CIVPAC has changed its endorsement of Annie Andrews for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina from provisional to full following the October 11 candidate debate and new developments concerning U.S. sanctions against Russia.
Our original endorsement was provisional in part because we wanted additional evidence about Senator Darline Graham’s willingness to exercise independent judgment when she disagreed with President Trump, particularly on foreign policy.
That question became more immediate following Trump’s October 9 agreement to relax sanctions on Russian diesel exports. A bipartisan group of seven senators, including four Republicans, called for reversing the decision. The agreement is unlikely to have a significant effect on U.S. diesel prices, but it could provide substantial revenue to Russia while it continues its war against Ukraine.
During the October 11 debate, Graham did not join that criticism. Instead, she emphasized the sanctions legislation she had helped enact while leaving its implementation to the president’s discretion. The Washington Post also reported that she praised Trump’s diesel-policy change.
We continue to credit Graham for her work on the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act. Nevertheless, her response to this particular decision adds to our previously expressed concerns about congressional independence.
CIVPAC has therefore removed the provisional qualification from its endorsement of Annie Andrews. Our reservations about aspects of Andrews’s domestic agenda and our unanswered questions concerning her broader foreign-policy views remain unchanged.
CIVPAC has published its evaluation of the Kentucky U.S. Senate race, comparing Republican Andy Barr, Democrat Charles Booker and Kentucky Party candidate Christopher Campbell.
The Kentucky race remains a difficult one. Barr combines a strong record on Ukraine and the 2020 election certification with questions about presidential power and congressional independence. Booker offers a stronger check on the current administration and a more congressional view of war powers, while leaving important questions about Ukraine, NATO and other foreign-policy commitments. Campbell presents a distinct third-party alternative but differs substantially from us on the role of government and American military assistance abroad.
With publication of the Kentucky evaluation, CIVPAC has now completed its initial endorsement and evaluation phase for the 2026 U.S. Senate general-election races.
We have made 29 endorsements, including our Alaska ranked-choice recommendation. In the remaining races, we have published full candidate evaluations but are not making an endorsement at this time.
That does not necessarily make those decisions final. Between now and Election Day, we will review candidate debates and other significant new information. Where unanswered questions are resolved or the balance of a race becomes clearer, some evaluations that currently make no endorsement may become endorsements.
Our purpose is not simply to issue a list of names. The evaluations are intended to give independent and centrist voters enough information to understand both the areas of agreement and the reasons we sometimes remain unable to recommend either candidate.
CIVPAC has published its current evaluation of the 2026 Arkansas U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Tom Cotton, Democrat Hallie Shoffner and Libertarian Jeff Wadlin.
This is an unusually difficult race to reduce to party labels. Cotton brings by far the strongest record of government and national-security experience and deserves credit for rejecting efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But his positions on presidential war powers, emergency tariffs and several consequential Trump administration appointments raise concerns about congressional independence.
Shoffner brings substantial agricultural and small-business experience and is closer to CIVPAC on tariffs and congressional war powers, but her positions on foreign policy, immigration enforcement and several other issues remain insufficiently developed.
Wadlin offers the most detailed independent platform of the three and is surprisingly close to CIVPAC on a number of institutional, trade, immigration and foreign-policy questions. But he has no legislative record, and an important question remains unanswered: with which party, if either, would he caucus in the Senate?
Because Arkansas early voting begins before all of the scheduled debates have taken place, we are publishing our evaluation now rather than waiting. The race remains under review, and we intend to revisit it as the debates provide additional information. In the mean time, we hope this evaluation will help Arkansas voters with a difficult decision.
CIVPAC has completed its side-by-side evaluation of Democrat Chris Pappas and Republican John E. Sununu in New Hampshire’s 2026 U.S. Senate election. We are not endorsing either candidate at this time.
Pappas presents a developed center-left record. We agree with him on important matters including support for Ukraine and America’s alliances, reproductive rights and the need for Congress to act as an independent branch of government. But we have substantial disagreements with him on organized labor, the scale of federal intervention in the economy and aspects of fiscal and social policy.
Sununu is closer to CIVPAC on a number of conventional economic issues and has a genuine history of independence from Donald Trump. But that independence has limits, and his current campaign leaves too many important questions unanswered. We would particularly like clearer positions on Ukraine and NATO, abortion, the Affordable Care Act, immigration, Social Security and President Trump’s January 6 pardons.
