Vice President JD Vance has been a loyal lieutenant to President Donald Trump, but the new year will bring new opportunities and challenges should he decide to launch a campaign to become commander in chief.
More than two years before the first votes are cast in the 2028 Republican presidential primary, Vance, who has downplayed speculation regarding his political aspirations, is polling, on average, more than 40 percentage points ahead of his closest competitor, Donald Trump Jr., according to RealClearPolitics.
But, like all vice presidents before him, Vance, 41, would face the challenge of having to defend his president’s record, which would become his own.
“Vice President Vance is clearly in the pole position for [the 2028] presidential race,” Republican strategist Cesar Conda told the Washington Examiner. “However, his political prospects are tied to the president’s performance over these next three years, especially on the economy.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris encountered a similar complication last year concerning then-President Joe Biden’s economic record, with the 2024 election becoming, in part, about the economy as voters sought change.
Regardless of whether the 2028 election is a change contest or not, Trump’s current average economic approval rating is net negative 15 percentage points, again according to RealClearPolitics, only slightly better than Biden’s net negative 21 points when he left office in January.
For President Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, it is too soon to ascertain whether Trump would be a drag on Vance or not, the former Republican strategist contending, “We don’t know where Trump will be in a year.”
“It is possible to run on [Trump’s] issues and association without picking up his negatives by simply making your campaign about the positive things like the border and [the deportation of illegal immigrants], inflation coming down, peace agreements throughout the world while putting your liberal opponent on the defensive by associating him or her with all the failures of Biden and Bidenism,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner.
Despite the public perception of Trump as he starts to pivot toward next year’s midterm elections, Vance does have other advantages, including his close relationships with him, his base, and Congress, in addition to his position as the Republican National Committee’s finance chairman. Through the latter, Vance has been introduced to the GOP’s most generous donors.
“JD needs to keep doing what he’s doing now: serving as the chief lobbyist for the president’s legislative agenda on the Capitol Hill, raising money for the Republican Party, and keeping the president’s [Make America Great Again] base unified and motivated,” Conda, the strategist and founding partner of Navigators Global, who fundraised for Vance’s 2022 Ohio U.S. Senate campaign, said.
Doing so could also help Vance with Trump’s endorsement, which the president appears more inclined to provide him after declining to even discuss his succession plan with reporters until August. Prime Policy Group founding chairman Charlie Black agreed, arguing that generally vice presidents are “always the front-runner for the nomination.”
“He could help himself by securing the president’s endorsement in the 2028 primaries,” Black told the Washington Examiner.
Shirley, the biographer, disagreed: “[Trump] has enormous influence over the GOP, including future presidential nominees, but not absolute. The power of the incumbent wanes naturally towards the end of their terms. Vice presidents rarely succeed their presidents. [Martin] Van Buren, [George H.W.] Bush, and Biden are more the exception than the rule.”
For Republican strategist John Feehery, this is because it is “difficult” for vice presidents to “carve out” their own niche, though the partner of EFB Advocacy asserted Vance’s “biggest problem is trying to figure out how he messages to women” as he creates “his own brand for Republican voters.”
“That’s a huge deficit for him right now and not just Democratic women, but Republican women,” Feehery told the Washington Examiner. “I still don’t think people really know him that well because Trump is such a huge star in his own right, and he overshadows everybody. So [my advice to Vance is] just finding ways to show that he’s got the ability, and gusto, and vision to take over when Trump runs out of runway space, and stops.”
To that end, Vance — a relative political newcomer who was only elected to the Senate in 2022 after the Iraq War Marine Corps veteran and Yale Law School graduate was a corporate lawyer, Senate aide, and venture capitalist before publishing his bestselling, Netflix-adapted memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 — has an average 40% favorable-45% unfavorable rating, according to RealClearPolitics. That means, on average, 15% of polling respondents do not have an opinion of him.
Feehery described the 2026 midterm elections as a good opportunity for Vance to help himself as he helps Trump and Republicans, an edge he has over the likes of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, in Feehery’s words, is “building his brand overseas,” but “nobody cares what’s going on overseas.”
“He should be on the road every day helping Republicans in the midterms because that’s how you build your ability to create those shifts where that’ll pay off in support down the line,” the strategist said. “He needs to go to every part of the country, listen to the concerns of the voters back there, and maybe become a force to mitigate some of the bad policies, the counterproductive policies that the Trump administration is doing.”
“He’s pretty good with the tech bros. That’s where he comes from. But there’s other parts of the country where, especially in Republican areas, he can get out there and plow some fields,” he added, alluding to Vance’s childhood among “the forgotten American coal miners of the Appalachia.”
“The other thing that Vance has a problem with is [that] the national security establishment doesn’t really like him that much because he’s an isolationist,” Feehery continued. “So he’s going to have to figure out a way to deal with that.”
After avoiding speaking about his succession plan amid conjecture he may try to seek a third term, Trump in August acknowledged Vance is “most likely” his “heir apparent to MAGA.”
“In all fairness, he’s the vice president,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It’s too early, obviously, to talk about it, but certainly he’s doing a great job, and he would be probably favored at this point.”
Simultaneously, Trump has repeatedly praised Rubio, who campaigned against the president in 2016, recommending that Vance and Rubio run together as a ticket.
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“We have JD. Marco is great,” Trump said on Air Force One in October during his Asia trip in front of Rubio. “If they formed a group, it would be unstoppable.”
Nevertheless, Rubio has reportedly told confidants that Vance has the first right of refusal when it comes to a presidential campaign.
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