Michigan’s senior Democratic senator announced on Tuesday that he won’t seek re-election in 2026, setting up what will likely be a fierce competition in a state Donald Trump won last year.
Sen. Gary Peters, who first won his seat in 2014, revealed his retirement and shared how he came to that decision in a video.
“What we do becomes a unique, individual life story having many chapters. At this point in my life, I have been able to write many different chapters and I look forward to the new ones with both anticipation and excitement,” Peters said in the five-minute video.
“Our Founding Fathers envisioned members of Congress as citizens, serving their country for a few turns and then returning to private life. I agree. I believe now is time for me to write a few more paragraphs in my current chapter and then turn over the reins.”
Peters narrowly won re-election in 2020, when former President Joe Biden won the battleground state back for Democrats after Trump took it in 2016.
The 66-year-old lawmaker served as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2022, when Democrats held all of their swing district seats and flipped a seat in Pennsylvania. In 2024, Democrats lost four seats — in Pennsylvania, Montana, Ohio and West Virginia — while holding seats in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, despite Trump winning those states. Trump won Michigan again in 2024, along with the six other major swing states.
Republicans will inevitably see the race for Peters’s seat in 2026 as an opportunity to make gains in the battleground state. Michigan’s Democratic Party has a deep bench of talent including the state’s term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel. Former presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, who most recently led the Department of Transportation under the Biden administration, also relocated to Michigan and could be a potential candidate for Peters’s seat, along with Lieutenant Gov. Garlin Gilchrist.
Democrat Sen. Elissa Slotkin beat former congressman Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open seat last year after the state’s longtime senator Debbie Stabenow retired.
Republicans could put forward John James, a West Point graduate who currently serves in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a potential candidate. James lost to Stabenow in 2018 and to Peters in 2020.
The announcement comes as Democrats strategize how best to counter Trump after Republicans flipped the Senate and regained the White House.
Republicans will also likely target Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia as they play defense to protect Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
