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Marathon Strategies Releases Meet The Freshmen, Its Online, Nonpartisan Guide to the New Members of the 120th Congress

November 5, 2026

Unlike other guides to the new Congress, this interactive guide helps companies and industries quickly find information on the views of newly elected Members of Congress, enabling them to get ahead of policy risks and opportunities

Searchable by state and issue, a great resource for anyone tracking the new Congress, including reporters!

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nov. 5, 2026) – With Tuesday’s midterm elections now in the history books, Marathon Strategies today released Meet The Freshmen, its nonpartisan, interactive guide to the new members of the 120th Congress. Searchable by state and issue, the online guide gives companies, industry groups, and government affairs teams with a stake in federal policy what they need to quickly get up to speed on every new House and Senate member – their personal backgrounds, their campaign priorities, and where they stand on the issues that will dominate the congressional agenda in 2027.

The incoming class, made up of at least 80 new members, reflects a massive upheaval in Congress, fueled in part by the largest wave of retirements in more than a decade. Knowing where these members stand is only the first step. The organizations that come out ahead will be the ones with a game plan to educate them – not just through meetings on Capitol Hill, but through the research, collateral, and public footprint that new members and their staff encounter long before a lobbyist walks in the door. Meet The Freshmen is the starting point for that work.

“A new Congress brings new priorities, new coalitions, and a whole new set of risks and opportunities, and the organizations that engage early are the ones that will come out ahead. Right now, incoming members are getting to work hiring staff and setting the agendas they will pursue for the next two years. Companies, industry groups, and government affairs teams can’t afford to wait until January to learn who they are and where they stand,” said Phil Singer, founder and CEO of Marathon Strategies.

“But knowing a new member’s positions is only half the job. The other half is having a plan to educate them on the issues that matter to your organization – and that takes more than a meeting. New members and their staff form their views from what they read, hear, and see well before anyone sits down across the table from them. Meet The Freshmen shows organizations exactly where the incoming class is starting from, so they can decide where to begin.”

Marathon helps companies, trade associations, and other stakeholders devise and implement programs to educate new members of Congress and their staffs on the issues that matter to them. These programs complement Capitol Hill meetings by building a public footprint that explains a company’s policy priorities and concerns, collateral that educates staffers, and information about a company’s presence in a member’s district or state. Through a combination of earned and owned media, digital content, and third-party validators, they reach a new member long before a formal sit-down and stay with them well after. Organizations interested in building such a program can contact Marathon at info@marathonstrategies.com.ith the political pressures and scrutiny sure to come in the next Congress, companies cannot afford to choose between winning the legal argument and protecting their reputation.”

Meet The Freshmen includes:

Profiles of every incoming House and Senate member as races are called, including the lawmakers they replace, their professional and educational backgrounds, and the key issues and priorities that shaped their campaigns.

Where each new member stands on 10 issues likely to dominate the agenda, including affordability, immigration, energy, AI, and foreign policy.

Search tools that let users filter the incoming class by state and by issue, so they can quickly find the members who matter most to their organization.

The guide draws solely on publicly available sources, including candidate websites, questionnaires, debates, interviews, social media posts, and news reports. It includes races called by The Associated Press, the National Election Pool/Edison Research, and the Cook Political Report. With some races still uncalled, Marathon will continue updating the guide as results come in.

Meet The Freshmen follows Marathon’s formal launch of its Congressional Investigations Readiness practice, which helps companies and industries identify and address their political and policy vulnerabilities before Congress does. Together, the two offerings – investigations preparation and education programming – give organizations a way to prepare for a reshaped Congress on both fronts: educating the new members who will set the agenda, and getting ahead of the wave of oversight expected in 2027.

The Meet the Freshmen guide is available now at www.meetthefreshmen.com.

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About Marathon Strategies

Marathon Strategies is an independent, non-partisan strategic communications and investigative research firm with offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and Albany. The firm’s multidisciplinary team of campaign operatives, communications professionals, researchers, journalists, digital analysts and creative strategists combines investigative rigor with integrated communications to give leaders an information advantage. Marathon’s services include public affairs, corporate communications, crisis and issues management, competitive intelligence, digital strategy and creative.

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