New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen announced last week she won’t run for re-election in 2026.
Shaheen, a Democrat first elected to the Senate in 2008, spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about that decision and about the Democratic Party’s strategy moving forward.
Transcript
You have spent nearly a half a century in politics as a campaign staffer, state legislator, governor and senator. What was it like to come to the decision to not seek reelection in 2026?
Well, it was a difficult decision made especially difficult because of what's happening in the country right now and my concern about what President Trump is doing and the direction that he's taking the country. But I think it was an important decision for me [and] for my family. As you pointed out, I've been in politics for 50 years in New Hampshire. At the end of this term, I will have served for 30 years in elective office. And so it will be nice to have time to do some other things, [have] a little more flexibility. I want to leave the job while I'm still feeling like I can do it well, because it's been the honor of a lifetime to represent the people of New Hampshire.
At a time when the Democratic Party is struggling to find a unified strategy, what do you see as the party's direction moving forward?
I think what's important for us is to continue to address what matters to the people of New Hampshire, [and] in my case, what matters to the people of this country. When people voted in November, they wanted to see a president who was going to lower grocery prices, who was going to do something about inflation in the country, who was going to address housing shortages and costs, who was going to do something about energy costs. President Trump has done none of that. That's what I think people want to see. They want to see that whoever is in office is going to help make their lives better. It's going to be fighting for them every single day. I have tried throughout my entire political career to make a difference for the people of this state, and I'm not going to stop until the end of my term two years from now.
And what, specifically, should be the Democratic Party's strategy around that, to rally together, to have a unified message?
Well, to continue to point out the direction that President Trump is taking the country. To point out what the impact of that is. I can't tell you how many businesses we've heard from across New Hampshire who are very concerned about this tariff war that President Trump is getting the United States into, [and] what that's going to mean for them, what it's going to mean for consumers in terms of higher costs that they're going to have to pay, and the jobs that are going to be lost because of that. We need to point out to people the impact of what President Trump is doing, what the Trump administration is doing, to people across this country.
Let's turn to some more immediate news out of Congress. You were one of 10 Democratic senators who voted for the Republican-backed spending bill. It's a bill that Democrats say gives the Trump administration more discretion on spending decisions. That move has caused a lot of division within the Democratic Party. What do you make of the criticism that the vote empowered the Trump administration's continued cuts to the federal government?
I certainly understand the frustration that people are feeling and the desire to do something to try and stop what the Trump administration is doing. This was a choice between two bad options, and I picked what I thought was the lesser bad option.
The reality is, if you didn't like the continuing resolution, you wouldn't like a government shutdown because everything that they can do under that continuing resolution, they could do under a government shutdown and more. So we talked to a former Office of Management and Budget employee who said that the worst things that are happening in this administration are happening on nights and weekends, when Elon Musk and the DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] committee can get into offices and agencies and wreak havoc. What a government shutdown would do is give them 24/7 of being able to go into any government agency, of being able to make any decision about who is an exempt and a non exempt employee, who could get fired [and] not funding any programs at all.
At least under the continuing resolution, there are employees there who can ensure that people can get their WIC food, that the SNAP program is still operating, that employees who are still employed by the federal government are still getting paid. And Donald Trump has a much bigger megaphone than any Democrat. You can be sure if we had shut down the government, he would blame Democrats not just for the government shutdown, but for everything bad that is happening in the economy right now. I don't think that was something that would benefit anybody in the Democratic Party or in the country.
What do you hope to accomplish in your remaining time before you leave Congress?
I have almost two years left in my term. Obviously, I will continue to work in the areas that I've been focused on. I just took over as the ranking member, so the top Democrat, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I'm spending a lot of time addressing foreign policy issues and am very concerned about what Donald Trump is doing to turn on its head 80 years of America's foreign policy, particularly in Ukraine. I think we need to do everything we can to support Ukraine to ensure that they have the strongest possible bargaining position at the negotiating table and not siding with a murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, which is exactly what President Trump is doing. So I will continue to do everything I can to support the Ukrainians.
I think we need to fight against efforts to reduce health care for people in this country. It's very clear that the Republican majority in the House and Senate plan to cut Medicaid significantly. That has a huge impact, potentially, on people in New Hampshire, where 13% of people in New Hampshire benefit from Medicaid — both from traditional Medicaid to help those who are disabled [and] children, but also to help fund our Affordable Care [Act] health insurance that we have in New Hampshire, which has a trigger that says if federal funding goes below a certain level, then that program at the state level will get wiped out.
And of course, this morning I was over in Portsmouth, meeting with some Australian officials and folks from the Navy League who support the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard with a number of people [and] companies that support our submarine industrial base. [We] talked about why continuing to support AUKUS, which is the agreement that shares technology around nuclear submarines between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, is so important, because it helps address the threat from the People's Republic of China in the Indo-Pacific. There is no shortage of things to do over the next two years.
