← Election Series · All senate races

Our verdict

LiberalMind endorses Michael Katz — as unproven, and on watch

Election Day is November 3. Delaware has not elected a Republican senator in over five decades, and Senator Chris Coons is seeking a third full term. His challenger is a pediatric anesthesiologist who once sat in the state Senate as a Democrat, briefly ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, ran for this seat as an independent — and now holds the Republican nomination. Two names are printed on the ballot. This is the whole race — the records, the platforms, the worst claims against each candidate, and what the sources actually show. Read the research, and decide.

How Delaware got here

Delaware held its primaries on September 15, 2026. Coons won the Democratic primary with 78.0% against three challengers; Michael Katz won the Republican primary with 77.3% over John Shulli. The Delaware Department of Elections' official sample ballot prints exactly two names for this seat: Chris Coons (Democratic) and Michael "Dr. Mike" Katz (Republican). Three more men — Shulli, Travis Jack Stevens, and William McVay — are registered write-in candidates; write-in names do not appear on the ballot, and we do not present them as ballot candidates.

The raters are unanimous: Cook Solid D, Inside Elections Solid Democrat, Sabato's Crystal Ball Safe D. No general-election polling has been conducted in the last 90 days that we could locate. The money, per the PollingSource FEC compilation (a wider-window tracker puts Coons's total higher; we print one compilation and name it): Coons raised $4,956,015 with $5,031,711 on hand; Katz raised $190,416 with $16,085 on hand. Outside spending is negligible. This is a cruise-control incumbent against a shoestring challenger, and everyone involved knows it — which makes the records, not the horse race, the story.

Chris Coons (Democratic)

His record: Coons served as New Castle County Council president (2001–2005) and County Executive (2005–2010) before winning the 2010 special election for the Senate seat Joe Biden vacated; he has held it since, winning full terms in 2014 and 2020 (59.4% in 2020). He sits on Appropriations, Foreign Relations, Judiciary, Small Business, and Ethics, where he is vice chairman — senior seats that make him a real institutional figure, and a senior Foreign Relations voice: he co-led the May 2026 bipartisan Shaheen–Coons–Ricketts resolution on the China threat and the February 2026 bipartisan letter pressing Taiwan to raise its defense spending.

The bipartisan items — recorded fairly, because they are real: Coons backed the 2018 First Step Act, co-chairs the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus, led the Recruit and Retain Act to fund police hiring, and in April 2026 was one of seven Democratic senators to join all Republicans in opposing resolutions that would have blocked bomb and bulldozer sales to Israel. This is not a cartoon partisan. Against that: in sixteen years, no documented break with his party on an organizing vote or a signature program of his party's agenda was located in this pass. His bipartisanship is genuine — and it operates inside his party's program, never against it. Under our doctrine, that is the difference between an extremist and an enabler, and the words are distinct on purpose: Coons is the second. His 2026 platform — "opportunity, security and justice" — is the party's program stated plainly: push back on Trump's tariffs, defend the ACA and Medicaid, a clean-energy transition, comprehensive immigration reform, and a bill to create an oversight body for ICE and keep ICE officers out of schools and hospitals. That ICE position is his stated platform and we print it as exactly that. He called the Iran war a "war of choice."

Pros: Sixteen years of Senate service with senior Foreign Relations, Appropriations, and Judiciary seats. Real bipartisan legislative work, named above. A $5 million bank and a 78% primary win — his party and his state are not in doubt about him.

Cons: A reliable organizing vote for the Democratic program, priced at full Senate weight — the enabler profile, with no in-service break on a signature Democratic priority located in sixteen years. His platform defends the ACA and Medicaid as-is and restricts ICE's operating space.

The flaw, plainly: Not conduct, not extremism, not a broken promise — structure. Coons is a proven, dependable vote to organize the Senate for the other side's program, cast by a man whose undoubted bipartisan courtesies have never once cost his party a vote that mattered. In a chamber decided by organizing votes, that reliability is the whole case, and it is priced at full weight.

Michael Katz (Republican)

Katz is a pediatric critical-care anesthesiologist and the owner of a Delaware real-estate company. He is also the most party-traveled candidate in this batch of races, and his file has to be read whole.

The party history — the center of his file: Katz represented Delaware's 4th Senate District in the state Senate as a Democrat, from 2009 to 2013. In the 2020 cycle he briefly sought the Democratic nomination for president before withdrawing. In 2024 he ran for this same U.S. Senate seat as the Independent Party of Delaware nominee. He then re-registered as a Republican, won the 2026 GOP primary with 77.3%, and says re-registering "was not a change in principle — it was an alignment with the principles he had lived by for decades." That explanation is on the record, and it is his to make. What is also on the record is that he has never cast a vote as a Republican officeholder: the conversion, however sincere, is unverifiable in service, because there is no Republican service to verify.

His platform: Bring manufacturing jobs back; "back the blue" with higher federal penalties for violent crime and grant cuts to jurisdictions that won't enforce; complete the southern border wall; restore Remain in Mexico; withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities; workplace citizenship checks; pass the SAVE Act and national photo-ID voting rules with limits on mail voting; protect women's sports; oppose red-flag gun laws; protect Delaware's coast; first-time homebuyer incentives; and a new advanced-care VA facility in Delaware. It is the standard national Republican platform, stated plainly, with two Delaware-specific planks. One conduct item runs in his favor and should be recorded: when the University of Delaware debate series was canceled, Katz publicly demanded a televised debate and asked both state party chairs to organize one — the challenger asking for more scrutiny, not less. No national endorsements were located; his $190,416 raised and $16,085 on hand are a registration fee against an incumbent's $5 million.

Pros: Real elected experience (a state Senate term) and a serious professional career in medicine. A conservative platform stated in plain language, item by item. He demanded the debates the incumbent's side let lapse, and he won his primary decisively.

Cons: A three-party path — Democratic state senator, Democratic presidential aspirant, independent, Republican nominee — resting on his own assurance that the principles never moved. No Republican in-service record exists to test that assurance against. A campaign with $16,085 in the bank is a statement, not an operation.

The flaw, plainly: A consistency question, priced honestly. Katz's switch is documented conduct, but it is not an in-service failure — his state Senate service ended in 2013, under another party's label — and a conversion a voter must take on faith is an unproven item, not a proven demerit. He is asking Delaware to believe the alignment is real. Nothing in the record proves it is false; nothing in the record yet proves it is true. That is what "on watch" means.

OUR CALL

LiberalMind endorses Michael Katz — as unproven, and on watch.

The arithmetic comes first, as it does in every Senate race in this series: Coons is a proven organizing vote for the other party's program — an enabler in the precise sense, a decent and bipartisan-minded man whose courtesies have never cost his party a vote that mattered — and sixteen years of that record is the heaviest fact in this race. Across from him, Katz carries a documented party odyssey and no Republican service whatsoever. Under our doctrine, unproven is a watch posture, never a demerit and never by itself a reason to withhold an endorsement; his platform is our platform stated plainly, and his one testable instinct in this campaign — demanding debates — points the right way. We endorse the unproven challenger over the proven organizing vote, and we put the watch in writing: if Katz wins, his first organizing vote and his first signature vote are the ones that will tell Delaware whether the principles really never moved. Nothing in this call is close, and nothing in it is free: it is Senate math, applied the same way here as everywhere.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Winner: Chris Coons (Democratic) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 4, 2026 (results wave 1); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

← Back to the Election Series