GOP Insiders Look Past Trump’s Kingmaking Toward 2028

A week ago, Vice President JD Vance looked like the probable heir apparent to President Donald Trump. After Tuesday’s midterm losses, some in his party think he’ll have plenty of competition in the upcoming presidential race.  

The defeats have shaken the assumption that Trump will be able to hand-pick his successor, according to interviews with half a dozen Republican officials, strategists and people close to the White House. 

Some argue that the party’s historic losses will invite challengers like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to make the case that the party needs to “turn the page” from Trump. Others say the damage to the administration’s brand could follow Vance into a 2028 primary that one GOP consultant predicted could be “every bit as messy” as the Democrats’ contest.

A few see an upside: A wake-up call that forces the party to provide answers on issues like health care and foreign policy. 

“I think it means a more crowded field,” one former administration official told the Daily Signal. “I think what Republicans and what voters want is to feel heard, they want accountability.” 

An official who worked on the midterms agreed, and even named some potential candidates. 

“I think what [the midterm results] probably does on our side is it invites more challengers,” the official said. “If you’re Cruz, or DeSantis… you’re probably [thinking], ‘this is a sign I can come out and easily make a case that we need to turn the page.”

Over the past year, predictions of Trump’s successor mostly included two names: Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Vance appeared to pull ahead of Rubio after his book tour, his midterm campaign swing, and his speech at the midterm Republican National Convention. 

He remains the most likely Republican to enter the 2028 race, and his first public response to the losses read like an early pitch. In an X post on Wednesday, Vance wrote that pollsters pointed him to four issues the GOP needed to prioritize to win back voters: End the [Iran] war, focus on cost of living/inflation, put America First and change [America’s relationship to Israel].

Some Republican insiders say his candor helps him, even if he now has more opponents in the field. 

“I think it’s certainly posturing for 2028 to say, look, I was honest and clear eyed about why we lost,” one source close to the White House told the Daily Signal. 

The official who worked on the midterms called the vice president’s post “strong.”

“I think our side is always better at having an actual debate on ideas than the left is,” the official said. “Strangely, I might be a little more optimistic about ‘28 after [Tuesday.]”

Still, some Republicans worry the midterms proved that a tie to the Trump administration is a liability for candidates like Vance and Rubio. 

“I underestimated how toxic the admin brand is to America right now,” one GOP consultant told the Daily Signal in a text.

The electoral map may present an even greater problem for potential candidates. 

Democrats on Tuesday flipped Republican-held Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas. 

Texas is the party’s biggest worry at the moment. Democrats didn’t just gain a Senate seat there for the first time in decades; they did so by double-digits, also capturing the governor’s mansion and the state House, putting the state’s 40 Electoral College votes in question for the first time in a generation. 

The Midwest also presents issues for the GOP, which suffered major losses in Ohio and Iowa. Former President Barack Obama won both of those states twice before they swung sharply back to the right for Trump. In Ohio, Vance’s home state, Democrats won both the governorship and the Senate seat Vance once held.  

However, the new map could help 2028 hopefuls outside of the administration. DeSantis can point to Florida as one of the few states where Republicans held the line. Cruz has the advantage of being from Texas.

“Last night undoubtedly made the mechanics of winning in 2028 harder for Republicans,” former Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien told Politico after the midterms. 

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