Kamala Harris will tour Nevada, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Georgia from Oct. 21 to Oct. 30, with a virtual event in Florida added to the schedule. Three stops fall on the Democratic Party’s early 2028 primary calendar. Harris says she’s going to help other Democrats win in November. The calendar tells another story.
Harris lost the 2024 general election to Donald Trump two years ago. She hasn’t ruled out another run. “I’m thinking about it,” she said. The midterms will elect 36 governors and 470 members of Congress. For Democrats eyeing 2028, they’ve become something closer to an audition.
The Calendar Tells the Story
Nevada holds the second 2028 presidential nominating contest, after South Carolina. New Hampshire comes third. Harris starts in Nevada on Oct. 21, wraps up her Georgia swing from Oct. 28 to Oct. 30, and visits New Hampshire on Oct. 24 for a discussion on reproductive care and abortion rights. Her office gave The Associated Press the schedule first.
She’s far from alone. Politico calculated that Pete Buttigieg has visited 37 states in the two years since Trump’s inauguration ended his job as transportation secretary. He’s campaigned in person for about half of the 100 candidates he has endorsed. His PAC is called Win the Era. He admits he’s “more inclined than not” to run. Michigan and Virginia, both early 2028 primary states, feature on his pre-election itinerary.
The rest of the field hasn’t been idle. Sens. Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego and Raphael Warnock, Govs. Wes Moore, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker and Andy Beshear, as well as Rahm Emanuel and Rep. Ro Khanna, have all added South Carolina to their fall itineraries. Sen. Mark Kelly has visited more than 15 states during the midterms. The days when early White House hopefuls had to be coy are over, the source reports.
Money From the Top
Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, has sent tens of millions of dollars outside Illinois this cycle. The money went to the House Majority PAC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Senate nominees Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Jon Ossoff in Georgia, among others. In Texas, gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa had just $4 million in the bank when the Democratic Governors Association and Pritzker each sent $1 million.
Beshear chairs the Democratic Governors Association. He’s also a likely 2028 contender, and he’s said Democrats should nominate a governor.
A Party Divided Over Its Own Voters
Harris’s tour puts identity firsts front and center. In Nevada, she’ll appear with Aaron Ford, who would become the state’s first Black governor. In Mississippi, she’ll join Scott Colom, who would become the state’s first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction. In Florida, she’ll take part in a virtual event with Senate nominee Angie Nixon, who identifies as a democratic socialist and draws support from left-flank activists who criticized Harris in 2024 as too moderate.
The infighting is out in the open. Pritzker blamed “do-nothing Democrats” who “blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants, instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.” Emanuel argued the opposite. “We’ve lost the plot because the party got un-anchored,” he told a Fox News podcast, saying Democrats had focused on culture wars instead of middle-class concerns about the economy and education. “You are worried about bathroom access and locker room access,” he said. “Why don’t you focus on classroom excellence?” He calls himself a “raging moderate.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the left has “written a check” and “now it is time to cash in,” in remarks at a New York fundraiser leaked to ABC. Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, whom Harris campaigned for recently, is her proof of concept.
The Other Side’s Read
The GOP has a presumptive 2028 nominee in Vice President JD Vance, though he’s likely to face challengers. His prediction to NBC: “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz is running for president.”
No dominant frontrunner defines the Democratic race. Harris leads early polls. Seven or so governors, at least nine Senate prospects, progressives and a handful of formers who want back in are all circling. Two years after voters rejected Harris, the party’s donors, governors and activists are still arguing over whether the problem was going too far left or not far enough. The voters who decide that haven’t been asked yet.