U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley announced Thursday he plans to run for re-election next year, shattering speculation his congressional career was coming to an end.
“For years, I’ve worked to lift up the voices of ordinary Americans and take on the powerful interests that rig our system,” Merkley said in a statement. “Now, with Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies working overtime to destroy the checks and balances of our ‘We the People government’ and shred programs families rely on, we’re in the fight of our lives, and I’m not backing down.”
Merkley’s decision comes more than a week after a self-imposed June 30 deadline the senator had set earlier this year for announcing his intentions.
The announcement means the U.S. Senate will likely keep one of its most outspoken progressives in 2027. It also squashes tentative plans to run by some members of Oregon’s congressional delegation. Among those said to have been interested in the role are Democratic U.S. Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Andrea Salinas and Maxine Dexter.
In a call with reporters Thursday, Merkley said the decision to run again wasn’t initially clear-cut.
“If you had asked me a few months ago, and if I had confided in you ... we were leaning toward not running,” he said. But, Merkley said, he concluded that threats posed by Trump are “so dark and so dangerous that I am calling on everyone to be off the couch.”
Merkley spoke at length about cuts to services like Medicaid, an increase in the national debt anticipated by a massive budget bill congressional Republicans passed last week, and what he said was a “strong man state” he believes the president is pursuing.
“We’ve seen this happen all around the world where you have a subservient Congress and a deferential court and an aggressive authoritarian elected president try to capture all the power,” Merkley said.
Over 16 years in the Senate, Merkley has often positioned himself at Democrats’ left flank. He was the second senator to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in November 2023, and the only one of his colleagues to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.
Despite his often low-key demeanor, Merkley has also been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump.
In 2017, he spoke for more than 15 hours in opposition to Trump’s Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch — a nomination he deemed “theft” after Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s attempt to fill the vacancy the year before. The speech is among the longest in Senate history.
In 2018, Merkley garnered attention again when he traveled to Texas and attempted to gain entry to an old Walmart where migrant children were being held after being separated from their parents. In an encounter streamed live on Facebook, police eventually responded to the facility and filled out a police report as Merkley watched.
Legislatively, Merkley has been a longtime member of the influential Senate Appropriations Committee, and serves as ranking Democrat on a subcommittee in charge of spending at the Department of the Interior and Environmental Protection Agency, among other things.
He also sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, giving him a front-row seat to debates over international affairs. When Trump launched a surprise attack on Iranian nuclear sites last month, Merkley was among Democrats forcefully criticizing the decision.
He has spent virtually his entire career working to reform the dominance that the filibuster has on legislation in the Senate. Most recently, Merkley co-authored a book making the case that the chamber should bring back the “talking” filibuster, where senators are required to speak in order to delay a vote.
Under the current system, where 41 of the Senate’s 100 members can block most bills simply by indicating opposition, Merkley has called the chamber “one of the most paralyzed and ineffective legislative bodies in existence in the world.”
A long-time resident of East Portland, Merkley has made blue-collar roots a touchstone of his political persona.
Merkley graduated from Portland’s David Douglas High School, before going on to earn degrees from Stanford and Princeton universities. He returned to Portland after a period of time working in Washington, D.C., and was working in the nonprofit sector when he won a state House seat in 1998.
By 2003, Merkley was the House Democratic leader, and when he helped engineer his party’s takeover of the chamber in the 2006 election, he was tapped as House speaker.
His tenure was brief. Not long after being named speaker, Merkley signaled his intention to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith in the 2008 election.
He prevailed in that race, surprising many observers.
