On August 6, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) announced her bid for governor of Tennessee. Blackburn’s entrance in the race makes her the third sitting U.S. senator, along with Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), to announce bids for governor.

The number of senators running for governor in 2026 is the highest since 2010, when four sitting and former senators ran for their states’ governorships. In that time period, ten senators, including seven Republicans, two Democrats, and one independent, have run for governor. Of the 10, four won, four lost the general election, and two lost the primary election.

Of the three states, Colorado has elected one U.S. senator to the governorship: Edwin Johnson (D) in 1954. Alabama and Tennessee have never elected a U.S. senator, and in the case of Alabama, one had never run before Tuberville announced his candidacy. Only one Tennessee senator, Ross Bass (R) in 1974, ran for governor, losing in the primary.

The state that has elected the most Senators to the governorship is New Jersey, which has elected three senators, most recently Jon Corzine (D) in 2005. Of the 23 other states that have elected a senator as governor, they had only done so once. Twenty-six other states had not elected a senator as governor, with 18 of them not seeing a senator run for the position.

If Bennet were elected as governor of Colorado, it would become the second state to elect more than one senator as governor. If Blackburn were elected, she would be Tennessee’s first senator elected governor. The same applies to Tuberville, the first Alabama senator to run for governor.