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Just two months into a new presidency and the 2028 race has already begun—at least in the world of Democratic campaign consultants. The party is so desperate for visible figures who can challenge Donald Trump that up-and-comers are traveling the country like stand-up comedians, workshopping their material at town halls and in interviews. Acting like a presidential candidate this early would be considered amateurish, psychopathically ambitious behavior in any interregnum, but this is 2025. Power abhors a vacuum. Naturally, the Democratic professional class has been monitoring every rally and podcast appearance like talent scouts at the NFL combine. After all, there is enormous financial upside for campaign consultants who attach themselves early to promising presidential candidates—these are billion-dollar enterprises that throw off tens of millions in fees. And, of course, there is tremendous social value. Everyone in Democratic politics has a Sorkin-ized fantasy of running a winning campaign, with a chief of staff title as their reward. But, typically, the circle of consultants who actually get a shot at working a general election is tight.

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This forthcoming cycle, however, appears to offer more opportunities for the Democratic consultant class than at any time in a generation. There’s no obvious successor or heir apparent, and there are multiple competing visions for the party, endless potential aspirants, a new generation of talent entering the equation, and the sense—shared with me in multiple conversations with political operatives—that campaign structures are evolving at light speed. “Donald Trump has changed the rules not only for Republicans, but Democrats as well,” Democratic consultant Mary Anne Marsh told me. “There are no rules.”

At this primordial stage, there are easily two dozen candidates who could reasonably win the Democratic nomination—and presumably, every one of them will need advisors. Intriguingly, according to campaign finance records, several firms have overlapping clients, and the party is engaged in a very early dance over which consultants end up with which contenders. Take polling. Most of the big Democratic pollsters, including GBAO, GQR, and Hart Research, have worked with multiple promising candidates concurrently. But there are a few early belles of the consultant ball. One is pollster Molly Murphy, whose Impact Research firm has worked with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Another is Global Strategy Group founding partner and president Jef Pollock, whose firm’s clients include Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, New Jersey congresswoman and gubernatorial hopeful Mikie Sherrill, and former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who is currently seeking the governor’s mansion in Virginia. Each of these firms may need conflict-of-interest firewalls within their companies or else have to pass on clients, which opens up opportunities for younger consultants to work on a presidential campaign. “The third-tier candidates, they’re the ones that hire the young people, because everyone else is conflicted,” said a consultant. But given that Democrats are simultaneously trying to scrape the rust off of the gerontocracy, there is no better moment to be a young, plugged-in consultant who understands the internet. Moreover, the candidates will be decades younger than Democrats’ recent standard-bearers, and may be inclined to hire their contemporaries. Predictably, more-senior Democratic consultants argue that the older hands are still relevant and, indeed, necessary. This is partly because the modern presidential campaign is so massive that an upstart firm may not be able to handle the necessary infrastructure; plus, an inexperienced candidate may want consultants who’ve operated at the general election level before. That presents challenges for a party attempting to overcome moribund habits and communications strategies. “It’s a whole sea change,” a longtime presidential campaign consultant told me. “Yes, there will probably be younger consultants, but I will say, at the same time, there will be some older folks coming back to the system, because we need to blend the best of the old and the new.”

As for the actual candidates, the first name to emerge in my conversations with professional Democrats is, of course, Kamala Harris. My sense from almost every such discussion is that they believe she ran the best campaign possible under the circumstances—she had less than four months to do it, after all—but the emotional wounds of 2024 still sting, and there’s not a great deal of enthusiasm behind her at this point. Then there’s the top tier of Democrats who probably would have run in 2024 had Biden stepped out of consideration earlier in the cycle: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Gretchen Whitmer.

Further down the leaderboard are those Democrats whose profiles rose after Trump’s second win: Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, California Rep. Ro Khanna, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Elissa Slotkin, and Minnesota Gov. (and Harris running mate) Tim Walz. All have, in various ways, tried to put a voice to the base’s anger, and woo independents amid a leadership vacuum. For consultants and operatives looking further afield, there is also a class of Democrats who will almost certainly vault their way to the top tier, should they survive statewide bids over the next two years: Abigail Spanberger, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial race; Senator Jon Ossoff, who has a brutal general election ahead as he runs for a second term in Georgia; and Mikie Sherrill, who is facing a crowded Democratic primary field in this year’s New Jersey gubernatorial race. Shapiro, who faces reelection in 2026, also falls into this category. From my recent conversations, there is limited appetite for candidates who’ve run before, but the two exceptions appear to be Pete Buttigieg, who now has the credibility of having run a Cabinet department, and possibly Klobuchar, who made a much-noticed trip to Wisconsin to campaign for Susan Crawford in that state’s nationalized (and historically expensive) Supreme Court race this week. A.O.C. is being mentioned more than ever, but it’s anyone’s guess whether she’s gunning for a House committee chair position, Chuck Schumer’s 2028 Senate seat, or the White House. Finally, there’s the ever-present Rahm Emanuel. For the Bluesky crowd, he’s the political equivalent of Nickelback, and he also generated some eyerolls when Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported that he was “gearing up” to run for president. (A Democratic senator described him to my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell yesterday as “a giant in his own mind.”) But there is a very different conversation among the party’s professional class surrounding Emanuel. He’s a polarizing figure within the Democratic Party, but many, many consultants fondly remember his leadership of the D.C.C.C. in 2006, when Democrats picked up dozens of House seats in what then-president George W. Bush referred to as “a thumpin’” for Republicans. “I love the idea” of Emanuel at the helm of the party, a Democratic consultant told me, echoing several other conversations I’ve had. Others will be strategically awaiting the potential ascent of a candidate who’s not on anyone’s radar; most Democrats are openly entertaining the notion that a Beto-like candidate might emerge over the course of the midterms as a 2028 contender. With a start this early, it’s going to be a long cycle. Amid all this, plenty of Democratic consultants insist the most important focus right now should be the midterms. “There are not going to be heavyweight [candidates] in there, but there are a lot of people who are positioned to win this,” a prominent Democratic consultant told me. “The temptation to jump ahead, given what we’re dealing with now, is there. You’re staring at a Ferrari, and you’re riding in an old Pinto, and you wish you could get into that Ferrari right now.”

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