On October 22, 2025, former U.S. Senator John E. Sununu (R) announced his campaign for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire in 2026. Incumbent Jeanne Shaheen (D), who defeated Sununu in 2008, is retiring from public office. In the Republican primary, Sununu will face two other candidates, former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Tejasinha Sivalingam. On the Democratic side, Karishma Manzur and U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas are running.

Exactly one month before Sununu’s announcement, Ballotpedia looked at the results of former senators running again from 1976 to the present. In the analysis, Ballotpedia found that 24 senators ran again in 26 different elections. Across 26 elections, a senator lost the general election 13 times, lost the primary election five times, withdrew from the election four times, and won four times. The most recent senator to run again before the 2026 elections was Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who was defeated in the Republican primary in 2020 after resigning in 2017 to become U.S. Attorney General. The most recent senator to run again and win was Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who left office in 1999, and won another term in 2010.

The primary between Brown and Sununu is not the only primary between two senators. The most recent was in 2014, when Brown and former New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith (R)  ran in the Republican primary for the Senate seat currently up for election. Before Sununu’s announcement, the last year in which more than one former senator ran for another term was 2016, when two Senators, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), ran again. Sununu’s entrance makes him the third former senator to run in 2026 after Scott Brown and Sherrod Brown (D) in Ohio’s special election for Senate.

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