reagan, and both Bush's made a hallmark of during their presidencies. In that regard (and in that regard only, as I despise McConnell for what he's done to this country) I feel a little bad about what is going to come from him leaving.
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| Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R-KY) |
Kentucky is a dark red state, and the Republican nominee will not just be the favorite, but a safe bet for the win. Former Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who lost a close race for governor in 2023, has already announced his candidacy, and it's possible that McConnell will use what's left of his clout back home to get Cameron the nomination (the 39-year-old was McConnell's legal counsel and is seen as the closest thing McConnell has to a protégée).
But Cameron will not get the race to himself. Rep. Andy Barr, who recently lost a bid to chair the Financial Services Committee in the House, is expected to jump in given he couldn't get this plum House seat, and wealthy businessman Nate Morris is already running. Other names (Ambassador Kelly Craft, Rep. Thomas Massie, Secretary of State Michael Adams) could also get into the race, given how rare it is to see an open seat for the Senate in Kentucky. First attacks have been fired, with the Club for Growth very clearly against Barr (who for years had a more moderate House district, and it shows in terms of his public statements), and Cameron & Morris both playing the "who can MAGA harder?" card. I don't see a world where Donald Trump doesn't feel the need to insert himself into this race, which has to make Cameron nervous (Trump & McConnell hate each other...if Cameron is seen as McConnell's preference, Trump might speak up against him).
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| Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) |
The only name that any Democrat cares about in this race is two-term Gov. Andy Beshear. Beshear will be heavily courted (I would imagine he's already talked to Chuck Schumer & Kirsten Gillibrand today), but I would be stunned if he ran, for two reasons. First, Beshear is widely-expected to be considering a presidential run in 2028, and would be a top tier candidate. Similar to Gretchen Whitmer & Brian Kemp, running a Senate campaign would be too risky. If he won, he just went through a grueling session that will leave him exhausted headed into a POTUS race, and if he doesn't win...he's a loser headed into a POTUS race.
Also, Beshear won't win (unlike Whitmer or Kemp). We've been to this dance too many times to count, and it always ends up the same. The last Governor to win an open Senate seat in a state that his party lost the previous cycle was Joe Manchin in 2010. Since then, figures from Evan Bayh to Ted Strickland to Larry Hogan to Phil Bredesen to Steve Bullock have all tried, and all have failed. It's simply not possible to do this, and Beshear is smart enough to know that. He won't run.
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| House Minority Leader Pamela Stevenson (D-KY) |
House Minority Leader Pamela Stevenson has already announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination, and given her position as one of the most powerful Democrats in the state not named Beshear, I assume she'll get the nomination and become the sacrificial lamb in the race. But I will admit-the one thing I'd like to see here is not Stevenson or Beshear, but instead "no candidate." Rather than a Democrat, having a moderate Independent, one who threatens not to caucus with either party in DC, would be my suggestion. We have seen this come close to working a few times (AK 2020, KS 2014, NE 2024), and it's a strategy with some credence...if we have red states we can't win, why not see if there's a way to get the Republicans to lose? In all three of those cases, the candidates outperformed what a Democrat would do, though being the de facto Democratic nominee ultimately ended up costing them actual wins. If I was the DSCC, I'd be looking for another Dan Osborn, not Andy Beshear.
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| Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) |
We've focused pretty heavily in these Senate articles on Democratic retirements, both because of recent retirements from Tina Smith & Gary Peters, and because so many Democrats up this cycle (Markey, Shaheen, Durbin) are old, and I think likely to step aside. But as McConnell indicated, there are Republicans who could also skip town.
Generally I think this is a case where you retire because you don't think you'll have the majority, but since Republicans are heavily favored to win, Republican retirements feel more about being old (like McConnell) or being a bad fit for MAGA 2.0 (again, also like McConnell). Sen. Jim Risch is the next oldest Republican up this cycle, and while the low-key Risch is unlikely to face a conservative challenge, he's 81-years-old and may want to head back to Idaho after over 50 years in politics. The MAGA threat could be more an issue for people like Bill Cassidy (who voted to impeach Donald Trump, something he'll never escape if he runs) or John Cornyn (who has plenty of threats from his right from more devoted Trump loyalists). I also still maintain that Susan Collins should be on the retirement watch until early 2026, because Collins prides herself on having never lost her race, and I think (if she runs) that will be a test she can't win with a second Trump midterm taking her down. Any of these could join McConnell in what is increasingly looking like a turnover cycle in DC.
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