(The Epoch Times)—The United States will have many elections held on Nov. 3, 2026—for all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, one-third of seats in the U.S. Senate, and elections to dozens of state legislatures and local offices. Some of the biggest races will be for various states’ governor’s offices, which have attracted the candidacies of famous politicians in politically significant states.
In every state of the union, the governor is the chief executive and vested with executive authority, although his or her exact powers vary and depend upon state constitutions. Usually, the governor directs state agencies, vetoes bills, and is the state’s leading political figure. Historically, many governors have used their public esteem to get elected to other high offices, such as the U.S. Senate or the presidency.
In 2026, 39 governor’s offices—36 in states and three in territories—will be up for statutory elections, with some incumbent officeholders being term-limited from running again. Given the prestige of serving as governor, several high-ranking political figures have announced their candidacies for these posts.
Here are the biggest gubernatorial races to watch in 2026.
Arizona
In the Grand Canyon State, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-Ariz.) is running for re-election and is likely to win the Democratic primary. Two potential rivals, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes—both Democrats—are running for re-election to their current offices.
However, the state is not heavily Democratic and, in the most recent statewide elections for the presidency and U.S. Senate in 2024, it voted for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, and Democratic nominee Ruben Gallego, respectively. Most political observers consider the race a “toss-up.”
In the Republican primary, the two declared candidates are Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson, who ran for governor in 2022 but lost the Republican primary contest to Kari Lake. Biggs is a former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a right-wing faction of the House Republican Conference that regularly attracts notoriety. He also previously served as president of the Arizona Senate.
In Republican nomination contests, the endorsement of Trump is often the decisive factor, as many GOP voters have been following his directions on how to vote. In this case, the president has endorsed both Biggs and Robson for the nomination.
Statewide elections in Arizona are always closely watched, as the state is competitive during presidential elections and the results may indicate how voters there will vote for the next president. The primary will be held on Aug. 4, 2026.
California
The Golden State has the largest economy and population of any in the country, with nearly 40 million people. As a result, the governor of California is always a nationally recognized political figure. Because of the state’s heavy Democratic lean, the governor is often considered a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. This is the case with incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who is term-limited from running again.
Because the office is high-profile, many leading Democrats have joined the governor’s race, making it the most competitive across all 2026 gubernatorial elections. California uses a “jungle primary” system, in which all candidates of all parties run on the same ballot and the top two candidates (regardless of party) run in the general election.
The impressive roster of Democratic candidates includes Toni Atkins, former speaker of the California State Assembly and former president pro tempore of the California Senate—the first person in 150 years to have held both offices; Xavier Becerra, former U.S. secretary of health and human services and former attorney general of California; Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis; Tony Thurmond, state superintendent of public instruction; Antonio Villaraigosa, former mayor of Los Angeles and former assembly speaker; and former Rep. Katie Porter, who was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in California in 2024.
The race has been equally notable for the candidates who were considering running but either publicly declined or withdrew their candidacies. The most notable such person was former Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously served as a U.S. senator from California as well as the state’s attorney general, and whom many had predicted would be a clear frontrunner if she chose to run. Similarly, incumbent state Attorney General Rob Bonta, former Sen. Laphonza Butler, and California Treasurer Fiona Ma, all Democrats, also declined to run, with Ma suspending her gubernatorial candidacy.
The primary will be on June 2, 2026.
Florida
The Sunshine State has become the center of Republican politics following Trump’s emergence on the national political scene, being the site of his primary personal residence at Mar-a-Lago. Once a presidential battleground state, Florida is now considered safely Republican, with the governor of Florida attracting the same presidential speculation among Republicans that the governor of California receives among Democrats.
Florida’s incumbent Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who won a large re-election victory in 2022 and ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, is term-limited from seeking re-election. Trump has endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who is currently the frontrunner among declared candidates in both polling and endorsements. He has also been endorsed by DeSantis’s predecessor as governor, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.).
However, Donalds could face a primary challenge from Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, who gained a big reputation among the state’s conservatives during her husband’s gubernatorial term. Casey DeSantis has not yet declared her candidacy, although she has publicly expressed interest. Many other prominent Republicans in Florida, such as former Rep. Matt Gaetz and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, have declined to run.
On the Democratic side, the likeliest candidate is former Rep. David Jolly, who served in Congress from 2014 to 2017 as a Republican but switched parties in 2018 and has since become a critic of Trump. The primary will be on Aug. 25, 2026.
Georgia
The Peach State is another battleground state in presidential elections, and its statewide races attract a great deal of attention. Although the statewide race for senator, in which incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) is running for re-election, is attracting a great deal of attention, the race for governor of Georgia is equally significant. Incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, is term-limited.
For the Republican nomination, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and state Attorney General Chris Carr are running. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of the state’s most prominent and controversial politicians, has declined to run.
On the Democratic side, the former mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, is seeking her party’s nomination, as are two Georgia state legislators, state Sen. Jason Esteves and state Rep. Derrick Jackson. Stacey Abrams—former minority leader of the state House who was the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2018 and 2022, both times being defeated by Kemp—has also suggested that she may run again. The primary will be on May 26, 2026.
Michigan
The Wolverine State is yet another presidentially competitive state holding a gubernatorial election in 2026. As with all such states, Trump won it in 2024’s presidential election. Incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) is term-limited and cannot run again.
The Democratic nomination contest has many high-profile elected officials in the state running: Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson. State Attorney General Dana Nessel has suggested that she may run, as has former Rep. Andrew Levin. Several high-profile Democrats have also declined to run, such as former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who previously was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, but has since moved to Michigan.
Currently, polling shows that Benson leads the whole field by a wide margin, with the support of 65 percent of definite voters.
On the Republican side, the primary is a four-way contest between Rep. John James (R-Mich.), state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, former state Attorney General Mike Cox, and former state House Speaker Tom Leonard. Also running is William Null, a construction worker who was federally indicted for participating in a plot to kidnap Whitmer in 2020 but was later acquitted.
A potential candidate is Dick DeVos—former CEO of Amway, GOP nominee for governor in the 2006 election, and husband of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos—who has not ruled out a bid. The primary will be on Aug. 4, 2026.
Wisconsin
In America’s Dairyland, also known as the Badger State, incumbent Gov. Tony Evers (D-Wis.) upset the race by announcing that he would not run for re-election to a third term. The state is presidentially competitive and, thus, its statewide races at all levels—most recently, for the U.S. Senate and for the state Supreme Court—have attracted nationwide attention.
So far, only Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez has announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Others who have expressed interest are former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, and state Attorney General Josh Kaul.
On the Republican side, no major candidate has yet to emerge, although Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) appears prepared to announce his candidacy. The primary election will be held on Aug. 11, 2026.
Pennsylvania
Finally, in the Keystone State—considered the most important state for presidential elections—incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, is running for re-election in 2026.
Shapiro is the heavy favorite to win the race, and no other Democrat has entered the contest. Neither has any Republican candidate, with several of the state’s political leaders expressly declining to run. These include Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), who was endorsed by Trump to run for governor but opted to run for re-election to the House instead, as well as state Attorney General Dave Sunday. Likely, the leading candidate for the party’s nomination will be Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity.
The primary in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race will be held on May 19, 2026.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.