We now officially begin the “Will Glenn Youngkin run for president in 2028?” watch.
We’ve been through this before, back in 2022 and 2023, when the then-governor of Virginia was being courted by some major donors to seek the Republican nomination.
He didn’t, and that likely was a wise decision. The term of a Virginia governor doesn’t line up well with the timeline for a presidential run. We’ve had only one sitting governor seek the presidency — Douglas Wilder — and that didn’t work out well. His popularity at home sank; Virginians felt he was ignoring them. The length of a serious presidential campaign has only grown longer since.
By not running, Youngkin was able to leave the governorship with decent approval ratings: 51% in the midst of last year’s campaign to succeed him, in a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
Not running also spared Youngkin the wrath of getting on the wrong side of Donald Trump, who, in hindsight, was clearly unstoppable for the Republican nomination in 2024.
There’s one thing I got wrong, though. Shortly before the 2024 presidential election, I wrote that Youngkin’s best shot at the presidency would be if Trump lost that year. It turns out his best shot may come because Trump won — and now has such terrible approval ratings that the midterms have resulted in a massive electoral repudiation that has cost Republicans in such unlikely places as Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas.
My theory in 2024 was that, if Trump won the presidency, Youngkin would be blocked because Vice President JD Vance would be the prohibitive frontrunner for the 2028 Republican nomination.
Now Vance’s prospects are in serious jeopardy. Don’t take my word for this. Let’s go instead with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who posted last week on social media: “The scale of the Republican defeat is so great that it makes the race for the GOP presidential nomination wide open. If the administration had won a big victory, Vice President JD Vance would have had an enormous argument to be the inevitable nominee. Now, with this go-slow strategy blowing up in Iran and his defense of Vivek Ramaswamy’s horrible, inhumane ad featuring his opponent’s mother attacking her own daughter, a good bit of the luster has come off the bloom.”
Vance certainly is not out of the picture, but the political dynamics today are different than they were a few weeks ago. Vance has now broken with the administration on the Iran war; that may be both politically smart and politically risky. It’s very rare to see an open split between a president and vice president, especially on such an important issue. Meanwhile, Trump has seemed to distance himself from Vance by saying there may be others who will seek the nomination. We all know how forgiving Trump is of those who cross him.
There are, of course, other big names: Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought the Republican nomination in 2016 (and made his last stand in the Virginia primary, which he lost narrowly to Trump). “The number of people who want to draft Secretary of State Marco Rubio is staggering,” Gingrich posted.
Then Gingrich listed some other possibilities: “In addition, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, Pete Hegseth, Glenn Youngkin, and a surprising number of people may decide this is their chance to take advantage of the chaos of the shocking defeat and seek to be the champion who can rescue the party and the country.”
Gingrich is hardly the sole authority on Republican presidential prospects, but I cite him since he’s such a big name, is so dismissive of Vance and mentions Youngkin.
He’s hardly alone. So has almost everyone else who has tried to look at what lies ahead; the only question is how high Youngkin ranks. Most put him in the “others” category, although The Hill recently put him in the top five — coming in at fifth after Vance, Rubio, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz has a slight complication: If he were elected, the newly elected Democratic governor of Texas would be the one who appoints his successor to fill out his term. “Vote for me and get a new Democratic senator from Texas” may not be the most appealing campaign pitch.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a letter from a Texas Republican that was headlined “Send Glenn Youngkin to the White House.” That letter-writer from Dallas said, “As a conservative-leaning moderate, I think that former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin should run for president in 2028. It’s his time. We’re finally through our MAGA nonsense. Americans would like an adult in the White House. We’d like someone who doesn’t yell at rivals in all caps online and who doesn’t blow up institutions and norms that have held our country together for decades. We’d like someone who will treat inflation seriously, empower educational excellence and tackle the national debt. America needs a leader who will work across the aisle, overhaul legal immigration to attract the brightest minds and enforce the border, but with due process and without needless cruelty.”
Unfortunately for Youngkin supporters, that case for Youngkin may also be the case against him in some Republican quarters. It’s unclear whether Republicans really are through with “MAGA nonsense” or whether they want a more stable champion for that agenda than Trump has been. It’s also unclear how much Republicans want to “overhaul legal immigration to attract the brightest minds.”
Right now, it’s unclear just what kind of party the Republican Party wants to be. Trump has remade the party in ways that make it unrecognizable from the party of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was pro-immigration, anti-Soviet. Rhetorically, much of the Republican Party today has become anti-interventionist, perhaps even isolationist. Trump has had the government take stakes in private companies, something we’d once have called socialism. How much will Trump’s grip on the party relax over the next two years? Even if it does, to what extent will Republicans snap back to a previous era — or is there no going back?
Youngkin would likely be a strong general election candidate for Republicans in 2028; his challenge is winning acceptance from hard-core party activists. He profiles in a way that makes him come across to some as a moderate-conservative. That could be anathema to many Republican activists. Where Youngkin actually fits on a national spectrum is open to question. When he was governor, we often heard Democrats complain that he ran as a moderate but turned MAGA in office. I’m not sure either was true; he governed pretty much as I expected, but I have a unique vantage point on Virginia politics. As with many things, perception matters more than reality. Politically, I’d score Youngkin’s main advantage as his Reaganesque optimism, but it’s unclear whether that fits what Republican activists want. We’re in an era where, sadly, anger sells. (I reached out to Youngkin through four different channels to talk to him about the election but never heard back.)
Both parties run a risk in 2028: Their activists may want things that the general public does not, yet it’s the activists who nominate the candidates. The danger for Republicans is that their party base may want a hard-core conservative who snarls, but the general public may just want a normal conservative who smiles, at least occasionally. The danger for Democrats is that activists may want someone much further to the left of where the country is. All parties eventually overreach; that’s why majorities change back and forth. Democrats could easily make the mistake of thinking that they have won a mandate for policies they didn’t run on; they ran on the economy and against Trump. Yes, they have now won impressive majorities in both the House and Senate, but they should remember that the bigger their majority is, the more it’s the result of wins in places that don’t normally vote Democratic — and may not again if the party goes too far. Those are the legislators the party needs to protect if Democrats want to retain their majority.
One advantage that Democrats have over the next two years is that they won’t be able to do much. They can pass lots of bills, but Trump will likely veto many of them. That means Democrats may not have to pay a price for enacting a particular policy, but Republicans will still be tethered to the economy and whatever bad things happen around the world, whether they really deserve the blame or not. Still, Democrats should not assume that simply because they won a Watergate-level repudiation this year that the presidency is theirs for the taking in two years. Back in 1974, Republicans suffered widespread defeats across the country; two years later, they came within 9,246 votes of retaining the presidency with Gerald Ford (had those votes shifted in the right states).
Both parties might also want to take note of this history: Democrats won because, in Jimmy Carter, they nominated a new face and not one of their most left-leaning options; Republicans almost won because, in Gerald Ford, they nominated someone who would never be confused with Richard Nixon. Had Ford not pardoned Nixon, he could have claimed a complete break from the disgraced former president and likely would have won.
One thing is clear: The 2028 presidential race has already begun.
Three days after the election, Youngkin was on CNBC. He posted the interview on social media, with the note: “Democrats should not view Tuesday’s election results as a mandate to pursue a far-left agenda that is out of step with American values. Americans are angry about the cost of living, and Washington needs to get to work addressing it.”
Maybe that’s just Youngkin stating the obvious, or maybe he’s test-driving a message. We’ll see over the coming months.
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