The Trump Organization may sell Trump 2028 hats, but even President Donald Trump bowed to the Constitution and acknowledged earlier this month that he would not be the next Republican presidential nominee: \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be me.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s clear to everyone that the jockeying for presidential primary position in the post-Trump era \u2014 in both major parties \u2014 has already begun. Ambitious contenders are seizing on book deals, magazine profiles, podcast appearances, policy pronouncements and more than a few low-key beefs to find the spotlight and try to elbow into what will be a crowded race.<\/p>\n
So which potential 2028ers jockeyed the best in 2025?<\/p>\n
In the spirit of this year\u2019s \u201cFIFA Peace Prize \u2014 Football Unites the World\u201d\u00a0award delivered to Trump, POLITICO Magazine is ready to bestow trophies on some of the likeliest presidential contenders. Here are the Democrats and Republicans eyeing the White House who spent the past year maneuvering \u2014 some better than others.<\/p>\n
Let the ceremony commence!<\/p>\n
In 2025, sometimes Gavin Newsom made Democrats mad. Sometimes Gavin Newsom made Democrats exhilarated. But more than any other potential Democratic presidential candidate, Gavin Newsom made Democrats think about Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n
He made them mad when he invited the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk on his podcast and said \u201cI completely agree with you\u201d on barring transgender women from competing in women\u2019s sports. Ditto for when Newsom was asked in April about the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in flagrant violation of a court order; he downplayed it as \u201cthe distraction of the day\u201d and suggested Democrats should resist talking about immigration because it\u2019s an \u201c80-20 issue\u201d for Republicans.<\/p>\n
But many Democrats thrilled to his adoption of a bombastic social media strategy that walked a fine line between parodying and emulating Trump. And he delighted partisans by jumping into the redistricting war Trump started, successfully convincing California voters to pass a ballot initiative suspending the state\u2019s independent redistricting commission and redrawing district lines to favor Democratic candidates.<\/p>\n
The net result of all of Newsom\u2019s frenetic activity is that, despite being based 3,000 miles away from Washington, Newsom has unofficially achieved the status of the party\u2019s chief attack dog \u2014 and arguable\u00a02028 Democratic frontrunner.<\/p>\n
The proof is in the polls, in which Newsom is the only potential Democratic nominee who has shown clear momentum. During the first five months of the year, Newsom was mired in single digits. Since then, he\u2019s consistently earned double-digit support and has led polls sampled by\u00a0Yahoo\/YouGov,\u00a0Emerson College\u00a0and\u00a0AtlasIntel.<\/p>\n
Kamala Harris had a busy year, writing and promoting her 2024 campaign memoir\u00a0107 Days<\/em>, which quickly became a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0best-seller and sold more than 600,000 copies. Her book tour was a success too; as the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>observed, \u201cOnly two politicians in America have pulled off nationwide tours this year and\u00a0packed so many venues\u201d \u2014 Sen. Bernie Sanders and Harris.<\/p>\n Yet the former vice president saw her potential 2028 standing ebb. In the first eight 2028 primary polls sampled this year, Harris led in six, averaging 27 percent share of support. In the last eight, she led in three and averaged 21 percent support.<\/p>\n Why the slippage? Likely because Harris spent most of the year looking backward, performing an autopsy on her 2024 presidential campaign and picking some intra-party fights in the process.<\/p>\n Harris never distanced herself from President Joe Biden during the campaign, but did air some tensions between them in her book, and wrote \u201cat 81, Joe got tired.\u201d Critics wondered why she hadn\u2019t acknowledged reality before.<\/p>\n She also rage-baited Josh Shapiro, writing that the Pennsylvania governor \u201cmused that he would want to be in the room for every decision\u201d during her running mate vetting process. That prompted Shapiro to accuse Harris, in\u00a0an interview\u00a0with\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>, of \u201cblatant lies\u201d to \u201csell books and cover her ass.