Politics
How a top DC strategist courted Jeffrey Epstein
Leading Washington strategist Juleanna Glover publicly argued for a third-party presidential candidate halfway through Donald Trump’s first term, calling for a “morally lucid” leader akin to abolitionist Abraham Lincoln.
At the same time, she was privately trading emails with Jeffrey Epstein — a decade after he went to jail on child prostitution charges — to share possible presidential tickets “outside the partisan lanes.”
Glover even offered some “radical combinations” in an August 2018 email to a group of “third party thinkers” she then forwarded to Epstein via his now infamous address jeevacation@gmail.com. Her list of dream tickets mixed and matched figures like former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, former Republican Govs. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Nikki Haley of South Carolina, and Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates, coincidentally an Epstein associate himself.
Glover proposed: “Biden/Romney? Bill Gates/Hogan? Bloomberg/Haley? Howard Schultz/Bob Corker? Sandberg/Kasich?”
Their correspondence about centrist fantasy politics was only a small piece of a professional and political relationship that stretched across more than a year. Their workaday messages about third party campaigns, conversations that could have easily been with a well-regarded opinion columnist, underline the degree to which a large number of influential people treated Epstein as if he was just another rich guy to be courted rather than a convicted sex criminal with a troublesome reputation.
Glover, who has long been a leading Never Trump figure, told Blue Light News in an interview that her motivation for engaging with Epstein was solely focused on unearthing any potential information that could sink Trump’s reelection.
Despite that claim, there are no emails between Glover and Epstein that show her soliciting information from him about Trump. While she referred Blue Light News to a fellow Never Trumper to corroborate that motivation, a second person involved in some of her interactions with Epstein at the time, said they were not aware of her approach.
And in an interview, Glover acknowledged she had also asked Epstein for help in a business matter in 2017 involving her then-most prominent client, Elon Musk, and Saudi Arabia. In one Tesla-related email, Glover said that if Epstein was advising any sovereign wealth funds wanting to help “a prominent company go private,” she could help. In the second email to Glover, Epstein criticized Musk for not being “fluent” in how to deal with Middle Easterners’ “bluster” and “bloviating bragging” after Saudi funding did not come through.
Glover took a stab at helping reintroduce Epstein to parts of mainstream society and made a brief attempt to fashion him into a champion of democracy, arranging a meeting with the head of the nonprofit group Freedom House in 2017. And it wasn’t just Glover advising Epstein — he also offered suggestions on how to talk to New York Times reporters writing about Musk’s rumored drug use.
Glover’s and Epstein’s relationship encompassed several dozen emails, two in-person meetings and a number of calls, according to a Blue Light News review of the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice. Her name returns 191 results in the files, although many mentions are duplicates.
Glover characterized the relationship as a limited series of interactions comprised of 31 emails that she sent him, of which 12 dealt with logistics and 15 regarded Tesla. (The Tesla emails showed that Glover was leveraging the relationship with Epstein to help her client.) She said they had two meetings and three calls. She said the remaining were two emails on third party politics, one on MAGA stalwart Steve Bannon and the last connecting Epstein to a pro-democracy nonprofit. Glover said that he was never a client and she “never took anything of value from him.”
Their dynamic, catalogued here in full for the first time, further demonstrates the expansive reach of the late sex offender’s connections across the political spectrum. His Rolodex ranged from moderate former Republicans like Glover to Bannon and giants of the American left like Noam Chomsky.
Glover, a former aide in the George W. Bush White House and an adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign, had by 2017 largely moved on from professional electoral politics and built a thriving practice as an adviser to executives and corporations seeking to navigate the media landscape.
Her townhouse in Kalorama is a gathering place for a wide array of D.C. operators, think tankers, campaign funders and journalists. She has built goodwill across the town and a thriving personal network in part with her willingness to host book parties, new job celebrations and more: Indeed — she was a co-host of an engagement party in 2023 for the author of this article, and has thrown book parties for multiple past and present Blue Light News reporters.
