President Donald Trump’s presumed heir holds a commanding lead in early polling for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, but a growing lineup of Senate Republicans is already laying the groundwork to challenge him.
A Bowling Green State University/YouGov poll found 44 percent of Republican likely voters would back Vice President JD Vance for the nomination, but that hasn’t stopped Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Kennedy (R-LA) and Rick Scott (R-FL) or Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) from lining up their own campaigns, reported the Washington Post.
Vance’s polling lead is more than double the 21 percent who prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said he won’t run and would support Vance instead. Cruz and Paul trailed far behind, at 3 percent and 1 percent respectively, but the poll didn’t ask about the others.
The vice president’s would-be rivals are making the kinds of moves — early-state visits, policy rollouts, pointed criticism of the administration — that typically precede a campaign launch, a sign that his path to the nomination may be far less clear than the numbers suggest.
“I think the Republican primary electorate’s probably more with me than with the rest of them,” Paul told MS NOW, adding that he would oppose tariffs, foreign military intervention and government stakes in private companies if he entered the race.
Cruz, who has criticized Vance’s handling of Iran and his ties to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, previewed the coming primary as a referendum on the party’s identity.
“Are we a small-government, free-market conservative party, or are we a big-government nanny-state party?” Cruz said in an interview on the “Pod Force One” podcast, previewing what he called a “discussion” the party still needs to have about who succeeds Trump.
Massie, who lost his House primary in May to a Trump-backed challenger, has gone further, suggesting Vance and other administration officials have already undermined their own chances.
He cautioned against reading too much into current polling, pointing to how Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida rose in stature after the 2022 midterms only to fade before the 2024 race.
“Maybe we lose the majority, everybody’s down on Trump, then he gets impeached three times and everybody likes him again,” Massie said. “Who knows?”
Vance has moved to shore up support among skeptical factions of the party, including hawkish and Jewish Republicans uneasy about his association with Carlson, making appearances at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit and hosting a Shabbat dinner at the Naval Observatory.
Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) has become the first sitting senator to formally endorse him.
The shape of the field is expected to come into sharper focus after November’s midterm elections, which will test Trump’s standing and, by extension, Vance’s.
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