John Sununu and a History of US Senators Serving Interrupted Terms

Sununu’s 18-year gap in service would be the longest in the chamber since the early 1900s

Former three-term New Hampshire U.S. Representative and one-term U.S. Senator John Sununu has recently expressed interest in running for the GOP nomination for the state’s open 2026 U.S. Senate seat.

Sununu exited the chamber after being unseated by former Governor Jeanne Shaheen during his 2008 reelection bid and has not run for political office since.

Should Sununu join the 2026 Republican field (that already includes former Massachusetts U.S. Senator Scott Brown and State Senator Dan Innis) and ultimately win the seat, he would record one of the longest gaps in service in the history of the nation’s upper legislative chamber and the longest in more than 120 years.

Smart Politics reviewed U.S. Senate Historical Office records and found that 151 of the 2,018 men and women to serve in the chamber (7.5 percent) have recorded interrupted terms during their tenure ranging from a few weeks to more than 25 years.

A successful 2026 campaign would bring Sununu back to the chamber after an 18-year absence – the eighth longest in U.S. Senate history.

Only 32 of these 151 lawmakers had a break in their bookends of U.S. Senate service of 10 or more years, and just 22 have seen a gap in service of 12 or more years (two or more full terms). Of the 22 senators with a divided tenure of a dozen or more years, just four returned to service during the 20th or 21st Centuries.

The most recent to do so was Indiana Republican Dan Coats. Coats was sworn into the Senate in January 1989, after being appointed to fill newly-minted Vice President Dan Quayle’s seat. Coats won a special election in 1990 and was reelected in 1992 on his way to serving 10 years until leaving office in January 1999. After Democrat Evan Bayh chose not to seek reelection in 2010, Coats won the open seat race and returned to the chamber after a 12-year absence.

Before Coats’ election in 2010, it had been 80 years since an individual returned to the Senate after being out of office for at least two full terms.

Illinois Democrat James Lewis (a former U.S. Representative from Washington), served one term in the Senate from 1913 to 1919 and was the party’s whip, but lost his 1918 reelection bid. Lewis endured a failed gubernatorial run in 1920, but then returned to the Senate by winning the Election of 1930, after a span of 12 years from his last previous day of Senate service.

The other two 20th Century figures logging notable gaps in service are Delaware Republican Heisler Ball (14 years, out of office from 1905-1919) and Ohio Republican Theodore Burton (13 years, 9 months, 12 days; out of office from 1915-1928).

The individual with the longest break in Senate service is Maryland Democrat William Whyte who clocked out for more than 25 years.

Whyte actually had three stints in the Senate – but was elected only once. His first term lasted just over seven months between 1868 and 1869 after being appointed to the post upon the resignation of Democrat Reverdy Johnson. Whyte was out of federal office for six years, but stayed busy as the Governor of Maryland from 1872 to 1874. Whyte was then elected to the U.S. Senate and took office in D.C. once again in 1875.

After Whyte lost his reelection bid in 1880, he became mayor of Baltimore and then Attorney General of Maryland, before being appointed once again to the Senate after the death of Arthur Gorman in 1906.

When Whyte returned to the Senate on June 8, 1906. It had been 25 years, 3 months, and 5 days since his last day in the chamber.

Three other individuals have recorded gaps in Senate service of 20 years or longer:

• Future President Andrew Jackson: 24 years, 11 months, and 3 days between 1798 and 1823
• Indiana Democrat David Turpie: 24 years and 1 day between 1863 and 1887
• Famous Kentucky statesman Henry Clay: 20 years, 8 months, and 7 days between his second stint ending in 1811 and his third beginning in 1831

Sununu’s period of absence would also fall just shy of three other lawmakers from the 19th Century:

• Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri Democrat James Shields: 19 years, 10 months, and 24 days between the end of his service from Minnesota in 1859 and the start of his term from Missouri in 1879
• Louisiana Whig Henry Johnson: 19 years, 8 months, and 16 days between 1824 and 1844
• Virginia Democratic-Republican John Taylor: 19 years and 11 days between the end of his second period of service in the chamber in 1803 and the beginning of his third in 1822

The U.S. Senator with the shortest gap in service was Wisconsin Republican Angus Cameron. Cameron served a full term from March 4, 1875 to March 3, 1881 but did not run for reelection to his seat. However, the death of his GOP colleague Matthew Carpenter on February 24th of that year led to a special election in early March, which Cameron won. Cameron was sworn back into the chamber on March 14, 1881 for a gap of just 11 days.

In addition to the aforementioned Coats, other U.S. Senators to return to the chamber with nonconsecutive terms over the last half-century are New Hampshire Republican Norris Cotton (1954-1974; 1975), Ohio Democrat Howard Metzenbaum (1974; 1976-1995), Washington Republican Slade Gorton (1981-1987; 1989-2001), New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg (1982-2001; 2003-2013), and Arizona Republican Jon Kyl (1995-2013; 2018).

The average gap in service among the 151 lawmakers with interrupted terms in the U.S. Senate is 5.7 years.

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