There is also an institutional consideration. With a Republican president, another Republican senator could affect control of the Senate—and therefore its ability to provide an independent check on executive power. We would probably be similarly concerned with a Democratic president. We have overcome that concern in other races when a candidate’s record of bipartisan governance and policy positions justified doing so. We are not prepared to do that here on the information presently available.
This may not be the final word. Pappas and Sununu are scheduled to appear together at an October 29 candidate forum, and we plan to revisit the evaluation afterward if the candidates provide meaningful new information.
In part because of an expressed interest in our position, we have completed our evaluation of the 2026 Massachusetts U.S. Senate race. For now, we are making no endorsement.
The race presents an unusual choice between Democratic Senator Ed Markey and Republican challenger John Deaton. Markey has a long and readily assessable record and is strong on several issues important to CIVPAC, including support for Ukraine and NATO, congressional war powers, limits on presidential tariff authority and aspects of Middle East policy. But his domestic agenda is well to our left, including the full Sanders version of Medicare for All, the broader economic and social components of the Green New Deal, abolition of ICE and an annual wealth tax.
Deaton presents almost the reverse problem. His positions on health care, energy and several economic issues are considerably closer to CIVPAC’s market-oriented approach. He also takes positions on abortion and legal immigration that differ significantly from much of the national Republican Party and has repeatedly emphasized his independence from President Trump.
But Deaton has never held public office, so there is no legislative record against which to test that independence. More importantly, his published foreign-policy positions leave significant questions about Ukraine, NATO and the circumstances under which he would support continued American assistance to allies.
Those unanswered questions matter enough that we are not prepared to endorse either candidate at this time. Markey and Deaton are scheduled to debate on October 13, and we intend to revisit the race afterward. If the remaining questions are not resolved, we may ultimately make no endorsement.
Our non-endorsement should not be read as a recommendation that Massachusetts voters abstain. Rather than manufacture an endorsement where our criteria point in different directions, we have tried to provide voters with enough information to make their own judgment.
CIVPAC has moved its Florida U.S. Senate evaluation from the draft pool to publication and makes no endorsement among Republican incumbent Ashley Moody, Democrat Angie Nixon and No Party Affiliation candidate Neil Gillespie.
Moody is considerably closer to us on a number of economic and foreign-policy questions, including support for sanctions against Russia. But her Senate record raises serious concerns about congressional independence. She has supported a series of controversial Trump nominees, backed the administration’s exercise of emergency tariff authority and repeatedly declined to support congressional efforts to assert its constitutional authority over military action.
Nixon would provide a stronger partisan check on the administration, an important consideration given our increasing concern about executive power and the value of divided government. But her domestic agenda—including Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, national rent controls, tuition-free public college, a wealth tax and abolition of right-to-work laws—lies far to our left. Her positions on Israel and unanswered questions about Ukraine, NATO and broader American international leadership create additional concerns. Nixon’s own platform confirms many of these domestic and foreign-policy positions. Angie Nixon for U.S. Senate
The Democratic primary also demonstrates that this choice was not inevitable. Nixon defeated Alexander Vindman, who offered a substantially different combination of positions and whom CIVPAC would have viewed much more favorably. We mention that not to relitigate the primary, but because it helps explain the particular choices now before Florida voters. Washington Post
Gillespie’s rejection of conventional partisan politics initially merits attention from an organization focused on independent voters, but we have found too little of a developed policy program—and no clear indication of how he would caucus in the Senate—to recommend him as an alternative.
The result is an unusual but straightforward conclusion: Moody is closer on many policies but has not demonstrated the institutional independence we want from a senator serving under a president of her own party; Nixon offers greater institutional opposition to the White House but asks us to accept domestic and foreign-policy positions too far removed from our own; and Gillespie has not yet provided enough information for a comparable evaluation.
CIVPAC therefore makes no endorsement in Florida’s 2026 U.S. Senate election.
CIVPAC has published its evaluation of South Carolina’s 2026 U.S. Senate race and provisionally endorsed Democrat Annie Andrews over Republican Senator Darline Graham, Libertarian Kasie Whitener and Constitution Party candidate Mark Hackett.
