BOSTON — Depending on how the Nov. 3 election shakes out, there’s a “huge range” of possibilities that could play out in Washington during the lame-duck months of 2026, U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan told a crowd of business leaders Thursday.
Trahan also expressed confidence in Democrats’ prospects in the midterms as she sat next to Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jim Rooney at The Westin Copley Place.
“We could have a very productive lame-duck session. Sometimes, that’s where some of the deals really do strike a cadence that surprise folks. It could also go in the other direction,” Trahan said. “The Republicans don’t have a strong margin, and so attendance has always been an issue these last two years. If people just decide not to show up because they lost their seats, it could make for a very challenging lame duck.”
Republicans have controlled the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and the White House since President Donald Trump was elected in 2024. Democrats see the midterms as the chance to take back the House and the Senate. The current Congress includes 218 Republicans, 214 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies. The Cook Political Report 2026 House Race Ratings, published Oct. 9, forecast 21 House seats as a “toss up,” 15 of which are currently Republican seats and six of which are or were most recently held by a Democrat.
“There’s been a lot of tumultuous talk in the Republican conference that if they do lose, or they do lose big, that they might be looking for different leadership, and that is a factor in how we approach the lame duck,” Trahan said, naming a federal artificial intelligence framework, permitting reform and college sports regulation as items on her radar.
“Folks who have bipartisan bills are ready to sort of position those and take advantage of those four weeks. But that really is all we have until the [continuing resolution] runs out on December 11, and so the calendar is not our friend,” she continued. Trump on Sept. 2 signed a bill into law extending existing spending levels through Dec. 11.
Trahan discussed how she’s been supporting Democratic candidates nationwide — both “frontline” Democrats who currently sit in districts that voted for Trump and “red-to-blue” candidates who are running in a state or district that Trump won in the last election, she said.
Republican candidate Gary Grossi and unenrolled candidate Dennis Conlon will be on the Nov. 3 ballot alongside Trahan for the 3rd Congressional District seat. Trahan has been in Congress since 2019, sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and is co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. She is not running for her leadership position again, telling Rooney, “I would rather get to work on the policy.”
“I think we’re in great hands. I look forward to swearing in soon-to-be speaker Hakeem Jeffries, and even more excited about our majority leader Katherine Clark,” Trahan said. Clark, the Democratic whip, could be tapped as majority leader if Democrats win back the House in November.
Asked about the races she’s most excited about, Trahan listed off several Democrats from across the country: candidate for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District Rebecca Cooke; candidate for western Montana’s 1st Congressional District Sam Forestag; Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who’s running in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District; and candidate for Iowa’s 1st Congressional District Christina Bohannan.
“Everyone is feeling a little bit more confident as we head into the election,” she said. “There are races all over the country that are really just surprising us because they are in places where the president won by six, eight, 10 points,” Trahan said.
Emerson College’s September 2026 National Poll found congressional Democrats with an 11-point lead over congressional Republicans on the generic congressional ballot. More recent national polling shows that Democrats hold a seven-point lead on the ballot, per The Hill, and a Gallup poll published Oct. 13 reported that Americans are more likely to favorably view the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, 43% to 35%.
On the Senate map, she told Rooney that “we’re talking much differently about the Senate than we were a year ago.”
“In some aspects, our pickup opportunities in a red state like Kansas are stronger than some of our blue states, but I do think depending on what turnout looks like and what this sort of backlash to the last two years looks like, you know, we could win the Senate, too,” Trahan said. “I’m looking forward to a victorious election night.”
Ella Adams is a reporter for the State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach her at [email protected].
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