Michael Bennet (D-CO) is running for governor of Colorado. Even if he resigns his Senate seat to run or resigns because he wins, it should not change that the seat will stay blue.
As for the seat up for election, I think Hickenlooper (D) will win handedly. The only other person to declare is also a Democrat and many suspect she is running to either build a war chest or maybe replace Bennet.
tl;dr Colorado seats after 2026 election are still blue & blue.
The Hill: Mounting controversies, midterm fears strain Senate GOP’s relations with Trump:
So Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN) has announced she is running for Governor of Minnesota in the coming 2026 elections.
The other Minnesota seat in the Senate is open and it seems likely, barring an unknown disaster at this point, the winner of the Democratic primary will win the seat Tina Smith is vacating.
Am I correct in understanding Klobuchar will be able to keep the other Senate seat pending results of the gubernatorial election, when she will need to resign if she wins? And that she would then be able to appoint the person who will fill that seat until the election in 2030? Or have I missed something?
Yes, the Governor will appoint the new Senator. Perhaps Tim Walz?
There’s a history of sneaky Governor/Senator appointments. From Wikipedia:
That didn’t work well in the end. Two years later, in 1978, both Perpich and Anderson lost their reelection campaigns. I recall the line from one of the opposition television ads from that year, about Anderson’s “funny” appointment: He wanted to be Senator in the worst possible way, and he became Senator in the worst possible way.
I thought about the possibility Klobuchar could appoint Walz as her replacement, assuming she wins.
It appears Walz has ruled that out:
“I will never run for an elected office again,” Walz said. “Never again.”
Of course, that statement doesn’t rule out accepting an appointment to office but frankly, I think he’s fed up with anything close to elective politics. I could be wrong of course.
An Oberlin classmate of mine wrote a paper on governors who appointed themselves US senators (or prevailed upon a successor to do so), and far more often than not, they lost when the voters next got the chance to weigh in, IIRC.