This is not an endorsement without reservations.
Andrews is closer to our positions on reproductive freedom, immigration, evidence-based public health and congressional war powers. We also give substantial weight at this point to congressional independence and the value of divided government as a check on executive power.
At the same time, Andrews is to our left on much of domestic economic policy. We have reservations about the size and role of government implicit in parts of her agenda, including important unanswered questions about the design of her proposed public health-insurance option.
Our largest uncertainty concerns foreign policy. Andrews has made clear that she opposes open-ended wars and believes Congress should authorize sustained military action, but we have found much less from her on Ukraine, NATO, Russia, China and the broader international order.
Graham receives substantial credit for taking over the Russia and Iran sanctions legislation championed by her late brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, and helping carry it into law. But her limited foreign-policy preparation, her pledge to have President Trump’s back “100 percent,” and her vote against allowing an Iran War Powers resolution to proceed raise questions about congressional independence.
Whitener offers a strongly market-oriented and fiscally restrained alternative and has been unusually clear in challenging unilateral presidential war-making. Questions remain about what her noninterventionist approach would mean for NATO, Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel.
Hackett is clearer: he advocates ending U.S. support for Ukraine and Israel and withdrawing from NATO and the United Nations—positions fundamentally at odds with our approach to American foreign policy.
For now, the combination of divided government, congressional independence, reproductive freedom, immigration and public health tips our evaluation toward Andrews.
The endorsement is deliberately provisional. Andrews, Graham and Whitener are scheduled to participate in the October 11 South Carolina ETV debate, and we intend to review the endorsement afterward. In particular, we will be listening for clearer answers from Andrews on Ukraine and NATO, from Graham on congressional independence, and from Whitener on the practical implications of her foreign-policy philosophy.
CIVPAC has published its evaluation of the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Oregon, completing its review of every Senate general-election race this year.
The Oregon evaluation endorses Democratic incumbent Jeff Merkley over Republican David Brock Smith, Libertarian Gary Dye and Progressive/Pacific Green candidate Chris Henry.
This is not an endorsement based on broad agreement with Merkley’s domestic agenda. The evaluation identifies substantial differences over Medicare for All, labor policy, wealth taxation and the use of government direction rather than market mechanisms to address climate change.
Brock Smith is closer to CIVPAC on several economic and regulatory questions. But the evaluation raises concerns about climate change, the effort to challenge the 2020 election results, voting policy and abortion. OPB has reported both his rejection of human contributions to climate change and his participation in the 2020 Texas election challenge. (OPB) opb
His relationship with President Trump is also important to the evaluation. Willamette Week described Brock Smith as an outspoken Trump supporter and reported that, when asked whether he disagreed with anything Trump had done during his second term, he did not identify an example. CIVPAC was also unable to find sufficiently clear positions from him on tariffs, Ukraine, NATO or the Iran war. (Willamette Week) Willamette Week
In the end, the value of divided government tipped the balance. The Oregon evaluation argues that congressional checks on executive authority work less effectively when members of Congress are unwilling to challenge a president of their own party. For this moment, that consideration favors returning Merkley to the Senate. The endorsement is explicitly conditional: if the White House were occupied by a Democrat, particularly one well to the left of center, Merkley would probably not receive CIVPAC’s endorsement.
With the Oregon review, CIVPAC has now reviewed every 2026 U.S. Senate general-election race. We have published endorsements in 26 races, including Alaska, published evaluations without an endorsement in 3, and have 6 completed drafts still under review and awaiting publication.
That completes the research stage of the Senate project. The races will continue to be followed, and evaluations or endorsements can be revisited if significant new information warrants it.
CIVPAC has published its evaluation of the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Oklahoma. After reviewing all five candidates, we are not making an endorsement at this time.
The field offers Oklahoma voters unusually different choices: Republican Kevin Hern, Democrat N’Kiyla “Jasmine” Thomas, Libertarian Sevier White, and independents Ron Meinhardt and Curtis Stinnett.
Hern has the most extensive governing record and overlaps with CIVPAC on markets, taxation, regulation and fiscal discipline. But we have substantial differences with him over the 2020 election, presidential power, Ukraine, abortion and his close identification with President Trump.