\u201d And she rankled former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg by saying she passed over him for veep because she thought pairing a Black woman with a gay man was \u201ctoo big of a risk,\u201d adding that Buttigieg \u201cknew that \u2014 to our mutual sadness.\u201d After publication,\u00a0Buttigieg told POLITICO\u00a0he was \u201csurprised\u201d to read that and retorted, \u201cThe way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you\u2019re going to do for their lives, not on categories.\u201d<\/p>\n Harris even threw shade at the entire party\u2019s record of delivering for voters at a December speech before the Democratic National Committee, declaring \u201cboth parties have failed to hold the public\u2019s trust.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether a former vice president can, in the eyes of voters, sufficiently separate herself from the Washington establishment, remains to be seen. But by spending so much energy on the past, she wasn\u2019t putting in as much time taking on Trump or offering an alternative vision for the future.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a reason why Newsom gained ground and Harris lost ground this year; he seized the mantle of chief attack dog and she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Pete Buttigieg maintained a campaign-lite schedule in 2025, participating in an Iowa town hall and making appearances on right-leaning podcasts \u2014 burnishing a reputation as a smooth debater able to connect with red-state voters. (In case anyone missed the point of such appearances, Buttigieg wrote a Substack post titled,\u00a0\u201cWhy I Sat Down for a Two-Hour Podcast That Recently Hosted Trump.\u201d)<\/p>\n After ending his four-year stint as Transportation secretary, he and his family left Washington for Michigan, where he passed on running for open seats for governor or senator, a sign he\u2019s interested in a bigger prize like the presidency. He also grew a salt-and-pepper beard, which could help the soon-to-be 44-year-old shake the perception that he\u2019s too young to be Commander-in-Chief.<\/p>\n What he didn\u2019t do in 2025 is anything to address his biggest political weakness: scant support among Black and Latino voters.<\/p>\n In an August poll from\u00a0Emerson College gauging\u00a0Democratic support for 2028 possibilities, Buttigeig earned a promising second place with 16 percent. Yet the number of African American respondents who said they support Buttigieg was zero. Not that the percentage of support for Buttigieg among Black people rounded down to zero. Literally zero African Americans contacted by Emerson said they supported Buttigieg. And the number of Hispanic respondents was only slightly better: one.\u00a0Every Democratic presidential nominee since Michael Dukakis in 1988 has needed Black support, particularly Southern Black support, to secure a sufficient number of delegates.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Buttigieg\u2019s support was heavily consolidated among the college-educated, with little support from voters with only high school diplomas or vocational degrees. He remains a\u00a0quintessential \u201cwine track\u201d candidate, and such candidates have often struggled to win the Democratic nomination. Buttigieg ends another year as a contender but without a clear path to forging a diverse base of support.<\/p>\n Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist insurgent who had once been known for encouraging primary challenges to Democratic House incumbents, continued her intra-party fence-mending operation in 2025. Last year, she began paying dues to her party\u2019s House campaign arm for the first time. She also gave a full-throated endorsement to Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention when others in democratic socialist circles were withholding support to protest the Biden administration\u2019s military support for Israel\u2019s war with Hamas.<\/p>\n This year she helped raise money for the Democratic nominee for the governor of Virginia, Abigail Spangberger, a moderate who has disparaged the \u201csocialist\u201d label that Ocasio-Cortez still dons with pride.<\/p>\n She also solidified her position as the unofficial heir to the democratic socialist movement built up by Bernie Sanders\u2019 two presidential campaigns by joining the 84-year-old Vermont independent for 11 stops on his\u00a0Fighting Oligarchy tour, which took her to the early primary state of Nevada and the swing state of Arizona.<\/p>\n In another nod to the left, Ocasio-Cortez also didn\u2019t suppress her frustration in November when a faction of Senate Democrats broke ranks to end the government shutdown without a deal to renew expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.