Heating up: Newsom, Pritzker, Buttigieg make early moves in 2028 presidential race

The early moves in the next White House race, at least among the Democrats, have begun.

Pete Buttigieg on Thursday ruled out a run for an open Democrat-held Senate seat in his adopted home state of Michigan.

And the announcement by the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, who served four years as transportation secretary in former President Biden's administration, appears to clear the path for a potential 2028 White House bid by Buttigieg.

"While my own plans don’t include running for office in 2026, I remain intensely focused on consolidating, communicating and supporting a vision" that is an alternative to the "cruel chaos" of President Donald Trump's administration, Buttigieg said.

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A source familiar with Buttigieg's thinking told Fox News the former transportation secretary is in a strong possible position to run for president in 2028 and that running for either senator or Michigan governor "in 2026 would have taken that off the table."

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Across the country, term-limited California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has long been suspected of harboring national ambitions, is grabbing lots of attention and millions of YouTube hits, thanks to a new and high-profile podcast series.

The first two guests of the podcast were MAGA world superstars Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon.

But that didn't sit well with two-term Gov. Andy Beshear, the Democrat in red state Kentucky who is also seen as a potential 2028 contender.

"I think that Gov. Newsom bringing on different voices is great," Beshear told reporters this past week. "We shouldn’t be afraid to talk and to debate just about anyone. But Steve Bannon espouses hatred and anger, and, even at some points, violence. And I don’t think we should give him oxygen on any platform — ever, anywhere."

Meanwhile, Democrat JB Pritzker, the billionaire two-term governor of blue state Illinois and one of his party's leaders in opposing President Donald Trump's second-term agenda, will head to New Hampshire next month to headline the state party's annual fundraising gala, sparking plenty of 2028 speculation.

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Trips to New Hampshire, which, for over a century, has held the first primary in the race for the White House, are seen as an early indicator of a politician's interest in running for the presidency in the next election.

But there's more. 

There is plenty of focus on former Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential nominee last summer after he dropped out of the race amid mounting questions over his physical and mental stamina. 

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Harris, who lost November's White House race to Trump, is considering a 2026 bid to succeed Newsom in her home state of California. But a run for governor in 2026 would likely derail a 2028 White House bid.

A source in the former vice president's political orbit recently confirmed to Fox News Digital that Harris has told allies she will decide by the end of the summer whether to launch a gubernatorial campaign. 

And Harris earlier this month made a stop in Nevada, an early voting state on the Democrats' primary calendar.

Harris' 2024 running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is not ruling out a White House run of his own in 2028. Walz on Friday kicked off a high-profile town hall tour of red congressional districts. His first stop was in Iowa, the state that, through the 2020 cycle, kicked off the Democrats' presidential nominating calendar.

Three other prominent Democrats considered potential 2028 contenders — governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Beshear — addressed the House Democrats' annual policy retreat Thursday.

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Even Rahm Emanuel, the former congressman from Illinois, White House chief of staff in President Obama's administration and Chicago mayor who most recently served as U.S. ambassador to Japan, is potentially mulling a 2028 run. Emanuel this week was the topic of a feature report by Politico.

While 2028 seems like a very long way away, the early moves in the next White House race begin early for the party out of power.

That was the case for the Republicans in the 2024 cycle. 

Iowa continues to kick off the GOP's presidential nominating schedule, and the first stop there during the 2024 cycle by a potential White House contender was in March 2021, just weeks after Biden assumed the presidency.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who eventually decided not to run for president, grabbed plenty of attention as he spoke to the Westside Conservative Club in suburban Des Moines that year.

"There's no sense in waiting," New Hampshire-based political strategist Lucas Meyer told Fox News. "If anyone is serious about running for president, they would probably be well served in getting after it now."

Meyer, a former president of the New Hampshire Young Democrats who chairs the advocacy group 603 Forward, called it a "wide-open field" for Democrats.

"The crowd of leadership at the top of the Democratic Party isn't very deep at the moment," he observed. "There's oxygen there for someone."