Nineteen states hold a U.S. Senate seat rated safe or near-safe Republican this November. This is a record of what is documented in some of their counties — immigration enforcement agreements, food processing employers, large electrical load — and of which office decides each one.
Two offices govern most of what follows: the utility regulator, who allocates the cost of new large load, and the citizen initiative, which is the only route around a legislature. This table records what each state has. It carries no score — an earlier version summed these two columns into a single number, which was cut because the arithmetic embedded judgment calls that the cells themselves show more honestly.
Kansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and Texas. In these six, large-load cost allocation and Medicaid policy run through appointed commissioners and the legislature. Two carry a further wrinkle: West Virginia's HB 2014 removes qualifying data-center microgrids from its appointed commission's jurisdiction, and Tennessee's TVA is federally governed — though TVA distributes through roughly 150 local power companies, many of them municipal boards or member-elected cooperatives, so the check there is indirect rather than absent.
These are groupings within the class, not categories with hard edges. The third column records what sits outside the grouping and is worth knowing — usually a state or region carrying the same trait but not holding a safe seat in this class, which is a reminder that none of these patterns is confined to the nineteen.
| Grouping | States in this class | Sits outside the grouping |
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Stated as a tendency, not a rule. The pressures below are driven by industry structure and federal programs and are not confined to these nineteen states. The accountability structures are set at state level and are not portable. There are partial cases in both columns, and the 287(g) line has a genuine limit noted with it.
| Tends to travel | Tends not to travel |
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The offices that decide most of what this register records are elected in some of these states and appointed in others. Where they are elected, they appear on the same November ballot as the Senate seat, usually with far less attention. This table records what is on that ballot in each state, drawn from the same research pass — several entries are unconfirmed and marked accordingly.
All nineteen states now carry county entries. Six — Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio — were added in a later pass covering three categories only: 287(g) agreements, food processing, and large electrical load. Rural hospital figures for those six remain state-level.
No inclusion threshold was set. There is no employment floor for a food processing marker and no megawatt floor for a large load marker. Counties appear because they surfaced in research, not because they cleared a bar. Treat the set as illustrative, not exhaustive or ranked.
Florida is one row, not sixty-seven. SB 2C mandated participation statewide and every county jail signed, so a per-county enumeration would add sixty-seven identical rows. The same applies to Tennessee's ninety-five.
ICE publishes the participating-agency list as a spreadsheet — agency, county, model, signing date. As of Aug 21, 2026 it recorded 2,365 agreements across 39 states, against roughly 135 in January 2025. Note ICE counts agreements, not agencies; one agency can hold several.
ice.gov/identify-and-arrest/287gSix states in this class popularly elect utility commissioners. Nebraska's public power districts are governed by elected boards, a different mechanism. South Carolina's commissioners are chosen by the legislature. Everywhere else in the class they are appointed.
Every commission runs a public docket search, and large-load cases are filed there before rates change. Search the commission name plus "docket search."
CHQPR names hospitals at risk and at immediate risk by state. Its May 2026 edition counted 720 at risk nationally and 294 at immediate risk. These are CHQPR's projections from operating margins, not closure announcements.
ruralhospitals.chqpr.orgSheriffs are elected in every state in this class except Alaska, which has no county sheriffs. County clerk and secretary of state sites publish candidate filings, including which races drew one candidate.
Eighty hours a month for expansion adults 19–64 under P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025. Federal requirements take effect in 2027; states may implement earlier, so the start date varies. State Medicaid agencies post implementation plans and comment periods.
Each panel fills the class states by one structural feature and overlays the same set of surveyed counties. A filled pin sits inside a state that has the feature; a hollow pin sits inside one that does not. Reading across the four, the features have different shapes — the mandate is three states, Medicaid splits northwest against southeast, and the regulator scatters with no geographic logic at all.
Six states popularly elect commissioners. Nebraska's public power boards are elected by a different mechanism; South Carolina's are chosen by the legislature.
Florida's requires 60% to pass; Mississippi's was ruled inoperable in 2021. Both shown lighter.
Expansion states carry the 2027 federal work requirement. Non-expansion states never had the coverage to begin with.
Three states require local agencies to seek agreements. Florida's covers all 67 counties and is the largest in the country.
Shaded by the share of that state's county entries carrying a named source. This replaces the earlier coverage map, which only showed whether a state had been looked at.
All nineteen states now carry county entries. The six added in this pass — Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio — were surveyed for three categories only: 287(g) agreements, food processing, and large electrical load. Rural hospital figures for them remain state-level and appear in the state bar on the county tab, not as county entries.
Pins do not show verification. A pin marks that something was recorded in that county, not that it was confirmed. The tier is on the row in the county tab. Roughly two-thirds of the entries added in this pass carry a named source; roughly a third of the earlier entries do.
Alaska sits in the composite inset. Its pin marks the state, not a place. Alaska has no county sheriffs, so the county frame that organises the rest of this page does not apply there.
Colour carries no ranking. Each panel uses one hue for presence and grey for absence. Nothing is scored or summed.
Several of the decisions this register records fall in the weeks immediately after November 3. Texas sheriffs in counties of 100,000 or more that operate a jail must have requested a 287(g) agreement by December 1, 2026; the statute does not specify which model. The Louisiana Public Service Commission is scheduled to vote December 16 on Entergy's seven-plant gas application tied to the Meta Hyperion project, with two of its five commissioners newly elected. Idaho must adopt Medicaid work requirements by December 31 under HB 913, signed April 10, 2026 — an Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation analysis projects that up to 44 percent of the state's expansion enrollees, about 34,000 people, could lose coverage on a range of 20,000 to 34,000 by 2028. Tennessee's mandate requiring all 95 county sheriffs to hold an agreement takes effect January 1, 2027. Federal Medicaid work requirements for expansion adults aged 19 to 64 take effect during 2027 under P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025, though states may implement earlier and the operative date varies. Two initiative-restriction cases were argued and remain undecided — Oklahoma's SB 1027, argued before that state's supreme court in November 2025, and Montana's SB 93, argued in April 2026. Neither had been decided as of September 21, 2026.