Republican House candidate Mayra Flores keeps getting the same question: Is she insane?
Flores lost her seat representing her Texas district in 2022 just months after winning a special election. Two election cycles later, she’s fighting to win it back.
On the Hill, the direction of travel is toward the door. Members of both parties — some disgruntled with a dysfunctional institution, some older and just ready to retire — have already announced they’re departing. But outside of Washington, another group is emerging: former lawmakers who want to return.
“People are jumping ship — and we’re trying to get back on it. Why would anyone do that?” joked Democrat Tom Malinowski, who is running to reclaim his seat in New Jersey.
By The Washington Post’s latest tally, at least 18 former members of Congress — 11 Democrats and seven Republicans — are asking voters to send them back to D.C. next year.
They’re seeking to rejoin a club that is decidedly unpopular: Recent Gallup polling shows 80 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.
Some of those seeking to return had memorable debuts.
In Missouri, former “Squad” member Cori Bush was featured in the Netflix documentary “Knock Down the House” and snagged a Teen Vogue cover weeks being sworn in as the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress. Ousted in a primary three years later, she’s mounting a comeback.
In Florida, two former GOP congressmen — North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn and New York’s Chris Collins — are competing against each other for a seat in a state in which neither has previously held elected office.
Either would arrive in Washington with some baggage: Cawthorn was defeated after a single term in which he made headlines for speeding tickets, driving with a revoked license, attempting to carry loaded guns through airport security checkpoints and appearing in a leaked sexually suggestive video. Collins resigned after being convicted for insider trading and was then pardoned by President Donald Trump.
The reaction from current members who hear former colleagues want to come back?
“This place sucks, but we’d be really happy to have you back,” Malinowski said, summarizing the sentiment from members he’s spoken with.
“I’ve had so many members ask me if I need a wellness check,” Ben McAdams, a Democrat seeking to return to power in Utah, said, laughing. “After they question my sanity, they’re very encouraging.”
“They’re like, ‘Cori, we love that you’re running again, but why would you want to come back? You’re free,’” Bush said.
When news broke that Colin Allred, who left the House earlier this year to run for Senate, was suddenly dropping out of that race to run for a newly drawn House seat, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pennsylvania) sent him a text. The message showed an animation of Eminem with the rapper’s lyric flashing across the screen: “Guess who’s back.”
Other familiar faces running in 2026: Maryland Democrat David Trone, the co-owner of Total Wine & More who left the House earlier this year to dump $62 million into a Senate bid, now wants his old seat back. (He didn’t make it past the Senate primary.)
Tom Perriello, who was ousted from his House seat in Virginia in 2011 after voting for the Affordable Care Act, is now campaigning to return on the issue of health care.
Seasoned politicos John Sununu and Scott Brown are competing in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, and fresh-out-the-Senate Sherrod Brown is running for the Ohio seat vacated earlier this year by JD Vance. If Brown wins the special election, he’d serve alongside Republican Bernie Moreno, who defeated him for Ohio’s other Senate seat last year.
After states like Texas, California and Utah redrew their electoral maps this year, some former lawmakers seized their chance.
In Utah, McAdams is running for a new Democratic-leaning House seat. The state has not had a Democratic member of Congress since 2021, when McAdams lost his seat after voting to impeach Trump.
In Texas, the state’s new electoral map makes Flores’s former district redder. She sees the chance to take back the seat — if she can win the crowded primary.
Texas’s seismic redistricting effort, which the Supreme Court green-lit earlier this month, was designed to net the GOP five additional seats. The new map hurled some representatives into tough races — like Rep. Lloyd Doggett, 78, who opted to retire rather than compete against a younger colleague, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett. Crockett jumped last-minute into the Senate primary, and Allred, who had been in the race for months, assessed the fractured Democratic field and pivoted to a House race that would incorporate most of his old district.
Allred served in the House earlier this year. But if he makes it back, he plans to operate differently. He has a better sense of what Texans want from D.C., he said. He hopes to use his national profile to advocate for his district’s needs, and step into a leadership vacuum left by retiring Democrats.
Allred wasn’t gone long and he left only after losing a race for the upper chamber.
For politicians whose tenures would be split by time or geography, the question lingers: Why come back at all?
They get that question a lot. Many are galvanized by Trump: the opportunity to defend his agenda, or to fight it. And, unlike many of their opponents, they have previous Hill experience to tout.
“I have a America First voting record, and I’m the only one in this primary who actually supported and helped President Trump get back in office,” Flores said.
“I’m able to argue that I’ve stood up to Trump before at a moment like this — and done it effectively,” Malinowski said. “I have the experience and even formal seniority to actually get things done when we don’t have a moment to waste.”
But former members know of the trade-offs of serving on the Hill. They’ve lived them.
“It is tough life, I think particularly for people with young families and people who have to be traversing across the country,” Perriello said.
During a recent visit to Washington, Flores was struck by how much some of her former colleagues had aged.
“I was like, ‘What happened to you?’ It looks like a decade has passed by them,” Flores said. “I’m sticking with Orange Theory and drinking a lot of water. I’m like, ‘I will not allow Congress to do this to me.’ ”
Candidates are looking forward to the quirky, day-to-day parts of the job.
Several said they miss giving Capitol tours — not always historically accurate ones — and hosting constituents on the Hill.
“There’s a pretty cheap peanut butter and jelly sandwich they used to offer in the cloakroom that I used to live on for two years, much at the expense of my health,” Perriello said.
Malinowski hopes to rejoin the Democratic baseball team. Previously, he was their starting shortstop.
“I miss the little train,” Bush said, referring to the underground trolley that transports members from office buildings to the Capitol. She would sit on it and watch to see whether the rickety train could beat even the fastest walkers to the end of the tunnel. She misses “Squadsgiving,” when the group of young, progressive lawmakers would gather with staff for an annual feast.
Bush remembers sitting on the Capitol steps and gazing out, past the Supreme Court, past the Library of Congress, past silhouettes of rowhouses, at the horizon.
If she returns to that view, she said she will do so with a stronger understanding of which campaign promises are tangible and how to achieve them.
“Before, I was the fighter,” Bush said. “This time, I am running as the fighter who also will govern.”
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