<\/p>\n With Sanders unlikely to run for president a third time, and with the socialist left\u2019s new favorite \u2014 New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani \u2014 ineligible to run for president (he was born in Uganda), Ocasio-Cortez would likely have the democratic socialist lane all to herself if she chose to run for president.<\/p>\n She may decide not to. Perhaps she sees running against the aging, battle-scarred Chuck Schumer in 2028 as the safer bet or that staying in the House is the safest choice of all. And the question remains whether the socialist lane has grown big enough to win a Democratic presidential primary, let alone the presidency. But Ocasio-Cortez ends 2025 well positioned to finance and staff a presidential campaign, which is more than what most potential candidates can usually say this early in the process.<\/p>\n One thing Ocasio-Cortez still does not have on her resume is a signature legislative achievement, which another progressive House Democrat reportedly eyeing the presidency notched this year.<\/p>\n Teaming up with a small band of renegade Republicans, Rep. Ro Khanna helped round up a majority of House members to sign a discharge petition and force a vote \u2014 against Speaker Mike Johnson\u2019s wishes \u2014 on legislation mandating the Justice Department release documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. The bill then sailed through the House and Senate, cornering Trump and compelling his signature. Khanna now has a bipartisan success story to tout on the presidential campaign trail as evidence he can take on Trump and win.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not only more than Ocasio-Cortez can say, but also more than what any Senate Democrat can say they did in 2025.<\/p>\n Potential presidential candidates from the Senate Democratic Caucus, lacking obvious legislative options to distinguish themselves, tended to embrace symbolic acts of defiance. Some had better success than others.<\/p>\n Back in March,\u00a0Cory Booker of New Jersey delivered the longest floor speech in Senate history, holding court for over 25 hours and calling attention to the harsh impacts of Trump\u2019s policies on everyday Americans. In the moment, he received accolades from progressives hungering for some signs of fight, but nine months later, good luck finding someone who remembers anything Booker said.<\/p>\n Last month, Arizona\u2019s Mark Kelly and Michigan\u2019s Elissa Slotkin \u2014 two senators with national security backgrounds who represent battleground states \u2014 joined four House Democrats to\u00a0deliver a video message urging members of the military to refuse to follow illegal orders. Trump accused them of treason and suggested they should be executed, giving the Democrats a year-end publicity bump as they refused to back down in multiple interviews. But that media attention is also beginning to fade.<\/p>\n More substantively, Sen. Ruben Gallego, who also represents Arizona, made a small splash in May when he unveiled a comprehensive immigration reform plan. His more provocative move came this month when Gallego sought to outflank Trump on his populist right with\u00a0a letter passive-agressively scolding the Trump administration\u00a0for approving 30,000 H-1B visas for tech companies seeking high-skilled foreign workers while those same companies laid off hundreds of thousands of American workers.<\/p>\n But the biggest risk Gallego took was back in January, when he\u00a0voted for the Laken Riley bill,\u00a0sought by Trump to require mandatory detention without bail of undocumented immigrants who were charged \u2014 but not necessarily convicted \u2014 of low-level crimes like shoplifting. Gallego was not the sole Democrat to cross party lines, or even the sole potential presidential aspirant. So did Kelly and Slotkin as well as Pennsylvania\u2019s John Fetterman. But Gallego stood out as he played up his vote as the product of \u201cthe perspective of working class Latinos from Arizona.\u201d<\/p>\n At the beginning of the year, most Democrats were still shell-shocked by Trump\u2019s election victory and were not inclined to harangue Gallego and others for trying to tack toward the political center. But Trump\u2019s record on immigrant detentions and deportations has since shocked the conscience of many Democrats, and public opinion of Trump\u2019s handling of immigration has gone\u00a0underwater. The Laken Riley vote taken in January 2025 may end up being a vulnerability once primary voters go to the polls in 2028.