DeSantis said to be laying groundwork for 2028 White House bid after midterm rout

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is gearing up to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing three people briefed on his plans. The reported preparations come after Florida held firm for Republicans in a midterm election that otherwise delivered sweeping gains to Democrats.

DeSantis disputed the report after it was published. "I have not reached out to anybody about running for anything," he wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, criticizing the use of anonymous sources.

According to The Washington Post, the governor has contacted at least one national political consultant about joining a campaign, and his federal super PAC sent out a fundraising text this week. People who know him read those steps as signs he intends to run. His chief of staff did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment.

Allies told the newspaper that DeSantis sees a political opening after voters delivered a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump's agenda. DeSantis himself described the results as "close to an extinction-level event for Republicans." Speaking to reporters in Tallahassee, he called it "the political equivalent of a meteor strike that went all around the United States, blue states, red states, everything in between."

Before Tuesday's vote, Vice President JD Vance had been widely viewed as Trump's political heir and the early favorite for the 2028 nomination, an assumption the scale of the Republican defeat has thrown into question. "Florida's walls not being breached by the blue wave gives DeSantis more credibility than nearly anyone in the opening days of the 2028 primary," Dan Eberhart, a longtime Republican donor and energy executive who campaigned for DeSantis in 2024, told The Washington Post.

DeSantis has used the week's losses to make a string of media appearances, including on Fox News, casting himself as an alternative to Trump. He has also sought to set himself apart on artificial intelligence policy, emerging as a prominent opponent of data centers, which are widely unpopular among Florida residents. Opposition spans majorities of Democrats at 84%, Republicans at 52%, and unaffiliated voters at 76%, according to a University of North Florida poll.

A person close to DeSantis told the newspaper that the governor drew two lessons from his last run: he needs to do more media, and he cannot wait too long to get in. In 2023, he held off on launching until Florida's legislative session ended, giving Trump's team months to define and attack him.

That campaign ended when DeSantis dropped out shortly before the New Hampshire primary, after finishing second in the Iowa caucuses with 21.3% of the vote, far behind Trump, who won more than 50%. The effort was also marked by extensive infighting between his campaign aides and an outside super PAC staffed by national consultants, and by heavy overspending despite huge fundraising hauls. Whether donors would back him again is one of the open questions facing a 2028 run, according to The Washington Post.