Glover consulted for Axel Springer, Blue Light News’s owner, several years ago, according to a company spokesperson.
‘Captive’ to Elon Musk
Glover came to know Epstein through another type of fixer who was also advising him on PR strategies. The journalist Michael Wolff, a shared acquaintance of the two, first mentioned Glover to Epstein in March 2017 as she was consulting for Musk.
“I rolled the dice when Michael Wolff asked me to meet with Epstein against the backdrop of Epstein talking publicly about Trump,” she said in a statement. “My interactions with Epstein were in service to that objective; not to help him in any way or improve his image. Wolff was seemingly positioning me as someone smart enough for him to take advice from.
“To wit, I repeatedly steered Epstein to talk to top investigative journalists including Jim Stewart of the NY Times and Epstein eventually did so, ultimately talking to Stewart about writing his book. I never knew what Epstein was planning to say, but a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist almost found out,” she said, referring to Stewart.
At the time of her interactions with Epstein about Stewart, Musk’s move to try to take Tesla private led to a Securities and Exchange Commission probe and rumors of drug use. He needed all the communications help he could get.
“[T]here’s a Washington PR type named Juleanna Glover with whom you might want to ch=t,” Wolff wrote to Epstein that spring. “Elon Musk basically owns her now and I’m not sure she can take on o=her clients, but she will have a valuable perspective on how you get to wh=ere you want to be.”
Two months later with the subject line “More PR,” Wolff reminded Epstein that they had spoken about Glover, reupping the Musk connection.
“She’s captive to him, so not hireable. But she’s exceedingly smart and well connected and has interesting things to say,” he wrote. “She can offer an extremely informed overview on how to think about larger steps. Not so much about the trial per se, but going forward. Anyway she is in NYC on Thursday with some time if you wanted me to arrange a meeting.”
Within an hour, Epstein wrote back, “Yes please.”
Three days later, Epstein, Glover and Wolff had lunch together on a day that Epstein was set to have breakfast with private equity investor Leon Black and dinner with director Woody Allen and his wife Soon Yi Previn, according to his schedule. (Black has been accused of sexual assault by two women but has denied all allegations.)
Wolff has written books critical of the president and in 2016 even told Epstein “you’re the Trump bullet” to stop his rise given their former relationship. Last November, Wolff posted an Instagram video in which he said, “These two men, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, had the closest of relationships for more than a decade.”
Trump has said he wasn’t involved in any of Epstein’s criminal activity and that they had a falling out years ago. Epstein was once a frequent visitor at Mar-a-Lago and court records indicate that Trump flew at least once on one of Epstein’s planes and his phone numbers were in Epstein’s directory. There’s no evidence to suggest Trump took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation.
Wolff said in a statement that he worked on an effort with Glover to get Trump to publicly respond to questions about his relationship with Epstein during the 2016 presidential campaign. Glover said that Wolff had called her in the fall of 2015 to try to have reporters ask Trump about Epstein. That’s why Wolff emailed Epstein that year regarding how Trump might handle questions about their shared history.
“In 2017, I encouraged Juleanna to see Epstein in the hope that she might help convince him to go public about what he knew about Trump,” he said. “I believe she suggested to Epstein that Jim Stewart at the Times would be receptive.”
Glover referred Blue Light News to an anti-Trump political consultant, Rick Wilson, with whom she had been in touch about Epstein in 2015, years before her correspondence with Epstein began.
Wilson told Blue Light News that he and Glover had a phone call in the fall of 2015 to try to figure out if Epstein had any dirt on Trump.
“She’s a great communicator, and that’s why people seek her out, and that’s why she was so valuable in this anti-Trump fight at the time,” he said. “She was definitely in the pursuit of trying to stop Trump.”
In the summer of 2018 she asked Epstein about Stewart, who was writing a piece on Musk.
“Do you like Jim Stewart?” she wrote to Epstein in August 2018. “Will send him to you for deep backgound [sic] convo if y=u like? But only if you like.”