Thomas offers a detailed domestic agenda and takes positions we regard as reasonable on a number of civil-rights, reproductive-choice and health-care issues. But her economic program would give the federal government a substantially larger role than CIVPAC supports, and important questions remain about fiscal and foreign policy.
Meinhardt’s emphasis on constitutional limits, congressional war powers and putting principle ahead of party machinery deserves attention. But his abortion position differs sharply from ours, and we found too many unanswered questions about his positions on major national and international issues.
Stinnett has produced an unusually detailed policy program. We appreciate the effort to confront difficult issues directly, but many of his proposals would move considerably farther toward federal direction of health care, wages, credit and resource allocation than CIVPAC favors.
There is simply too little publicly available information about White’s positions for us to make a meaningful comparison.
CIVPAC does not expect candidates to take centrist positions on every issue. We look instead at the overall combination of policy agreement, institutional responsibility, independence of judgment and willingness to confront difficult tradeoffs. In Oklahoma, none of the five candidates currently provides enough of that combination for us to make an endorsement.
We have completed our evaluation of the 2026 Michigan U.S. Senate race between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.
It is not an endorsement.
We could not quite get there for either candidate.
That is worth putting in context. During the Democratic primary, CIVPAC endorsed Haley Stevens over El-Sayed. Had Michigan Democrats chosen Stevens as their nominee, we would probably have endorsed her in the general election as well. Our inability to endorse El-Sayed is therefore not simply a consequence of evaluating a Democrat against a Republican. It reflects concerns specific to his candidacy and policy program.
Rogers and El-Sayed present very different strengths, weaknesses and policy agendas. But each leaves us with an important unanswered question that goes beyond the ordinary disagreements voters should expect in a Senate race.
Our full evaluation examines those differences in considerable detail.
El-Sayed has produced one of the most extensive and specific policy platforms we have encountered this election cycle. (That is one reason why this evaluation has taken about a week to draft.) We agree with him on some important matters, including support for Ukraine, concern about unauthorized military action, protection of reproductive freedom, vocational education, increasing housing supply and taking potentially catastrophic artificial-intelligence risks seriously.
We disagree much more broadly with his economic approach. His Medicare for All proposal would create a far more comprehensive government-financed system than Medicare as Americans know it today. His proposed annual wealth taxes are extraordinarily high by international standards. His AI program would go beyond regulation to substantial government ownership and control of major AI companies. We also differ on labor policy, tariffs, climate policy, the Senate filibuster and restrictions on independent political spending.
But those normal policy disagreements are not what ultimately prevent us from reaching an endorsement.
For El-Sayed, the unresolved question concerns Israel.
He has repeatedly declined to say plainly that Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state. He has said that whether there should ultimately be one state or two should be decided by “the people,” without clearly defining who he means by that term.
Our question for him is straightforward:
Does Abdul El-Sayed accept that Israel should continue to exist as a secure Jewish and democratic national home for the Jewish people, with equal individual rights for its non-Jewish citizens, alongside a viable Palestinian state in which Palestinians exercise their own national self-determination?
He is perfectly capable of answering it.
Mike Rogers presents a very different problem.
Rogers’s earlier career gives us substantial reasons to take him seriously. He has deep national-security experience and, in 2021, forcefully rejected Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Rogers wrote then about the danger of blind allegiance to a person or party and insisted that certified election results should not be rejected without evidence.
The 2026 Rogers has aligned himself much more closely with President Trump.
To his credit, he has also demonstrated some real independence. He has called for an end to the Iran war, supported slowing AI development while safeguards are developed, and backed a Michigan pause on new data centers despite the administration’s very different approach.
But his comments about his own 2024 Senate loss remain difficult to reconcile with the standard he articulated in 2021. Rogers has suggested that a Detroit ballot delivery “swung” the election against him without producing evidence that anything improper occurred.
So our question for Rogers is equally straightforward:
Does he still apply to himself the standard he articulated when Donald Trump lost an election?
More broadly, where are the lines at which a future Senator Rogers would place his own judgment, constitutional responsibilities and institutional obligations ahead of loyalty to President Trump?
We are not asking either candidate to agree with CIVPAC on everything.
We are asking each to answer a question that bears directly on whether we can recommend entrusting him with a seat in the United States Senate.
Michigan voters should listen carefully for those answers.
Until we hear them, this remains an evaluation, not an endorsement.
