The Democrats' Biggest Senate Recruits Have One Thing in Common

The Atlantic

a day ago

When news broke this week that Sherrod Brown would run next year to reclaim a Senate seat in Ohio, Democrats cheered the reports as a huge coup. Before losing a reelection bid last year, Brown had been the last Democrat to win statewide office in a state that has veered sharply to the right over the past decade. His entry instantly transforms the Ohio race from a distant dream to a plausible pickup opportunity for the party.
If most Democrats were ecstatic about Brown's planned comeback bid, Amanda Litman was a bit less jazzed. To be sure, she's a big fan of Brown, the gravelly-voiced populist who was once seen as a formidable presidential contender. (He never did run for the White House.) But Brown is now 72, and Litman, the founder of a group that encourages and trains first-time candidates, has been among the loudest voices calling for Democrats to ditch their gerontocracy once and for all. 'In a year like this, if Sherrod Brown is really the best and only person that can make Ohio competitive, that's who we should run,' Litman told me. But, she quickly added, 'it is a damning indictment' of the Democratic Party in states such as Ohio that a just-defeated septuagenarian is its most viable choice.
Litman has called for every Democrat over the age of 70 to retire at the end of their current term in office. A few have heeded that message: Earlier this year, Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois (80), Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire (78), Tina Smith of Minnesota (67), and Gary Peters of Michigan (66) all announced that they would not seek reelection next year. But in some of the nation's biggest Senate races, Democrats are relying on an old strategy of recruiting—and then clearing the field for—long-serving party leaders with whom voters are already familiar.
Helen Lewis: The Democrats must confront their gerontocracy
In North Carolina, top Democrats aggressively lobbied former Governor Roy Cooper (68) to run for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Republican senator, Thom Tillis. And in Maine, the party is waiting to see if Governor Janet Mills (77) will challenge five-term Senator Susan Collins, the GOP's most vulnerable incumbent, who is 72. If they run and win, Brown would be 80, Cooper would be 75, and Mills would be 85 at the end of their first Senate terms.
Democratic strategists and advocates I spoke with acknowledged the tension between the party's broadly shared desire to elevate a new generation of leaders and its embrace of older candidates in these key Senate races. But they said the decision was easy in the states they most need to win next year. 'The frustration of voters, donors, and younger elected officials is real,' Martha McKenna, a former political director of the Senate Democrats' campaign arm, told me. But Cooper and Brown (and potentially Mills) 'are brave patriots who have already shown they know how to run and win, which is thrilling to the Democratic grassroots base.' Any Democrats unhappy with their candidacies, McKenna added, 'are defeatist bed wetters who would rather complain from the sidelines than get into the fight.'
Winning the Senate is a long shot for Democrats in 2026. They would need to flip at least four Republican-held seats without losing any of their own, and the only blue state where a Senate race is up for grabs is Maine. But even a gain of two or three seats could put Democrats in position to take the majority in 2028, and they hope that a voter backlash to President Donald Trump's second term, combined with the recruitment of strong candidates, could put states such as North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Iowa, and Alaska in play next year. Republicans have also tried to woo popular governors to mount Senate campaigns, with less success: Governors Chris Sununu of New Hampshire (50) and Brian Kemp of Georgia (61) each passed on the opportunity.
Brown lost to Bernie Moreno by three and a half points in a state that Trump carried by 11 points. He will likely start as an underdog against Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed by Governor Mike DeWine to fill the seat that J. D. Vance vacated when he became vice president. But even if Brown falls short, Democrats argue, his strength as a candidate could force Republicans to spend millions of dollars they would otherwise have directed elsewhere. No other Democrat in Ohio can make the same case.
The push for Democrats to get younger has been driven not only by the party's panic over former President Joe Biden's age and performance last summer, but by the more recent deaths of three House Democrats during the first five months of 2025. The activist David Hogg sparked an internal feud by declaring, soon after becoming the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, that he would back primary challengers to some party incumbents in safe House seats.
Younger Democrats did win key Senate seats last year in Arizona, New Jersey, and Michigan. And the party's leading Senate contenders for 2026 in Texas, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Minnesota are in their 40s and early 50s. 'We are in the fight of our lives, and that requires a truly multigenerational front,' Santiago Mayer, the founder of the youth-oriented progressive group Voters of Tomorrow, told me. 'Of course we need young people running. We need young leaders who are vocal and visible around the country.' But Mayer said he had no problem with older Democrats such as Brown, Cooper, and (possibly) Mills leading the way in crucial races. 'We need to be supporting the candidates who are proven winners,' he told me.
Nowhere are Democrats more desperate to win than Maine, where Collins's resilience has both frustrated the party and scared off some of its rising stars. In 2020, Collins defeated a well-funded Democratic opponent by nearly nine points even as Biden carried the state by the same margin. Her approval ratings are even lower than they were at this time six years ago, and Democrats consider the state a must-win in the battle for the Senate. Yet hardly any Democrats have stepped up to take her on. (Jordan Wood, a onetime aide to former Representative Katie Porter of California, is the best-known declared candidate so far.) Representative Jared Golden, who holds a rural House district that Trump carried three times, decided to seek reelection rather than higher office. And several up-and-coming Democrats have opted to run for governor instead of challenging Collins.
To a large extent, everyone is waiting on Mills, who trounced her predecessor, Paul LePage, in his 2022 comeback bid and then drew national attention by telling Trump, 'See you in court' during a confrontation at the White House earlier this year. The governor, however, is in no rush to make a decision and has evinced little excitement about becoming a freshman senator in her late 70s. 'I mean, look, I wasn't born with a burning desire to be in Washington, D.C.—any month of the year,' Mills told a local radio station last month even as she acknowledged that she was seriously considering a Senate campaign. One national Democratic strategist told me that the odds of Mills entering the race are about 50–50; another put the chances lower. The strategists showed little concern about Mills's age, noting that she doesn't appear any older than Collins (even though she is by five years). The issue may not resonate as much in Maine anyway, which has the oldest population of any state in the country.
Democrats have had mixed success relying on former governors to harness their cross-party popularity as state leaders in competitive Senate races. In 2020, then–Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper defeated GOP Senator Cory Gardner to help Democrats recapture the majority. And the four Democratic senators from Virginia and New Hampshire all previously served as their state's governors. But in 2016, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland lost by more than 20 points in his bid to oust a Republican senator. Two years later in Tennessee, former Governor Phil Bredesen met a similar fate.
Litman argues that part of the Democrats' problem is a fear of competitive primaries, which both parties try to avoid in Senate races because of their expense and the risk that the winner will emerge damaged for the general election. Some believe the lack of a presidential primary in 2024 hurt Kamala Harris's chances against Trump. 'That is how you keep Democratic voters engaged,' Litman said. 'If we've learned anything from 2024, it's that primaries are good.' She's optimistic that as younger Democrats run and win at the local level, the party's bench in red and purple states will get deeper, and the elections where its hopes hinge on aging former stars will become more rare. 'It's not like in one election cycle, everyone over the age of 70 is going to be thrown out,' she said. 'This is the first big generational-change election for the Democratic Party. It's not going to be the last.'