Warnock won’t rule out 2028 as his midterm tour runs through the early primary states

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — Sen. Raphael Warnock says he is thinking only about the midterms. His itinerary for the final month of the campaign runs through all three states that open the Democrats’ 2028 presidential calendar.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday whether he would rule out a run for president in 2028, the Georgia Democrat did not. “To be very clear, I am sharply focused on the midterm elections,” he told moderator Kristen Welker, adding that “there’s nothing more important” than defeating Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican challenging Georgia’s other senator, Jon Ossoff. Welker ended the interview: “I don’t hear you ruling it out,” according to NBC’s transcript.

Ossoff had shut the door five days earlier. “I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for re-election to the Senate,” he said at the Atlanta Press Club debate on Oct. 13, and he said “Yes, I will” when asked whether he would serve a full six-year term, NBC News reported. The Washington Post noted the next day that Warnock, not Ossoff, “is the Georgia senator actually making presidential moves and hinting at a run.”

A surrogate tour that tracks the early calendar

Warnock’s closing stretch as a surrogate opened Oct. 6 in New Hampshire, his first trip to the state, CNN reported. He campaigned with Senate candidate Chris Pappas and House candidate Stefany Shaheen. “He was definitely connecting,” state Democratic chairman Ray Buckley told CNN, adding that “there’s also great interest in Ossoff.”

The itinerary, first reported by Politico, then had him in Nevada, in South Carolina on Oct. 13, in Mississippi on Oct. 14, in North Carolina on Oct. 15, back in South Carolina on Oct. 16 and 17, in Michigan on Oct. 20 and 21, in Wisconsin on Oct. 23 and in Ohio from Oct. 24 to 26, according to a summary of that schedule. On Sunday he confirmed the Michigan leg, telling Welker he would be there “this week” for Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee running against Republican Mike Rogers.

South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire are the three states scheduled to hold the Democrats’ first 2028 primaries, with South Carolina leading off on Jan. 22, 2028, The Post and Courier reported. In Columbia on Oct. 13, Warnock told reporters he was “very much focused on 2026.” The paper noted that he had answered “we’ll see what happens” when asked about 2028 during an earlier stop in Texas. He is not alone: the same story listed recent South Carolina visits by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, California Rep. Ro Khanna, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The message he is testing

Warnock spent most of Sunday’s interview on the case he has been making on the road. “The road to a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress is in the South,” he said, warning that Democrats “are missing a real opportunity to invest in a serious and sustained way in the South.” Asked about impeachment if Democrats win the House, he called President Donald Trump “a crook” and said “we ought to have the investigations to get to the truth,” while arguing that Democrats must also “deal with the costs,” from gas to groceries (transcript).

That builds on a plan Warnock released in July, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, calling on a future Democratic majority to investigate officials who redrew congressional maps, “including through Congressional hearings, document requests, depositions, testimony, and, if necessary, subpoenas.”

In New Hampshire he framed the pitch as a critique of his own party too. “The Democratic Party’s like most old institutions. It’s slow to change. I feel that institutional inertia and I refuse to be bound by it,” he told CNN.

The complication: his own seat

Warnock won his seat in a January 2021 special-election runoff and a full term in a December 2022 runoff, which puts it back on the ballot in 2028, the same year as the presidential race. CNN reported that some aides and advisers do not want him to give it up and that he had not yet begun “those real conversations” with them or his family. “Look, I know that in a matter of months,” he said, “I’ll be in a race.”

His federal money, for now, sits in that Senate account. Warnock for Georgia raised $963,551 from July through September, spent $960,365 and ended the quarter with $4.1 million in cash, according to its October quarterly report to the Federal Election Commission. A search of FEC records on Tuesday found no leadership PAC or presidential committee tied to Warnock; Warnock for Georgia is his only authorized committee.

That leaves the next tell for after Nov. 3: whether he files for re-election to the Senate, as some of his advisers hope, or starts building a national operation.

Warnock’s Senate press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Ossoff’s Senate office referred questions to his campaign.

Photo: Sen. Raphael Warnock’s official portrait. U.S. Senate Photographic Studio / Rebecca Hammel, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.