Kamala Harris will spend the final stretch of the midterm campaign, from Oct. 21 to Oct. 30, crisscrossing the country for Democratic nominees. Her schedule runs through Nevada, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Georgia, plus a virtual event in Florida. Three stops fall in early states on Democrats’ 2028 calendar. The former vice president isn’t hiding why that matters. “I’m thinking about it,” said Harris, the party’s late-breaking nominee in 2024, who lost the general election to Donald Trump two years ago.
Harris says she’s focused on helping Democrats win in November. She hasn’t ruled out another run.
Who’s on the Ticket
The midterms are officially about electing 36 governors and 470 members of Congress. The candidates Harris is boosting would break barriers if they win. In Nevada on Oct. 21, she’ll appear with Aaron Ford, the state’s first Black attorney general, who would become its first Black governor. She’ll also meet Culinary Workers Union members. Nevada holds the second 2028 presidential nominating contest, after South Carolina.
On Oct. 22, she heads to Mississippi to campaign with Scott Colom, who would be the state’s first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction. Colom faces Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and has recently drawn more attention from national Democrats.
The New Hampshire stop on Oct. 24 pairs Harris with Senate nominee Chris Pappas for a discussion on reproductive care and abortion rights. As vice president, she was the Biden White House’s foremost abortion rights advocate, especially during the 2022 midterm campaign, four years ago. New Hampshire comes third in Democrats’ 2028 primary order. Harris and Wisconsin gubernatorial nominee David Crowley campaign together Oct. 26. She then finishes with a three-day swing in Georgia beginning Oct. 28, joining Sen. Jon Ossoff, attending voter protection events and delivering the keynote at the Fulton County Democratic Party’s annual gala in Atlanta on Oct. 30.
In Georgia, she’ll headline a virtual organizing event with Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon, who would be her state’s first Black U.S. senator. Nixon, a state lawmaker, identifies as a democratic socialist and draws support from left-flank activists who criticized Harris as too moderate in 2024. Harris most recently appeared in Michigan for Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, another notable progressive.
A Wide-Open Field
Harris isn’t alone. The days when early White House hopefuls had to play coy are over. Pete Buttigieg says he’s “more inclined than not” to run. He’s visited 37 states in the two years since leaving his job as transportation secretary when Trump took office, Politico calculated, and has campaigned in person for about half of the 100 candidates he’s endorsed. 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 have always supported his campaigns.
Harris leads early polls, but no dominant frontrunner defines the race. The lanes include about seven regularly mentioned governors, at least nine early Senate prospects, progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ro Khanna, and former officials such as Rahm Emanuel. Booker, Gallego, Moore, Newsom, Pritzker, Warnock, Beshear, Emanuel and Khanna have all had South Carolina on their fall itineraries. Sen. Mark Kelly has visited more than 15 states during the midterms.
Money is flowing, too. When Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa was gaining ground against Gov. Greg Abbott, she had just $4 million in the bank, according to Texas campaign records. The Democratic Governors Association, chaired by Beshear, and Pritzker each sent $1 million. A billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, Pritzker has given tens of millions outside Illinois, including to the House Majority PAC, the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, and Senate nominees Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Ossoff in Georgia.
A Party Arguing About Itself
Newsom has taken an early lead in confronting Trump. “The gravest threat to American democracy,” he said, warning Americans, “Wake up: You will lose your country.” He called Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles a “brazen abuse of power.” At an Oct. 5 Nebraska rally, Trump discussed the Iran war and said, “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” The White House said the president meant the cities were vulnerable, not that he was inviting an attack. “He is deranged and dangerous,” Newsom said, directing California’s State Threat Assessment Center “to actively monitor the situation in the event that foreign actors interpret the President’s remarks as an invitation to target California.”
Democrats are sparring among themselves, too. Pritzker has accused some in his party of lacking the backbone to counter GOP attacks on issues like transgender rights: “Those same do-nothing Democrats 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.”
Emanuel sees it differently. “We’ve lost the plot because the party got un-anchored,” he told a Fox News podcast, saying Democrats focused on culture wars instead of middle-class worries about the economy and education. He calls himself a “raging moderate” and has proposed restricting children’s access to social media and banning federal workers from betting on the predictions market.
Ocasio-Cortez points to candidates like El-Sayed as proof that bold progressive ideas can energize new voters. “We have written a check on the left, saying if you champion these policies that have popular support, we can win,” she said at a New York fundraiser leaked to ABC. “And now it is time to cash in.” Beshear makes the case for governors with records of solving problems and reaching across party lines: “I believe that our candidate should be a Democratic governor.”
On the Republican side, Vice President JD Vance is the presumptive 2028 nominee, though he’s likely to face challengers. He told NBC: “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz is running for president.”
Why This Matters:
The 2028 contest is already shaping the Democrats they put forward this November. Candidates who’d make history, like Colom, Ford and Nixon, are getting national attention and star power at a moment when abortion rights, labor and voter protection are on the ballot. The party’s internal fight is real: one side urges a pivot to the economy and education, while the other argues popular progressive policies can win. How that argument resolves will decide whose priorities, from workers’ rights to reproductive care, get a champion in 2028. And the money matters. When a challenger like Hinojosa has just $4 million, help from governors and party committees can shape whether a competitive race stays competitive.