How will DeSantis, Youngkin and other 2028 hopefuls stay relevant outside the Trump administration?

During a busy week in the nation’s capital, far from the action, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had no trouble keeping his name in the political spotlight.

“This is a time for action. And a time for Washington, D.C., to deliver results to the American people. There are no more excuses for Republicans,” the conservative two-term governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate said Thursday as he named Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to succeed Sen. Marco Rubio in the Senate.

Two days earlier, President-elect Trump gave his onetime bitter GOP primary rival a shout-out after the governor called for a special state legislative session to implement Trump’s expected immigration crackdown.

“Thank you Ron, hopefully other governors will follow!” the president-elect said in a social media post.

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Due to the national profile he’s built over the past four years, the governor of one of the country’s most important states will likely continue to stay in the headlines as he takes a lead on some of the nation’s most consequential issues.

The spotlight should help DeSantis if he ends up launching a second straight GOP presidential nomination run in 2028, a race in which soon-to-be Vice President JD Vance will be considered the clear early frontrunner as the perceived America First and MAGA heir apparent to Trump.

“He needs to do what he did in 2022, which is pick good fights. And he’s shown a lot of capability to pick good fights with the left both in Florida and nationally,” longtime Republican strategist David Kochel said of DeSantis.

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“I think he’ll be in demand to come do stuff in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina,” Kochel, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, predicted, pointing to the three key early voting states in the Republican presidential primaries. 

“I wouldn’t change a lot from how he did the run-up to his 2024 campaign. The problem was he basically ran against an incumbent president. He didn’t have the wrong playbook. He had the wrong cycle.”

While the initial moves in the 2028 White House run will likely start in the coming months, including some early state visits, most Americans won’t be paying a lick of attention until after the 2026 midterms, when the next presidential campaign formally gets under way. And that’s when DeSantis will be wrapping up his second and final four-year term steering Florida, allowing him to concentrate 100% on a White House run if that’s in his cards.

But what about another high-profile Republican governor who likely has national ambitions in 2028?

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The Virginia Constitution doesn’t allow for incumbent governors to run for a second consecutive term, so Gov. Glenn Youngkin will be out of office in Richmond in a year.

Compared to DeSantis, who also enjoys large GOP majorities in his state legislature, which will allow him to continue to enact a conservative agenda, Virginia is a purple state where Democrats have a slight upper hand in the legislature. 

“It might be a little tougher for Youngkin, a little tougher for him to find ways to stay in the news” after he leaves office in a year, Kochel suggested.

But, Younkin predicted, “You’re going to see me a lot.”

“We’ve got a very aggressive agenda for being governor in the last 14 months,” he said in a Fox News Digital interview in November. “But part of that agenda that I have is to make sure that we have [Lt. Gov.] Winsome Sears as our next governor. [Virginia Attorney General] Jason Miyares is back as our attorney general and a super lieutenant governor who we will pick at our primaries.”

Youngkin, who energized Republicans nationwide in 2021 as a first-time candidate who hailed from the party’s business wing, edged former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe to become the first GOP candidate in a dozen years to win a gubernatorial election in the one-time swing state that had trended toward the Democrats over the previous decade. He could also potentially end up in the Trump administration after his term in Richmond sunsets in a year.

“I told the president when I called him and told him that I wanted to finish my term that I would be available to help him at any time while I’m governor and afterwards,” Youngkin told Fox News Digital, referring to a call he held with Trump right after the November election.

But if he doesn’t enter the Trump administration, another route for Youngkin to stay in the spotlight in 2026 would be criss-crossing the country on behalf of fellow Republicans running in the midterm elections. It’s a role Youngkin previously played in 2022, helping fellow Republican governors and gubernatorial candidates.

“He’s got to do the blocking and tackling, go state by state, help a lot of candidates, raise a lot of money for them. Get a bunch of governors elected,” Kochel suggested. “That’s the playbook for him.”

What about NIkki Haley, the former two-term Republican governor of South Carolina and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Trump’s first administration, who was the last rival standing against Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries?

Out of office and shut out of the Trump world while still facing social media zingers by the president-elect, Haley’s ability to grab attention should she seek the presidency again may be a more difficult climb within a party once again on bended knee to the former and future president.

Haley does have a weekly national radio show on Sirius XM, where she noted a few weeks ago, “I had no interest in being in [Trump’s] Cabinet.”

But a lot can happen in the two years until the next White House race officially gets under way. There could be some buyer’s remorse among voters if the new administration is not successful in enacting some of its goals.

“While JD Vance starts as the presumed frontrunner right now, there’s a million miles to go between now and then,” seasoned Republican strategist Colin Reed told Fox News.

And Kochel added that for some Republicans mulling a 2028 presidential bid, “I think a little strategic distance is not a bad idea. Because you don’t know what’s going to happen over the next two years.”

But holding statewide office — either as a governor or senator — doesn’t guarantee favorable coverage.

“Having a day job cuts both ways. It gives you a platform, a megaphone, and an ability to make news whenever you want. But it also carries with it the responsibilities of governing or legislating or being part of government bodies, whether it’s Congress or the state you are running, where things can go wrong and end up on your doorstep and become political baggage,” Reed noted.

Reed warned that “history is littered with those officeholders who ran and won for a second term only to have political baggage at home become political headaches on the campaign trail.”