Running for president

What has to happen, and when

The gauntlet opens earlier than almost anyone expects, and not where you would look. Nevada takes declarations of candidacy for its presidential preference primary between 1 and 15 October 2027 and not a day later — a fixed calendar window written into statute rather than an offset from the primary date, which is why it falls two months before anything else. Arkansas closes in early November, Alabama and Florida later that month, and Texas at 6pm on 14 December 2027. By the end of that month a dozen states have shut.

Two practical things follow. Filing is not one act but fifty-one, on fifty-one schedules, and in at least fourteen jurisdictions you do not file with the Secretary of State at all — you file with a party chair, who in Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina and Washington simply hands the state a finished list. And it costs money unevenly: nothing in Montana and South Dakota, $25,000 in Mississippi, and $50,000 in South Carolina, of which $20,000 is the statutory cap and $30,000 is kept by the party.

An independent faces a different problem, and a later one. Texas alone wants 113,887 signatures from voters who skipped both primaries, collectable only from 7 March 2028 and due 8 May — a sixty-two day window for the largest signature requirement in the country, attached to forty electoral votes, and it has to be paid for in 2027. And the two paths are not a sequence: sore-loser laws reach presidential candidates in 28 states carrying 221 electoral votes, so anyone choosing between a party primary and an independent run chooses before knowing how the primary would have gone.

The field

Nobody is running yet, and the money says so

Four hundred and fifty-one people have filed with the Federal Election Commission as 2028 presidential candidates. Four hundred and twenty-five of them have raised nothing, the entire field has raised $489,196 between it, and not one of them holds or has held a federal or statewide office. The largest balance of any declared 2028 candidate belongs to a committee called Invisible President Phyllis Jager 2028.

What is actually happening is quieter, and takes a different kind of looking: leadership political action committees posting $5,000 cheques to state parties, books, a handful of hires, and a great many aeroplane tickets to Des Moines and Manchester. It is worth knowing the scale of a real campaign before reading any of it as one. In 2023 and 2024, simply getting onto the ballot cost Donald Trump and Nikki Haley more than $50,000 per early state in fees alone — $55,000 to the Nevada Republican Party, $50,000 to South Carolina’s, and a $603,000 transfer to the Nevada Republican Central Committee. Measured against that, the largest 2028 cheque anyone has yet written is $5,000. Nobody in either party is spending like a candidate.

Those whose own money has reached the early states

This is the hardest evidence available, because it is filed, dated and paid for. Five people’s political action committees have put money into all four of the states that vote first.

Pete ButtigiegDemocrat is the cleanest case. On 29 June 2026 his Win the Era PAC gave exactly $5,000 to each of the four early-state Democratic parties, all on the same day. He holds no elected office, so he has no candidates of his own to protect and no job that explains it. He has also appeared in all four states this year, including the Iowa party’s Liberty and Justice dinner in July and an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Orangeburg in August — a 2020 candidate repairing a 2020 weakness.

Cory BookerDemocrat has been giving to all four state parties since 2023. Mark KellyDemocrat and Ruben GallegoDemocrat have sent money into all four as well, mostly to candidates rather than parties. Kelly also sits on $24.3m in his own Senate committee, the kind of money that can legally follow him into a presidential campaign — though every dollar of it re-counts against its donor’s presidential limit.

The fifth is Mike JohnsonRepublican, and he is the exception that explains the rule: he is Speaker of the House, funding House candidates everywhere is his job, and every one of his early-state cheques went to a candidate rather than a party. Among people whose money reached the whole calendar, the only Republican is the one whose job accounts for it.

JD VanceRepublican is the nearest Republican exception. His Working for Ohio PAC put $5,000 into six Iowa committees in fifteen weeks, including Chuck Grassley’s, plus one each in New Hampshire and South Carolina. A vice president funding incumbents in a midterm year is ordinary; the concentration in Iowa is not. He sent nothing to any state party.

Those who have shown up, but not spent

Gavin NewsomDemocrat opened a field office in Las Vegas in July and has made two South Carolina swings, the second of them six stops in two days; the state party chair puts his reach at seventeen counties. He has also said he would not run if Kamala Harris does, which makes his candidacy a function of someone else’s undated decision. The roughly $99m raised into his Proposition 50 committee is a genuine demonstration of capacity and, by federal law, cannot pay for one minute of a presidential campaign.

Andy BeshearDemocrat has the tidiest calendar of anyone: chair of the Democratic Governors Association since December, the South Carolina party’s Blue Palmetto dinner in May, and a book published in September. Ted CruzRepublican keynoted Iowa Faith & Freedom in May, published a biography in August, and said on a podcast that “it’s no secret that I want to be president”. Ro KhannaDemocrat is reported to have hired Ron Klain and two operatives from Bernie Sanders’s campaigns — the only campaign hire of its kind reported for anyone this cycle — and has named the earliest decision window of anyone, between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.

Those who have said something and done nothing

This is the cheapest category and the most crowded. Marco Rubio has “no plans”; Rand Paul is “50-50” and will decide after the midterms; Mike Pence has “no plans”; Ron DeSantis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have each said something and moved nothing.

Rubio is the sharpest puzzle on the board. He ran second in New Hampshire Republican polling in July at 26%, up from 7% in February — while having no political team, no early-state visit that could be found anywhere, and an on-the-record position that if Vance runs, “he’s going to be our nominee”. The polling is measuring a candidacy the candidate has disclaimed.

Those who have ruled it out

Josh Hawley (“No, I have no intention of doing so, period”), Nikki Haley, and Wes Moore, who said it twice on television and then won a governorship he must now serve. Treat all three lightly: Gretchen Whitmer ruled herself out in May and retracted it within hours, and the historical record on rule-outs this far from a primary is not kind to them.

Why the Republican field is so quiet

Because the incumbent has not let go of it. Donald Trump has conceded the Twenty-Second Amendment three times on the record — “I’m not allowed to run” in October 2025, “I guess I’m not allowed to run… let’s assume I was allowed to run” in January, and “I’d love to run, but the law is very strong” in August — and has taken no formal step of any kind toward a third term. What he has not done is endorse anyone else.

That absence, rather than any ambiguity about his own position, is what holds the field still. The first member of Congress to endorse Vance did so on 14 September. Everyone else is either deferring to Vance, parked until November, or out. The gate is the midterms.

September 2026

From next month this is a comparison with the previous read. This first one lists what the month held.

• 3 Sep — Newsom began a six-stop South Carolina tour, his second visit of the year.
• 7 Sep — Turning Point Action began staffing toward all 99 Iowa counties. It is the largest organising effort in the state and it belongs to no candidate.
• 9–10 Sep — Vance gave the Night Two keynote at the Republicans’ first midterm convention in Dallas, where the party also kept Iowa first.
• 14 Sep — Senator Jim Banks became the first member of Congress to endorse Vance for 2028. Newsom said he would not run if Harris does.
• 15 Sep — Hawley ruled himself out. Rick Scott launched a policy project called Rescuing America.
• 16 Sep — Rubio and Pence both said they had “no plans”.
• 17 Sep — Harris said she is sticking to her own timeline and has still not set a date.
• 18 Sep — Vance headlined a rally in Council Bluffs, his second Iowa trip of the year.
• 20 Sep — Booker said he and his wife will decide after the election.
• 21 Sep — Rick Scott keynoted the New Hampshire Republican Party’s Amos Tuck dinner.
• 22 Sep — Beshear published Go and Do Likewise.

How to read this, and how not to