<\/p>\n Another 2025 Senate floor vote that could lead to future political repercussions was on the GENIUS Act. The legislation passed with bipartisan support and ostensibly was a bid to regulate a type of cryptocurrency called stablecoins, but it was\u00a0criticized by progressive financial reform advocates\u00a0as full of holes. In\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>, anti-Trump conservative\u00a0David Frum\u00a0argued that the new law could cause a chain of events leading to \u201cshocks that reverberate through the global financial system.\u201d Yet several potential Democratic 2028ers have their fingerprints on it, with Booker, Fetterman, Gallego, Slotkin and\u00a0Khanna voting\u00a0for the\u00a0final measure. If stablecoins destabilize the economy by 2028, this 2025 vote could loom large.<\/p>\n One Democratic senator interested in 2028 who steered clear of these two controversial bills: Connecticut\u2019s Chris Murphy. He also started a\u00a0political action committee\u00a0to help increase voter registration ahead of the 2026 midterms.\u00a0In a November speech\u00a0to Democrats in the traditionally early primary state of New Hampshire, he took some swipes at the Democratic Party establishment for poor messaging, and also complained the party has \u201cbecome kind of addicted to litmus tests, and that made us a pretty ideologically pure party, but it made us a losing party.\u201d Yet he hasn\u2019t been able to dramatically demonstrate how he would message differently and navigate the party\u2019s myriad interest groups.<\/p>\n As for Fetterman, we cannot offer him an A-for-Effort certificate this year. He has been defiant, but mainly toward fellow Democrats and the institution of the United States Senate itself. Early in the year he was\u00a0dinged\u00a0for high rates of\u00a0absenteeism, though he has missed\u00a0fewer votes since April. A\u00a0searing profile\u00a0in\u00a0New York<\/em>\u00a0magazine citing former staff members raised questions about his mental fitness.\u00a0Recent polling\u00a0of\u00a0Pennsylvania voters\u00a0shows Fetterman deeply underwater with Democrats and newly popular among Republicans. He gave cryptic answers to\u00a0NOTUS<\/em>\u00a0when asked about a presidential bid, including, \u201cAccept the mystery. 2028 is gonna be crazy.\u201d But there is no mystery. Any hope he could win a Democratic presidential nomination is gone. Getting through a Senate primary may be hard enough.<\/p>\n While Ocasio-Cortez likely would not have to worry about competing against a fellow democratic socialist, she may have to worry about getting crowded out of the progressive populist lane, and by a billionaire no less: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.<\/p>\n Unlike Newsom and some other Democrats, Pritzker hasn\u2019t tried to recalibrate at all on immigration or trangender issues. During Trump\u2019s first week back in office, Pritzker promised his state would \u201cstand in the way of an unconstitutional order\u201d related to immigration, and later waged legal battles to thwart Trump\u2019s Chicago deployment of the National Guard. He\u2019s ending the year by signing a bill that expands the state\u2019s sanctuary laws.<\/p>\n In a\u00a0fiery speech to members of the New Hampshire Democratic Party\u00a0in April, Pritzker charged \u201cdo-nothing Democrats\u201d with \u201cwant[ing] to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants \u2014 instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Pritzker is only registering middling single-digit numbers in 2028 primary polls. That makes him little different from every other White House-curious Democratic governor not named Gavin, including Pennsylvania\u2019s\u00a0Josh Shapiro, Minnesota\u2019s\u00a0Tim Walz, Kentucky\u2019s\u00a0Andy Beshear,\u00a0Maryland\u2019s\u00a0Wes Moore, Michigan\u2019s\u00a0Gretchen Whitmer\u00a0and Hawaii\u2019s\u00a0Josh Green.<\/p>\n Each had their moment in the spotlight, for better or worse, over the course of 2025. Green, a medical doctor,\u00a0called for the resignation\u00a0of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because of his \u201canti-vaccine ideology.\u201d Whitmer suffered an awkward moment,\u00a0covering her face with a folder\u00a0during an unscheduled Oval Office photo-op with Trump. Beshear was named the chair of the Democratic Governors Association and used his new perch to\u00a0pen a\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0op-ed\u00a0offering advice on how Democrats can woo rural voters. Moore, the only African American currently serving as governor,\u00a0vetoed a bill to study reparations for slavery.