One of the oldest members of Congress has said that she will run again for reelection in 2026, rather than retire and make way for a younger successor.
Asked by Axios whether she planned to extend her political career into her 90s, D.C.’s Democratic congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, 88, said: “I say that my seniority is what is very important, and I am not going to step aside.”
Her statement comes despite NBC News reporting that she appeared to struggle walking unaided en route to her own press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, at which she denounced President Donald Trump’s plan to deploy the National Guard on a crimefighting mission to more American cities, including Chicago and Baltimore.
Axios also quoted a number of Holmes’s colleagues in June expressing concern about her declining faculties, with one claiming she was now “missing stuff” in hearings, a claim she hotly refuted.
“D.C. residents have embraced me as their ‘Warrior on the Hill,’ where I’ve been privileged to have a long and successful tenure defending D.C. residents,” Holmes said in a statement.
There are currently 24 members of the House and Senate aged over 80, 15 of whom are Democrats and just seven of whom are Republicans.
Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley is the oldest person currently serving in the Congress at 91 – he is also the longest-serving Republican in congressional history and the sixth longest-serving senator of all time – and, after Holmes, another conservative is third: Kentucky Rep. Hal Rodgers, 87.
Democratic Party elders Maxine Waters, Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn take up the next four positions, all aged between 87 and 85.
Two more senior Democrats – Georgia Rep. David Scott, 80, and Connecticut Rep. John Larson, 77 – also told Axios this week that they likewise have no intention of leaving office anytime soon.
“Generational change is fine, but you’ve got to earn it,” said Larson, who plans to soldier on despite suffering a “complex partial seizure” on the floor of the House of Representatives in February.
“It’s not like, ‘Oh geez, you know what, why didn’t I think of that? Now’s the time for me to step down because, well, it’s generational change!’”
The questions were prompted by New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, 78, telling The New York Times on Monday that he would not be seeking reelection, citing the visible decline of former president Joe Biden in his final year in the White House as his reason for stepping down.
“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” he said, acknowledging that the more younger voices might benefit his party.
Elderly politicians on both sides of the aisle, from Republican Mitch McConnell to Democrat Dianne Feinstein, have suffered obvious health problems in office in recent years.
But a disinclination to retire appears to be a peculiarly Democratic trait, as well as a source of particular frustration to the party’s progressive wing, which is typically much more youthful.
The three members of the legislature that have passed away in the last six months were all Democrats.