“[N]o thanks,” Epstein replied. “I live in dark background.”
During several days in August, the two exchanged emails and calls about Musk, who was looking for wealthy investors to buy out shareholders.
“If you are advising re: sovereign wealth funds looking to help a prominent company go private, let me know if I can help w any approp additional information,” she wrote Epstein on Aug. 12.
“Clever,” he replied. She also offered a primer on how Tesla’s Autopilot worked.
Epstein passed along names of potential candidates to join Tesla’s board, suggesting former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former Obama White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler and Margaret Thatcher, not realizing she had been dead for five years. (Summers and Ruemmler have apologized for their connections to Epstein and left their jobs after their ties to him were highlighted in the files.)
Epstein also offered to “help shape your story” and gave Glover advice on how Musk should talk on the record to Stewart or then-Times reporter Landon Thomas Jr. about the situation.
“Will try,” Glover replied.
Two days after Epstein’s death, Stewart wrote a column recounting a meeting he had with Epstein in which he claimed to know information about wealthy and famous people that was “potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.”
Thomas Jr. left the Times in 2019 after he solicited a major charitable gift from Epstein, who’d been a source, according to an investigation by NPR and a statement the publication made to the New York Post. Thomas Jr. declined to comment to NPR and didn’t respond to a request for comment from Blue Light News.
Stewart said in a statement that he wasn’t aware at the time of any relationship between Glover and Epstein and didn’t know about anything Epstein might have told her.
“As I would with any potential source, I reached out to Epstein because I’d heard he was recruiting board members for Tesla at the behest of Musk,” he said. “Epstein wanted to meet in person, so I went to his townhouse. (I subsequently wrote about that encounter.) I don’t recall using anything Epstein had to say in any story about Musk. He certainly didn’t ‘shape’ any story I was involved in.”
Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades-Ha said in a statement that Thomas Jr. hadn’t worked at the Times since 2019 “after editors discovered his failure to abide by our ethical standards. Times editors were not aware at the time of Thomas’s now-public emails with Epstein.”
Referring to Musk, Epstein told her that he only said “great things about your boy” while sharing that “some of the papers are looking into whether you [sic] boy was on drugs.” He then asked Glover if there are “different colors of cocaine. ? ! ectasy [sic]. (I know zero about drugs).”
“Nothing to it,” she replied. “He barely even drinks.” She acknowledged three days later, “Oh and re burning man, he hasn’t gone in years but may go w his musician girlfriend the last weekend in aug – that is the best the rumor mongers can do.”
After the Times published the interview, Elon Musk Details ‘Excruciating’ Personal Toll of Tesla Turmoil, Epstein emailed Glover, saying “good work – interview apart from the one short seller comment. :)”
Glover responded: “Glad you think it improves situation.”
The exchanges about Musk show how their relationship was a give-and-take compared to a more formal adviser-client set up with Epstein giving positive feedback to one of the nation’s leading communications strategists on her own media approach. At the same time, Glover also steadfastly defended her client, insisting he didn’t do drugs less than a month before he smoked marijuana live on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Glover said that her interactions with Epstein about Musk came during a tense time as Tesla’s leadership was pushing hard to take the company private, which Musk had announced the Saudis and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were key to getting done.
“Epstein had bragged that he was close to MBS, so I reached out,” she told Blue Light News. “Musk was unaware that I’d done so. I shared publicly available information about the company, with the intent that Epstein would advise the Saudis to hold steady on their commitment to Musk to take the company private. I was trying to encourage him to weigh in with the Saudis to keep their word to Musk. I do not believe he was in any way useful to this effort as there are no known communications with MBS in the DOJ files.”
Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.
An attempt at a pro-democracy rehabilitation
Glover’s firm Ridgely Walsh emphasizes “bespoke public affairs services” and the DOJ files reveal the kind of strategic matchmaking services she might offer clients. For Epstein, who needed to burnish his image, she found an advocacy group in need of funding.