\u00a0Walz is dealing with the\u00a0fallout of a scandal\u00a0in which fraudulent entities billed the state government for social services that weren\u2019t delivered, prompting Trump to scapegoat \u2014 and Walz to defend \u2014 Minnesota\u2019s Somali American community. Shapiro, in April, was the\u00a0target of an arsonist\u00a0who blamed the Jewish governor for the deaths of Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war, and he ended the year with a major\u00a0profile treatment in\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n Two incoming governors could also spark fresh presidential buzz. New Jersey\u2019s Mikie Sherill and Virginia\u2019s Abigail Spanberger each have strong national security resumes and each won their 2025 elections with impressive margins. But they won\u2019t be in office long before needing to make a decision about pursuing the presidency.<\/p>\n Several governors convened this month for a DGA conference and\u00a0talked up\u00a0the value of having an accomplished, outside-the-Beltway government executive lead the 2028 ticket. But if they want that person to not be Newsom, they\u2019re going to have to find a way to outdo Newsom\u2019s considerable attention-grabbing skills.<\/p>\n This award is in memory of Woodrow Wilson\u2019s vice president, Thomas Marshall, who famously said, \u201cOnce there were two brothers. One ran away to sea. The other was elected vice president. And nothing was ever heard of either of them again.”<\/p>\n We kid. Readers of my\u00a0past year-end presidential primary scorecards\u00a0know I\u2019m usually bullish on current and former vice presidents. In the modern primary era, the only veeps who ran and never secured their party\u2019s nomination \u2014 Mike Pence and Dan Quayle \u2014 were boxed out, respectively, by their former running mate and former running mate\u2019s son. Otherwise, primary voters are highly inclined to treat vice presidents as heirs apparent.<\/p>\n JD Vance ends 2025 having made great progress with forging the traditional bond vice presidents have with primary voters.\u00a0In every GOP primary poll taken this yearVance is the runaway leader, often clearing or nearing 50 percent support, even when Trump\u2019s eldest son Don Jr. is added to the mix. The tragically widowed Erika Kirk who now runs Turning Point USA gave Vance an early Christmas present by\u00a0pledging her support\u00a0for his assumed 2028 campaign.<\/p>\n Vice presidents typically struggle to distinguish themselves while playing second banana to their presidents. And Trump hasn\u2019t exactly helped his underling by occasionally giving him equal billing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In October, while\u00a0talking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump mused aloud about the 2028 primary: \u201cWe have JD obviously. The vice president is great. Marco\u2019s great. I\u2019m not sure if anybody would run against those two. I think if they formed a group it would be unstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n But Vance has learned how to emulate Trump\u2019s all-publicity-is-good-publicity approach to politics with a steady stream of provocative statements \u2014 from demeaning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as \u201cdisrespectful\u201d in the Oval Office in February to publicly urging his Hindu wife to convert to Christianity in November to declaring that under the Trump administration, \u201cyou don\u2019t have to apologize for being white anymore\u201d in December.<\/p>\n As with Trump, Vance\u2019s incessantly confrontational posture comes with a downside: weak favorability among the broader electorate. In mid-December,\u00a0Vance\u2019s favorability in the\u00a0Real Clear Politics\u00a0<\/em>average\u00a0was a limp 40.6 percent, nearly six points lower than his average unfavorability. Vance will begin any presidential campaign as a polarizing figure, which is hardly fatal in our social media-driven political era, but could make him vulnerable if a 2026 midterm blue wave prompts rank-and-file Republicans to seek out candidates who are not fully in the Trump mold.<\/p>\n Almost 10 years ago, Rubio roasted Trump\u00a0on the campaign trail: \u201cHe\u2019s not going to make America great, he\u2019s going to make America orange,\u201d and \u201cYou know what they say about men with small hands? You can\u2019t trust them!\u201d Turning serious, Rubio said, \u201cI will never allow the conservative movement to be taken over by a con artist.