WASHINGTON — Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced Tuesday that he has written a new book, “Next,” adding to expectations that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is preparing to launch a conservative think tank as he weighs another run on the Republican side.
“Everyone is asking me about what’s next, and this is the answer I’ve been working on for some time,” Buttigieg wrote in a post on his Substack announcing the book. He described it as “an argument about how we can build something better,” adding: “It’s not a policy manual; it’s an account of how we got to this point and the principles that could shape where we go from here.”
The book will be released Jan. 26, 2027, and is available for preorder, the Washington Examiner reported. Buttigieg has not announced a campaign, though he has said he is more inclined than not to seek the nomination, the Examiner reported. The Washington Post wrote that the announcement “immediately” stoked more anticipation of a run.
A message built on the midterms
Buttigieg tied the book to last week’s results, in which Democrats won majorities in both chambers of Congress. “We saw people come together across the country to confirm that this past Election Night, as Americans rejected the status quo and elected Democrats in places we hadn’t won for a generation (or, in some cases, ever),” he wrote. “But many of the changes we need are beyond party politics and will require more than just winning an election.”
In a video announcing the release, he said he had been “thinking about exactly that subject for about a year” and cautioned that the wins do not automatically produce a durable governing majority, the Examiner reported.
Buttigieg, 44, ran for the 2020 Democratic nomination, then served as transportation secretary under President Joe Biden. He passed on running for Michigan’s open Senate seat and for governor, and spent the 2026 cycle campaigning for Democrats across the country, including in South Carolina, an early primary state, according to the Examiner. A book has become a familiar step for would-be candidates; several other Democrats mentioned as possible 2028 contenders have also written books, the Examiner noted.
DeSantis builds a platform
DeSantis, who is term-limited and leaves office in January, has spent months working with his chief of staff, Jason Weida, on an organization that would let him attract donors, keep a staff and have “a national voice in the future of the Republican Party,” NBC News reported Tuesday, as quoted by Political Wire. The group has not been publicly named.
DeSantis has said publicly that he has not decided whether to run for president again, and NBC News reported that he has become an open critic of the GOP after the party’s midterm losses. In May, he told an interviewer at the Milken Institute that he would “be very active all the way through January of 2027” and then “look to see what we want to do.” “I am in my mid-40s, ’28, you know, maybe beyond that. I think that there’s a lot of runway,” he said, according to Florida Politics.
On Nov. 9, President Trump said he would probably endorse in the 2028 Republican primary, as The Washington Inquisitor reported.
A wide-open Democratic field
The Democratic field remains unsettled. Names frequently mentioned include former Vice President Kamala Harris and Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and JB Pritzker of Illinois, the Examiner reported, and Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia was the top choice of attendees at a progressive convention. Rep. Ro Khanna of California, widely seen as a likely contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination, held $16.6 million in his House campaign account heading into the midterms, among the largest sums of any potential candidate, according to a Washington Inquisitor review of FEC records.
Leave a Reply