Sen. Pete Ricketts held his Nebraska Senate seat early Wednesday, and the Associated Press called the race at 3:27 a.m. Eastern. The Ricketts Nebraska Senate win came in a contest that forecasters had pushed onto the national battlefield after independent Dan Osborn pulled within a few points in the polls.

Ricketts finished with 50.3 percent to Osborn’s 43.9 percent, according to unofficial results reported by the Nebraska Examiner. Osborn performed worse than he did in his 2024 run, when he lost to Sen. Deb Fischer by fewer than seven points.

Why the Ricketts Nebraska Senate Win Matters for Drug Policy

Few senators have pushed harder on intoxicating hemp and kratom. In August, Ricketts and Sen. Ted Budd filed an amendment to strip language from a stopgap spending bill that would have delayed the federal ban on hemp-derived THC products. Speaking on the Senate floor, Ricketts warned that THC in young people’s brains “can reduce their IQs, lead to mental health issues such as suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression.”

In March, he and Sen. Richard Blumenthal led eleven senators in a letter urging the FDA to recommend scheduling the whole kratom leaf, not just the concentrated opioid 7-OH. Singling out 7-OH, they wrote, “would leave these addictive products on the shelf.” The letter helped set up the push, later joined by Sens. Grassley, Lee and Collins, for a ban on the entire plant.

Cotton, Ayotte, Harris and Tong Hold Their Seats

Sen. Tom Cotton, a longtime opponent of marijuana commercialization, won a third term in Arkansas, defeating Democrat Hallie Shoffner by roughly 12 points.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte won a second term in New Hampshire, a rare bright spot for Republicans in a state where Democrats swept the federal races. New Hampshire remains the only New England state without legal recreational marijuana sales. Ayotte has promised to veto any legalization bill, and in June she vetoed a bill to expand cultivation, writing, “I do not support expanding the cultivation of marijuana in our state.”

Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland won a ninth term despite a national Democratic wave. As chairman of the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee, Harris wrote the language closing the 2018 Farm Bill’s hemp loophole, which was signed into law last November and takes effect this month.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, won a third term with about 63 percent of the vote. Tong co-led the bipartisan letter from 35 attorneys general telling Congress not to delay the hemp THC ban. “Congress made the right decision when it closed a dangerous loophole, and we should keep it closed,” he said.

Two Democrats Who Voted No on Federal Legalization Move Up

Rep. Chris Pappas defeated former Sen. John E. Sununu for New Hampshire’s open Senate seat. In 2022, Pappas and Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas were the only two House Democrats to vote against the MORE Act, the party’s federal marijuana legalization bill. Cuellar, too, won a twelfth term Tuesday in a district Republicans had redrawn to beat him.

The same night, more than half a million Massachusetts voters backed Question 8, the first ballot measure anywhere to ask voters to repeal a commercial marijuana market. Repeal ran ahead of the Republican ticket in Boston, Chelsea, Lynn and Springfield.

Yet the officials who have done the most to close the hemp loophole and rein in kratom, in both parties, will all be back in office in January. The industry spent the cycle hoping Congress would blink on the hemp ban. The voters sent back the people who refused to.

• 35 State Attorneys General Call for the Closure of the Hemp Loophole
• Senator Mike Lee Once Pushed DEA to Hold Off on a Kratom Ban. Now He Wants the Whole Plant Scheduled.
• Massachusetts Question 8 Falls Short, Sabet Says “This Is Only the Beginning”
• Hemp THC, Explained