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio\u2019s antagonism was fleeting. Once Trump became president, Rubio became a dutiful soldier in the Senate. And though Trump abandoned the hawkish internationalist foreign policy of the conservative movement, Rubio gamely accepted Trump\u2019s second-term offer to lead the State Department and implement his foreign policy.<\/p>\n Rubio\u2019s inclination toward submission is seemingly paying off. He\u2019s become an influential force in the administration and Trump has even suggested Rubio could be the next president, slighting Vance and maybe some of his offspring. Yet true to form, instead of feeding the notion he is interested in jousting with Vance for the 2028 nomination,\u00a0Rubio has reportedly told confidants that he would support Vance in 2028.\u00a0That would be a canny move if he wants to become the running mate of the likely nominee, and if he\u2019s willing to wait until 2032 or 2036 to slake his longstanding presidential thirst.<\/p>\n Yet beneath the surface, tensions may exist. During the infamous\u00a0Vanity Fair\u00a0<\/em>photo shoot, Vance\u00a0jokingly offered the photographer\u00a0$1,000 if he made Rubio\u2019s picture worse than his.<\/p>\n More substantively, Vance is deeply committed to an \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy that deprioritizes human rights concerns abroad and degrades the NATO alliance (\u201cI just hate bailing Europe out again\u201d Vance privately told top Trump officials in the infamous Signal chats that inadvertently included a journalist).<\/p>\n Amid some appearances that Rubio pulled the U.S. back from a Russia-favored plan to end the war in Ukraine and has helped push a militaristic regime change strategy in Venezuela,\u00a0suspicions are growing\u00a0among America First adherents that Rubio hasn\u2019t fully converted.<\/p>\n All this is to say that Rubio\u2019s standing on the right may be shakier than Trump\u2019s 2028 musings otherwise suggest. Nevertheless, being mentioned in Trump\u2019s musings is better than not.<\/p>\n At least, I\u2019m sure Don Jr. feels that way.<\/p>\n As fans of\u00a0Death by Lightning<\/em>\u00a0and the James Garfield presidency know, Roscoe Conkling was an imperious Republican senator from New York and defender of the spoils system. When Garfield wouldn\u2019t appoint Conkling allies to key posts, Conkling huffily resigned with the belief he would be swiftly re-appointed by the New York State legislature in a show of his political strength. The plan backfired when the legislature snubbed him and his political career ended.<\/p>\n Now Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has resigned her seat after locking horns with Trump. Will her counter-intuitive flex fare any better than Conkling\u2019s? There\u2019s reason to think it could.<\/p>\n Greene\u2019s close relationship with Trump imploded as she increasingly criticized Trump and Republican Party leadership for failing to address expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies and resisting release of the Epstein files.<\/p>\n But what seemed to be Trump\u2019s last straw was\u00a0an interview with NBC News\u00a0published on Nov. 14 in which Greene lambasted Trump\u2019s focus on global affairs. NBC provocatively headlined the story: \u201cRep. Marjorie Taylor Greene questions if Trump is still the \u2018America First\u2019 president.\u201d Hours after the story published,\u00a0Trump publicly rescinded his endorsement of Greene and branded her a \u201ctraitor.\u201d\u00a0One week later, Greene announced her resignation from the House, effective Jan. 5.<\/p>\n The resignation can easily be viewed as a sign of Trump\u2019s strength and Greene\u2019s weakness, a recognition by Greene that she might not survive a Trump-backed primary challenger for her current House seat. But Greene remained popular in her district, and she may be thinking a few steps ahead.<\/p>\n She has insisted she has no plans to run for president. But post-resignation announcement, she has embarked on quite a media tour for someone with no intention of running for something. And she has flatly said she isn\u2019t running for governor or senator this year. That leaves one other office above her current station.<\/p>\n In resigning, Greene also staked out ideological territory occupied by few others in elective politics: the America First purist unmoored to Trump. She even went so far as to distinguish America First from MAGA during her recent\u00a060 Minutes\u00a0<\/em>interview\u00a0with CBS News\u2019 Lesley Stahl:<\/p>\n STAHL: Are you MAGA?<\/em><\/p>\n GREENE: I\u2019m America First.