Kamala Harris will spend Oct. 21 to Oct. 30 touring Nevada, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Georgia, with a virtual event in Florida thrown in. Her office shared the schedule first with The Associated Press. It takes her through several early states on the Democrats' 2028 calendar. The official reason: helping other Democrats win in November. The actual reason is hiding in plain sight. “I'm thinking about it,” said Harris, who lost the 2024 general election to Donald Trump two years ago.
Who Has the Power
The midterms are officially about electing 36 governors and 470 members of Congress. But the base reporting is blunt about what else is going on: Harris is “among a burgeoning group of prominent and wannabe prominent Democrats using this political season to pursue the 2028 presidential nomination.” The old protocol required early White House hopefuls to be coy. Those days are over. Pete Buttigieg admits he’s “more inclined than not” to run. Asked by USA TODAY for a reason he might not run, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear cited only objections from his family, then noted his wife and two children had always supported his campaigns.
The travel logs read like a résumé tour. Buttigieg has visited 37 states in the two years since he left his job as transportation secretary, and campaigned in person for about half of the 100 candidates he’s endorsed. His political action committee is called Win the Era. Booker, Gallego, Moore, Newsom, Pritzker, Warnock, Beshear, Emanuel and Khanna have all put South Carolina on their itineraries this fall. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly has visited more than 15 states during the midterms so far.
Money flows in the same direction as ambition. Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, gaining ground against Gov. Greg Abbott, had just $4 million in the bank when the Democratic Governors Association, chaired by Beshear, and Pritzker each sent $1 million. A billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, Pritzker has handed out tens of millions of dollars outside Illinois this cycle, to the House Majority PAC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Senate nominees Roy Cooper and Jon Ossoff.
What They’re Calling “Order”
While the hopefuls court donors and early-primary voters, they’re also fighting each other. Newsom has criticized Democrats for not doing more to confront Republicans. Pritzker blasted “do-nothing Democrats” who “want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants, instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.” Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff, says the party “lost the plot” and calls himself a “raging moderate.” Ocasio-Cortez, speaking at a New York fundraiser leaked to ABC, said: “We have written a check on the left, saying if you champion these policies that have popular support, we can win. And now it is time to cash in.”
The field, in the base article’s words, is “wide open and so is the direction of the party.” Harris leads early polls. No dominant frontrunner defines the race. Seven or so governors, at least nine early Senate prospects, progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna, and a handful of formers who want back in. Meanwhile, the GOP already has a presumptive nominee in Vice President JD Vance.
The Reform Trap
Newsom calls Trump “the gravest threat to American democracy” and his deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles a “brazen abuse of power.” At an Oct. 5 Nebraska rally, discussing the Iran war, Trump said: “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” The White House later said he meant the cities were vulnerable, not that he was inviting an attack. Newsom replied: “He is deranged and dangerous.” California’s State Threat Assessment Center now monitors whether foreign actors read the remarks as an invitation.
Harris will campaign alongside Nevada’s Aaron Ford, Mississippi’s Scott Colom and Florida’s Angie Nixon. Nixon identifies as a democratic socialist and draws support from left-flank activists who criticized Harris in 2024 as too moderate. Harris was the Biden White House’s foremost abortion rights advocate four years ago. She’ll hold a New Hampshire discussion on that topic Oct. 24. Then comes the Oct. 30 keynote at the Fulton County Democratic Party gala in Atlanta.
That’s the machinery: a billionaire’s checks, a party’s primary calendar, a rolling audition staged across states where people just want to know who’ll show up when the next crisis lands.