What the 2024 State of State addresses tell us about the 2028 presidential race

Key Facts

“It is not surprising that we have witnessed — and continue to witness — a great migration of Americans away from cities and states pursuing these failed policies, with Florida serving as a refuge for freedom and sanity,” DeSantis said in last month’s speech from Tallahassee.
“Your callousness, sending buses and planes full of migrants in this weather, is now life-threatening to every one of the arrivals,” Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote to Abbott last month, pleading with him to at least suspend the transports until the end of winter.
The cross-border attacks are unlikely to subside given the unusually large number of governors on both sides of the aisle who are viewed — or at least view themselves — as potential national contenders.
With the presidential contest looking like a scabrous rematch between two unpopular old white men, there’s an opportunity for the nation’s governors — far younger, less reviled and not as bludgeoned by partisan warfare — to put themselves forward as the potential next crop of national political contenders.