<\/em><\/p>\n STAHL: And that\u2019s not the same as MAGA?<\/em><\/p>\n GREENE: MAGA is President Trump\u2019s phrase. That\u2019s his, his political policies. I call myself America First.<\/em><\/p>\n STAHL: But you\u2019re, you\u2019re not saying you\u2019re MAGA. That\u2019s over.<\/em><\/p>\n GREENE: I\u2019m America First. Yep.<\/em><\/p>\n The challenge for Greene going forward is convincing more rank-and-file Republicans that Trump, as well as Vance, aren\u2019t America First enough and she is the true keeper-of-the-flame. If Republicans begin to sour on Trump following a rough 2026 midterm election, yet aren\u2019t interested in returning the party to its traditionally conservative roots, Greene will be well positioned to take advantage.<\/p>\n Granted, it may take a colossal midterm shellacking to convince rank-and-file Republicans to seek out the absolute antithesis of Donald Trump. But in that scenario, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox will be waiting for them with fresh baked cookies and hot chocolate.<\/p>\n I say that because in 2020\u00a0Cox gave protesters in front of his house fresh baked cookies and hot chocolate.<\/p>\n Cox has long cultivated a reputation for political civility, which was put to the test in 2025 under horrific circumstances when conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered in his state.<\/p>\n While Trump was trying to exploit the assassination to broadly tar the \u201cradical left,\u201d\u00a0Cox used the unwelcome spotlight to reject such divisive tactics: \u201cAt some point we have to find an off-ramp, or else it\u2019s going to get much worse.\u201d He saved his blame for social media and urged people to \u201clog off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.\u201d<\/p>\n In November, Cox announced a deal to\u00a0publish a book on reducing political polarization. And he ended the year by joining Shapiro for a bipartisan forum on\u00a0\u201cFinding Common Ground\u201d that was televised on NBC, where he continued to pile on social media companies for monetizing division: \u201cThese are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the history of the world, and they\u2019re profiting off of destroying our kids and destroying our country, and they know it, and it\u2019s very intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n Upon announcing the book deal and in his NBC appearance, Cox insisted he isn\u2019t running for president. And maybe he means it. Regardless, intentionally or not, he is carving out a place in the 2028 primary for a type of Republican not seen leading the party since the last guy not named Trump won the nomination \u2014 another nice guy with Utah ties named Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n If Marjorie Taylor Greene is blazing her own path by daring to criticize Trump\u2019s foreign policy, Ted Cruz is trying to do the same by\u00a0criticizing Tucker Carlson\u2019s foreign policy. It\u2019s not quite as politically daring, though it does represent an attempt to sharply shift the Republican Party\u2019s platform back toward hawkish internationalism.\u00a0Axios\u00a0<\/em>reported that Cruz\u2019s forthright support of Israel and denouncement of Carlson\u2019s platforming of the antisemite Nick Fuentes has\u00a0impressed some in the GOP donor class.<\/p>\n Cruz took another indirect swipe at Trump by\u00a0chastising Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr\u00a0for pressuring ABC to cancel the late-night talk show of Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel, and even threatened to roll back FCC powers.<\/p>\n He has also built up a significant audience who listen to his thrice-a-week podcast\u00a0Verdict with Ted Cruz.\u00a0<\/em>Ben Jacobs noted in POLITICO Magazine last month that the podcast gets up to\u00a02 million monthly downloads, more than three times the size of Newsom\u2019s.<\/p>\n Yet Newsom\u2019s average poll share of the Democratic primary electorate is 10 times the size of Cruz\u2019s on the Republican side. Polls may not be the equivalent of votes, but they are closer to it than downloads. For Cruz to be so far back in the pack, after a past presidential run and more than a decade of chasing headlines, suggests that Republican voters simply may not buy what he\u2019s trying to sell.<\/p>\n While Democrats boast about their deep bench of governors, Republican governors in 2025 largely went missing.