On Thursday, John Harris, Politico’s ruminative co-founder and paterfamilias, informed staff that he was taking on a chairmanship role and would relinquish the editor-in-chief title upon determining an heir. “At some point in 2026, I’ll be passing on the editor in chief role to the best possible successor,” Harris wrote in a memo, noting that Springer C.E.O. Mathias Döpfner and Politico C.E.O. Goli Sheikholeslami had invited him to take part in the search. “When we find the best leader, we will act swiftly.”

The change marks the end of many eras at Politico. It may seem like only yesterday in Washington, but it’s been a decade since Harris’s cofounders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen defected to start Axios, and half a decade since the founding owner, Robert Allbritton, sold the company to Döpfner for $1 billion. Harris has remained with Politico throughout, serving mostly as editor-in-chief—a role he reassumed in 2023, after a previous stint as chairman—and also as the site’s elder statesman and high priest.

In the intervening years, Politico has endured a prolonged period of soul searching, as Rosslyn kremlinologists well know. Once revered for its high-metabolism scoopage and highly influential flagship Playbook newsletter, it long ago morphed into a more durable but tepid transatlantic business built around a very expensive, policy-focused enterprise subscription business. This has made Politico quite profitable, of course, but the dearth of groundbreaking or even exciting journalism has also put it at a far remove from the political zeitgeist it once defined.

The strength of the business aside, this has nagged at Harris over the years, particularly as his former colleagues—first Jim and Mike, then former Playbook co-authors Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer—left to launch Punchbowl and became formidable and outspoken competitors. The histories and resentments have been recounted here and elsewhere far too often, as has the delta between, say, Mike’s agenda-setting tipsheet of yore and Jack Blanchard’s awestruck Tocquevillian diary of today. In any event, Harris’s myriad attempts to re-create the old magic—putting Playbook in the care of Ryan Lizza & Co. (remember this?), luring Jonathan Martin back from the Times as a floating ambassador to Middle America, trying to fashion Dasha Burns as the second coming of Maggie—never quite worked out.

Harris’s passing of the torch has thus raised a few obvious questions: First, what does Mathias Döpfner want Politico to be, and who does he want to run it? For Mathias, there’s quite a bit riding on those answers. A year and a half ago, he ceded control of Axel Springer’s core classified advertising business to KKR in order to assume full control of the smaller, $4 billion media enterprise, of which Politico is the flagship asset. And he appears to have big ambitions for it. Over the years, he has waxed poetic about turning Springer into the leading digital media company of the democratic world, with Politico at the tip of the spear. If that is indeed the vision, is it enough for Politico to sell services to policy wonks and K Street insiders, or does it need to be something more?

As Harris’s note made clear, Mathias has not selected a successor yet—and he is likely to take his time. Sources with insight into his thinking noted that he and Jan Bayer, his acerbic deputy, will almost certainly canvass the field of potential hires from across the industry, rather than defaulting to an insider among Harris’s direct reports. “This isn’t The New York Times,” one source said, referring to the highly anticipated (but probably already decided) bakeoff that will ensue between managing editors Carolyn Ryan and Marc Lacey when executive editor Joe Kahn announces that he wants to return to the sedentary life. Several sources noted Mathias’s decision to tap longtime Wall Street Journal veteran Jamie Heller as editor-in-chief of Business Insider as evidence that he might look to the outside.

Still, unsurprisingly, Harris’s move has inspired the Washington in-crowd to start handicapping potential internal candidates. Most of these conversations very naively assume pole position will go to Carrie Budoff Brown, the former top Politico editor who returned to the organization last year after a sojourn at NBC’s Meet the Press. She has spent the last five months serving as executive editor and senior vice president of Politico Europe.

In their endless myopia, Washington journalists tend to plot their careers years, if not decades, in advance, as if they were truly candidates for public office. And in this spirit, many have rightly noted that Budoff Brown, who wasn’t entirely a raging success in her previous editorship of Politico, was clever to moor herself in Europe while Harris II played out. And yet, this facile handicapping may also reflect the narcissism inside the mothership in Arlington that only an insider could succeed Harris. Also, as you’ll recall, Budoff Brown’s tenure at Meet the Press wasn’t exactly a raging success, either.

For a time, Politico insiders anticipated a bakeoff between her and Harris’s favored son Alex Burns, a divisive early Politico reporter who now serves as North American editor. Fairly or unfairly, however, Burns has established a reputation for a truculent and prickly leadership style that has almost certainly put him at a disadvantage in Berlin. At the same time, some insiders noted that Burns maintains the support of both Harris and Sheikholeslami, which may or may not prove meaningful. (At the end of the day, this is Mathias’s decision.) Deputy editor-in-chief Joe Schatz is also said to be in the mix. Some have suggested that Mathias will consider Jonathan Greenberger, the executive vice president who joined Politico after a career at ABC News, though he can reasonably be seen as a more logical successor for the chief executive office.

Anyway, the preoccupation with internal candidates probably fails to appreciate the true scope of Mathias’s ambition. He is, after all, a guy who once tried to acquire the Financial Times, settled for Business Insider, and is now shopping for other properties—while lamenting that there aren’t enough compelling U.S. media assets on the market. Presumably, he didn’t expand this burgeoning media empire just to manage for margin. And, while the policy verticals may buoy the P&L, chances are he feels the ennui emanating out of Rosslyn, and may look beyond the newsroom to treat it.