Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s prospects for the Republican nomination in 2028 may have increased as Democrats lost control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections and voters punished the Republican Party for high gas prices and the war in Iran.
Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, said Rubio was the ultimate winner in the GOP’s disappointing night.
“There’s a winner tonight on the Republican side, and it’s Marco Rubio,” Gowdy said on Fox News Wednesday morning.
Even though President Donald Trump will never be on the ballot again, his allies will be, Gowdy said. Republican strategists are beginning to debate who in Trump’s camp will be able to win the Republican nomination in 2028.
The field will likely be vast. Outgoing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has hinted he is ready to run for president again, as he did in 2024 before being eclipsed by Trump in the Republican primary. So is Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who said in August that it was “no secret” that he wanted to be president.
Within the Trump administration, speculation about who may carry Trump’s torch has focused on Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.
Rubio’s main rival, Vance, has already publicly blamed the war with Iran for the massive midterm rout, in what appears to be an initial effort to put distance between himself and one of his boss’s most unpopular policies. From the start of the war, Vance had privately expressed his opposition to it and subsequently led American negotiations to end it.
Rubio, who has been hawkish on Iran as a senator, will likely be lumped into the pro-war camp as different factions of the Republican Party clash.
But Rubio has so far avoided stepping too far forward as the face of Trump’s Iran war.
Vance, Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth instead relayed the bulk of public messaging on Iran. But Rubio may find it difficult to fully distance himself after serving as Trump’s national security adviser and chief diplomat.
“The reason we lost was the war,” Vance said. “Any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
When asked if he would run for the Republican nomination, Rubio said he was focused on his current national security duties and had no plans to run.
A person close to Rubio, who requested anonymity to discuss the secretary’s thinking, said he has left the door open but is focused on his current duties. “No one knows except him,” the person said.
Voters across the country reacted to Trump’s broken promises to lower prices and keep the country out of foreign wars. In exit polls, 63% of voters said going to war with Iran was a mistake, two-thirds said Trump’s policies had worsened the economy, and 61% said Trump was more focused on his own interests than those of the country.
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