Peters served in the House from 2009 to 2015 before moving on to the Senate.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) has announced that he will not be running for reelection in 2026, leading to an opportunity for the GOP to flip the seat to expand its Senate majority.
“I always thought there would be a time that I would step aside and pass the reins for the next generation,” Peters told The Detroit News, which published an exclusive interview with him on Jan. 28. “I also never saw service in Congress as something you do your whole life.”Peters, 66, was first elected to Congress in 2008, serving in the House between January 2009 and January 2015. He was first elected to the Senate in 2014 and narrowly won reelection in 2020.
“I think this is pretty normal for everybody to say, I’ve done a job, and I’m proud of the job I did, but there are other things I want to do in my life. There are other ways that I can give back to the community,” he said.
During his time in the Senate, Peters led the Senate Democrats’ main campaign finance arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, resulting in the Democrats keeping the Senate in the 2022 election but losing it two years later.
Peters chaired the Senate Homeland Security Committee between February 2021 and this January. He is currently the committee’s ranking member.
Peters said he is not leaving the political arena.
“I want to be very clear: I’m not retiring. I’m just not running for reelection in the Senate,” he said. “I hope, God willing, I have a lot more good years ahead.”
He said he will not be running in the 2026 Michigan gubernatorial primary. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited and therefore cannot run for reelection. However, she is a possible candidate to run for the Democrat nomination to succeed Peters.
“There’s still a lot of work to do. We have issues related to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, natural disasters, cybersecurity to border security, and I’m intimately involved in all these issues, and we’ll continue to do that,” said Peters.
