A waitress, a mechanic and a Nascar driver running for US Congress

Come November, American voters will elect not just their 47th president but also decide the future of the US Congress.

All 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and 33 seats in the Senate are up for election on 5 November.

The two major parties currently split control of Congress, with Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives and Democrats holding the Senate, both by narrow margins.

Regardless of whether voters send Donald Trump or Kamala Harris to the White House, the party which wins a majority on either side of Capitol Hill will have greater leverage to enact its own agenda.

So who are some of the most interesting individuals seeking a job in Congress and how the outcome of their races could affect the balance of power in US politics?

Polls suggest that Republicans may regain control of the Senate with likely victories in Montana and West Virginia – but an upset may be brewing in their traditional stronghold of Nebraska.

Independent candidate Dan Osborn is turning heads with his challenge to two-term Republican Senator Deb Fischer. A recent internal poll shows him leading Fischer by two points.

Osborn, 49, has served in the US Navy and National Guard.

He worked as an industrial machinery mechanic at the Omaha factory of cereal maker Kellogg’s where, as head of his local union, he led a walkout in 2021. The 77-day strike forced the company to withdraw a proposal to slash benefits – thus keeping the plant open until 2026.

Now working as a specialised pipefitter, Osborn is offering Nebraskans a path outside the two-party system by running as an independent candidate. Democrats are implicitly backing his bid by not putting up a candidate of their own.

The tougher-than-expected challenge for Fischer has also drawn the attention of national Republicans who are now pouring money into the race.

Senator Sherrod Brown is the last Democratic state-wide elected official left standing in Ohio, but the state’s rightwards drift is endangering his re-election bid.

Republicans – who only need to flip two seats to win back the Senate – are feeling confident their nominee, Bernie Moreno, is the man to finally unseat Brown.

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Moreno came to the US at the age of five. Over nearly two decades, he built one of the largest car dealership groups in America, the award-winning Collection Auto Group. In more recent years, Moreno has also invested in blockchain technology.

Now running as an America-First nominee endorsed by Donald Trump, Moreno says he will bring commonsense business principles to Congress if he wins – a motto other Republican candidates have sought to replicate in the Trump era.

Moreno, 57, is also one in a rising wave of minority candidates running under the Republican Party banner and, if elected, he would be Ohio’s first Latino senator.

Unseating an incumbent House lawmaker in a district with a strong partisan tilt is an increasingly difficult feat in a polarised US. Democrat Janelle Stelson appears poised to do just that.

Stelson has reported on local television in central Pennsylvania since 1986, making her a familiar face and yet a fresh one to voters.

Two other long-time news presenters – Arizona’s Kari Lake and New York’s John Avlon – are also running for Congress this year, but neither is polling quite as strongly as Stelson, who is seeking to topple six-term Republican Scott Perry in the right-leaning congressional district.

Perry is a former chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and was a leading figure in the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Stelson, who was a registered Republican until last year, has branded him an election denier but that has not been the key focus of her campaign.

The Democrat’s approach reflects a consensus that election denialism has faded as a concern among voters.

INstead, the 64-year-old is hammering Perry on his voting record and obstructionist style, while also harnessing liberal outrage over efforts to restrict abortion.

Not many candidates running in this election cycle have a life story quite as compelling as Sam Brown, the Republican Party’s Senate nominee in Nevada.

By his own admission, the former US army captain should not even be alive today.

In 2008, four months into a deployment in Kandahar, Afghanistan, a roadside bomb detonated under his vehicle, and set him ablaze. By the time the fire was extinguished, nearly a third of his body, including his face, was severely burnt.

The West Point military academy graduate was forced into medical retirement and spent the next three years undergoing intensive physical rehabilitation.

He went on to marry his burns unit dietitian, with whom he now has three children, completed an MBA programme and launched a small business that provided critical medical care to other veterans.

With this record, many expected that Brown, 41, would pose a stiff challenge to Nevada’s Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen in her bid for re-election. But Brown is lagging far behind and polls suggest Rosen may coast to victory.

Abortion access has factored heavily into the race, as Rosen and her allies have hit the airwaves to warn that Brown will be one more vote in favour of potential abortion restrictions.

More importantly, while Brown has the backing of mainstream Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, his support from the party’s ever-ascendant Trump wing is much softer. Trump himself long delayed endorsing Brown and many of his staunchest supporters campaigned for other candidates in the Republican primary.

Democrats have struggled to win in small-town America as rural residents have increasingly turned to the Republican Party, but liberal candidates around the country are still betting they can prevail in close races against controversial figures.

In Wisconsin, Rebecca Cooke, 36, is looking to flip the congressional seat held by Republican Derrick Van Orden back into her party’s column.

Van Orden, a first-term lawmaker and former US Navy Seal, has often made headlines with his public outbursts, from dressing down teenage Senate pages inside the Capitol building to heckling President Joe Biden during this year’s State of the Union address.

Cooke – who is campaigning on lowering costs, expanding access to healthcare, passing commonsense gun laws – was born and raised on a dairy farm in the central part of a state known as “America’s Dairyland”.

A former small business owner who runs a non-profit organisation and works as a waitress, she argues that Van Orden is more interested in “picking fights and climbing the ladder” than fulfilling legislative duties.

Cooke’s profile matches that of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a small business owner who narrowly eked out a win in rural Washington state two years ago against a far-right election denier.

A Perez re-election and a Cooke victory this November may go a long way in delivering the House majority to their party.

Representing a swing district in Maine, Democrat Jared Golden has built a career in Washington by frequently bucking his own party on issues like energy and the environment.

But as Golden seeks a fifth term, he is facing a challenge from state lawmaker and former stock car driver Austin Theriault.

Theriault, 30, hails from a logging and farming family with deep roots in the northern tip of Maine, just south of Canada.

Trained to race from the age of 13, the Republican broke records in 2017 and drove alongside Nascar legend Kenny Schrader en route to being crowned the Automobile Racing Club of America Menards Series champion in 2017.

From driving the “Maine car” on America’s most famous speedways to mentoring, managing and training several younger drivers, Theriault translated his love for his home state into a term in the state House of Representatives. He is now hoping he can be a voice for Mainers in the nation’s capital.

Another former professional athlete is making his own run for office this year. Colin Allred, once a line-backer for the National Football League’s Tennessee Titans, is hoping to be the one to break the Democrats’ losing streak in Texas and thus ending firebrand Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s political career.

The fight for abortion access has galvanised Democrats at the national, state and local level since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago.

In swing state Arizona, Amish Shah is telling voters that the abortion restrictions supported by Republicans force doctors like him to “choose between fulfilling my oath to the patient” and “going to jail”.

The Indian American has served three terms in the state’s House of Representatives with a bipartisan record of achievement and a professed love of public service.

Now that he is running for the US Congress, it is his experience as an emergency service physician that is coming to the fore in his bid to unseat seven-term Republican lawmaker David Schweikert.

Schweikert, who recently skipped out on a candidate forum planned for him and his challenger, says he is anti-abortion and he has declined to directly state how he would vote on a federal abortion ban.

Concerns over limits on abortion have been particularly pronounced in the Grand Canyon State. The repeal of Roe in 2022 triggered the enforcement of a long-dormant Civil War-era law that criminalised all abortions except when a woman’s life is in jeopardy. State lawmakers ultimately voted to repeal the law.

Arizona is also one of several states in which voters will be asked whether they want to enshrine the right to abortion in the state’s constitution.