Politics

Democratic governors (and 2028 hopefuls) gather to chart path under a Trump administration

Published

2 years ago

December 9, 2024

BEVERLY HILLS, California — Still reeling from the party’s electoral losses last month, the country’s Democratic governors descended on a plush Beverly Hills hotel on Friday and Saturday for a series of closed-door meetings with donors, interest groups and advocacy organizations. Officially, the event was a time to chart a path forward under a Trump administration.

Unofficially, it also served as a preview of the next Democratic primary.

“You’re witnessing the kickoff to the 2028 presidential primary, live and in-person,” said one adviser to major Democratic Party donors, granted anonymity to speak candidly. He added: “This is the audition for the next president to a room full of donors, operatives, reporters, etc.”

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, emphasized that the meeting was focused on the near term: keeping New Jersey and flipping Virginia in 2025, and on the “huge contingent of governors races in ’26.”

“Trust me, we’re not thinking beyond ’26 at this point,” she said.

But it was hard to ignore the weekend’s guest list stacked with potential 2028 contenders, including Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tim Walz of Minnesota, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Roy Cooper of North Carolina. And for two days here, in this state that has long served as a bastion of Democratic politics, the Beverly Hilton was teeming with donors, strategists and lobbyists eager to land meetings with the rising stars.

Asked about the jockeying for 2028, Cooper told Blue Light News: “I’ll just say that there are a lot of great governors across this country who will make great leaders in the future.”

Democratic governors are preparing to thread a fine line between standing up to President-elect Donald Trump’s Republican trifecta in Washington and collaborating with the incoming administration.

Immediately following the election, some Democratic governors launched plans to “Trump-proof” their states, and in a memo released this week, Meghan Meehan-Draper, DGA’s executive director, wrote that Democratic governors would be the “Last Line of Defense” against the incoming GOP trifecta in the federal government.

Blue-state governors have been explicit that they intend to try to block some Trump policies — efforts that will also likely raise their own profiles. Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis are leading an organization to “back against increasing threats of autocracy and fortifying the institutions of democracy that our country and our states depend upon” — and although the privately-funded group is non-partisan, the implications are clear.

“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker told reporters last month in a warning to the incoming administration.

In deep-blue New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James created an initiative to “address any policy and regulatory threats that may emerge from a Trump Administration.” In California, Newsom called a special session of the legislature to lay the legal groundwork for the state to lead its second Trump resistance.

And Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said, “We’ve already taken from the last rodeo considerable efforts that have been considerably successful to prevent him from abusing our state financially and taking away our resources [and] targeting us.”

“You can’t say we’re ‘Trump-proofed,’ because he still has some levers to pull, but we’ve already done that considerably,” Inslee added.

But with the election loss still smarting, the event implicitly raised the question of who might have the right formula for the next one. Inslee said the governors are “focused on the election cycle for governors right now.” Still, he acknowledged that “the day after every election is the beginning” of the next one.

While the positioning for governors in 2017 was more stridently opposing Trump, this time around they seem to be hedging their bets. Newsom has promised he would offer an “open hand, not a closed fist,” to the incoming administration and other governors signaled a willingness to work alongside Trump on some issues.

Whitmer, who said her state “played a role in supporting president Trump” also said she hoped she would find ways to work with the president-elect. She emphasized “I won’t abandon my values, but I’m going to work hard to find common ground everywhere I can.”

“I’ve got two more years, and my goal is do everything I can for the state,” Whitmer added.

Cooper — who will be replaced as North Carolina governor in January by Democrat Josh Stein — said it would be “really important” for his successor to work with the federal government to help the state recover from Hurricane Helene.

And many acknowledged that the demands of their job required them to pick up the phone when the Trump administration calls. “We will continue to do what we do, which is work with whoever we need to work with to get what we need for our states,” Kelly said.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

13 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”