Why Are So Many U.S. Senators Heading for the Exit Doors?

E lection to the U.S. Senate used to be considered the apex of a political career, bringing with it prestige, powerful committee chairmanships, and a national stage. Only the presidency was thought to be further up the political ladder. But that’s changing.

This year, three senators — Michael Bennet of Colorado, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama — have indicated that they will run for governor of their home states. They are trying to join Mike Braun of Indiana, who left the Senate after being elected governor last November. This is a complete reversal of the normal trend. Since 1900, governors have been over seven times more likely to become senators than vice versa.

Additionally, five senators have announced plans to retire next year. Two of them — Tina Smith of Minnesota and Gary Peters of Michigan — are leaving, even though each has only served two terms and they are only in their mid-60s.

Why has membership in what has been called the “world’s greatest deliberative body” become devalued?

The Senate has become synonymous with gridlock.

Braun, a former businessman who served one term in the Senate before running for the governorship of Indiana, says he found the Senate stifling. He agrees with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has complained that “it takes forever to get anything done.”

In 2024, Braun posted on X that “in the 5 years I’ve been here, the Senate Budget Committee has failed to make a single budget. Not one.” He introduced legislation he called “No Budget, No Pay” to hold Congress accountable for failing to pass budgets on time. It never came up for a vote. When the Senate does act, Braun said, it rushes through bills late at night. Committee hearings are often perfunctory, and senators often vote on legislation they haven’t read or fully vetted. He noted that the failure to follow “regular order” has fueled the growth of the national debt, which is now $37 trillion.

Governors are action figures compared with senators, who can look like mere talking machines.

Braun’s decision to run for governor was clear “when I measured what I could accomplish in six more years here, I think I can do more by going back home.” Governors are executives with real power to implement decisions, they control their own schedules, and they are not bound by a seniority system, such as the one that rules the Senate, that can force members to work for decades to create a legacy.

Senate life has become tedious, less fulfilling, and unpredictable.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin served two terms as governor of West Virginia before deciding to run for Senate in 2012. Within a few months of being sworn in, he was already thinking about returning to his old job. He said life in the Senate “sucks. . . . it’s frustrating for anyone here.”

Manchin also points out that working conditions for senators have worsened. Fundraising pressures are worse than ever, constituents expect senators to constantly travel back home, and the rise of social media means that personal attacks are a daily downer and negatively impact senators’ family life.

Partisanship has hit an all-time high.

Former Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who retired in 2024, says that partisan gridlock has become much worse of late. Senators face constant pressure to toe a party line, limiting their ability to make a difference individually or vote their conscience. In a 2024 interview with Maryland Matters, Cardin said that polarization often creates short-term fixes that merely paper over problems rather than solve them. His proudest moments came when he worked across party lines to sanction Russian officials who violated human rights, and when he helped secure funding for the Francis Scott Key Bridge replacement. But as he left the Senate, he found those moments increasingly rare.

How to fix the Senate and make it function better is a controversial topic. Many Democrats want to end the filibuster, which requires 60 senators to agree to advance legislation. But during the Biden administration, Manchin and his former fellow Democrat, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, vehemently disagreed on this point. Sinema argued that the filibuster prevents one party from unilaterally imposing its agenda: “The filibuster compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles,” she wrote in the Washington Post in 2021. She described the filibuster as a “guardrail” that secures the Senate’s role as a deliberative body and protects minority party influence. Removing the filibuster would marginalize the minority party, leading to resentment and further eroding public trust in government.

One idea for Senate reform that has more bipartisan support is fixing the confirmation process, which is often contentious and drawn out. The introduction of deadlines could prevent votes on nominees from being tied up in limbo for months. Confirming noncontroversial nominees, or nominees for lower-profile appointments, in batches could also speed up the process.

It’s unlikely, however, that there’s any one fix for what ails the Senate. So long as political polarization and voter cynicism remain as high as they are, you can expect more and more senators to head for the exit doors.

“Perhaps the only solution is for one side or the other to win often enough to dominate the policy discussion,” one former senator told me. “In the 1960s with Democrats and in the 1980s with Republicans, one party was on top enough that there was a majority consensus with minority input. Since then, it’s been trench warfare. But even in World War One, trench warfare finally ended and one side prevailed.”