Vice President JD Vance is seriously weighing whether to sit out the 2028 presidential race after Republicans’ heavy losses in the midterm elections, CNN reported on Friday, citing around a dozen of his allies and advisers.
Although Vance led early polls of Republican primary voters, even his allies concede his path to the nomination is no longer a given.
“I do think the field has been blown open,” Terry Schilling, president of the social conservative American Principles Project, who backs Vance, said, adding that he would be surprised if the vice president did not run. “And there isn’t an heir apparent.”
Vance has neither made a decision nor set a deadline for doing so, and some allies still believe he is more likely to run than not.
Those close to him, however, described to CNN a vice president who, torn among his ambitions, a splintering MAGA base, and a young family that has grown to four children over the summer, is unsure whether he is the right person to lead the party’s recovery.
“He’s young enough that he can have a comeback should this environment make success impossible,” one person close to Vance told CNN. “It just may not be his time.”
Iran war looms over Vance’s 2028 calculations
Allies see the war with Iran as perhaps the biggest hurdle to a Vance candidacy, and the central question for him is whether any Republican can win while it continues.
“If they don’t end the war in Iran, no Republican has a shot at 2028,” one ally said.
Democrats flipped seven Republican Senate seats in the November 3 vote, including Vance’s former seat in Ohio.
Trump reportedly privately criticized Vance’s Iran war post
Polls show nearly every group that backed Trump in 2024 – including men, young people, Latinos, and white voters without college degrees – turned away from him this year.
A day after the vote, Vance blamed the war for the Republican defeat in a 617-word post on X/Twitter, writing, “The reason we lost is the war.” He also called for rethinking America’s relationship with Israel.
US President Donald Trump was told about the post in advance and has brushed it off in public, yet two people familiar with the matter told CNN that he privately faulted Vance for failing to defend the decision to go to war.
“He was right, other than one thing,” Trump told reporters last Sunday, adding that Vance should have said he would make the same decision all over again.
On Thursday, Trump pulled Vance off the Iran negotiations he had been leading, telling him to focus on corruption instead.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp have already begun positioning themselves for 2028. Vance’s allies say a crowded field worked in Trump’s favor in both 2016 and 2024.
Trump has not committed to endorsing Vance, and has told aides he plans to stay out of the primary for a while.
When asked by 60 Minutes whether he would eventually endorse a candidate, the president replied: “Probably. Not necessarily.”