<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s once-omnipresent-now-term-limited\u00a0Ron DeSantis began 2025 pushing the idea his wife Casey could succeed him next year. Then came\u00a0allegations\u00a0that the governor illegally funneled $10 million from a Medicaid settlement into a nonprofit organization run by Casey DeSantis before most of it ended up with a political action committee opposing a ballot initiative to legalize cannabis. No one yet has been charged with committing a crime, but an\u00a0ongoing investigation\u00a0is not a great backdrop to a gubernatorial campaign (even though Donald Trump might differ), and we haven\u2019t seen Casey DeSantis take steps to launch one.<\/p>\n We used to see a lot more of Georgia\u2019s Brian Kemp when he was facing Trump\u2019s wrath about the 2020 vote count. And Kemp won real notice by winning re-nomination in 2022 despite Trump\u2019s backing of a primary challenger. But since Trump won Georgia in 2024 there\u2019s less for the two to argue over.<\/p>\n Having worked in Trump\u2019s first-term White House before getting elected governor in Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was already a national figure. In August, she raised the eyebrows of election watchers when she headlined a Republican event in the\u00a0early primary state of South Carolina. But the speech lacked any newsworthy content and was quickly forgotten.<\/p>\n Two months prior she did something few Republicans try to do: get an op-ed published in\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>.\u00a0Sanders bragged to the coastal elite readers about being the first governor in the country to enact antitrust law that prevents pharmacy benefit managers \u2014 who negotiate drug prices between pharmacies and insurance companies \u2014 from owning pharmacies with which they\u2019re supposed to negotiate. It\u2019s a novel policy solution to address rising health care costs. But we have little evidence that\u2019s what Republican voters are looking for.<\/p>\n Finally, Virginia\u2019s Glenn Youngkin sparked presidential buzz four years ago when he upset former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. But Youngkin\u2019s star faded as he hemmed and hawed about running for president last year and as he failed to turn Virginia\u2019s legislature red. Meanwhile, Trump lost the state last November and his lieutenant governor lost the race to succeed him this November.<\/p>\n Youngkin is now spending his final month in office squabbling with Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger over the state\u2019s universities. Democrats won court decisions that effectively\u00a0prevented Youngkin from filling 22 board positions\u00a0at three higher institutions, including five at the University of Virginia, before Spanberger is sworn in. But at Youngkin\u2019s urging and over Spanberger\u2019s objection, the University of Virginia board is moving to name a new president before those vacancies are filled. One last stick-in-the-eye to Democrats would probably give Youngkin a fresh round of accolades from conservatives, but that\u2019s well short of what he needs to join the top tier of 2028ers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Trump Organization may sell Trump 2028 hats, but even President Donald Trump bowed to the Constitution and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2532,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions\/2532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Running in Place Award<\/h5>\n
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg<\/h6>\n
Excellence in Socialism and Bridge-Building Prize<\/h5>\n
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/h6>\n
The \u2018Got a Bill Signed Into Law\u2019 Blue Ribbon<\/h5>\n
Rep. Ro Khanna<\/h6>\n
A-For-Effort Certificates<\/h5>\n
Senate Category:<\/h6>\n
Cory Booker, Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Ruben Gallego and Chris Murphy<\/h6>\n
A-For-Effort Certificates<\/h5>\n
Governor category:<\/h6>\n
JB Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Andy Beshear, Wes Moore, Gretchen Whitmer, and Josh Green<\/h6>\n
THE REPUBLICANS<\/h4>\n
The Thomas Marshall Prize for Vice Presidential Existence<\/h5>\n
Vice President JD Vance<\/h6>\n
The Eager Sidekick Award<\/h5>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/h6>\n
The Roscoe Conkling Award for Achievement in Resignation<\/h5>\n
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/h6>\n
The Profile in Niceness Prize<\/h5>\n
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox<\/h6>\n
Plaque for Potentially Delusional Persistence<\/h5>\n
Sen. Ted Cruz<\/h6>\n
The Milk Carton Award for Missing Politicians<\/h5>\n
Governor Category:<\/h6>\n
Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Glenn Youngkin<\/h6>\n