After their first lunch meeting in May 2017, Epstein thanked Glover for her time and said he was happy to meet the leadership of the democracy nonprofit Freedom House as he tried to overhaul his public reputation after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. (He served 13 months on a work release program that allowed him to go to his office during most days.)
“The pro- democracy fund=ng is a good idea, no matter what positive fallout it may have on me perso=ally,” he wrote.
He also invited Glover and a guest to see the Tony-award winning play Oslo, in which he bragged that he had bought out the entire Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center so that many U.N. diplomats could attend. “[Y]ou would be part of the private gatherings. Many interesting people will attend,” he noted.
Glover doesn’t appear to have replied to Epstein’s invitation but seven weeks later she told Epstein she had secured a date for Michael Abramowitz, the then-head of Freedom House, to come see him. They were all supposed to meet in person on July 24, but Epstein ended up being out of town so the three joined a call. Glover, who has long worked for international dissidents of various stripes, connected the two via email after the call with Abramowitz responding, “nice to meet you. Talk soon I hope.”
A month later, Abramowitz emailed Epstein, saying he hoped he had a good summer and had enjoyed talking to him. While he sent four attachments about the organization, Epstein had the brusque reply “thx” with a link to an article on HuffPost promoting his work funding scientists. (The articleno longer appears on HuffPost.)
The pair ups didn’t always work, although for Freedom House the mismatch turned out to be a positive. Numerous politicians have had to give away Epstein donations to charitable causes and other figures associated with the late sex offender have lost their jobs or resigned from posts.
Freedom House referred a request for comment to Abramowitz.
“I was asked to have a conversation with him about philanthropy,” Abramowitz said in a statement. “It was a brief phone call, and Freedom House never accepted money from him.”
Glover said she connected Epstein to Abramowitz because Epstein was interested in funding nonprofits. Glover and her firm have experience working with pro-democracy efforts including work on the Magnitsky Act, much of which she does pro-bono. (The Magnitsky Act allows the U.S. government to punish foreign officials for human rights abuses.)
“We do much work in the pro-democracy space, so I asked Freedom House to talk to Epstein about what overseas nonprofits might prove to be the most effective in supporting democracy efforts in Russia and Eastern Europe (at that time Russians were in the streets in large numbers protesting Putin),” she said.
“There was was also growing awareness about Putin directing interference in the U.S. 2016 election and the U.S. was certainly not going to step up to support free elections given Trump’s growing closeness to Putin so I suggested Epstein do it,” Glover said.
“I suspected these foreign groups would welcome his money in their vital, but cash-strapped work,” she added. “I have apologized to the good leaders of Freedom House for connecting this storied institution to this monster. Nothing came of that conversation. Epstein of course lied about his intent and/or ability to marshal money.”
A warning about Steve Bannon
There were tensions embedded in Epstein’s relationship with Glover, a classic establishment GOP operator, and his similarly newfound friendship with Bannon, the conservative firebrand who was separately giving him strategic advice. It’s an illustration of Epstein’s success at cracking the political world that he was able to maintain relations with both of them.
In their 2018 correspondence about unconventional presidential tickets, Epstein took care to write “(not bannon)” when telling Glover that his other “friends with great knowledge of the system” thought the third party idea was “brilliant.”
Glover replied back with a link to a New York Times op-ed she authored about third parties “that says something of the same.”
In December 2018, Epstein replied back to a blast from Glover sharing a Blue Light News Magazine op-ed she had written about how Joe Biden should run on a unity ticket with Mitt Romney.
“[Y]ou are right of course,” Epstein wrote.
Months earlier, Glover passed along a request by the BBC to put the outlet in touch with Wolff about Epstein. Wolff forwarded it to Epstein, who told him to get more information on the matter.
“On the job,” Wolff replied.
Glover emailed him to say she was going to be in New York City the next day and wanted to check in. Epstein wrote back that he “would have loved to however i am in the caribean [sic] please try again next time.”
“Will do,” Glover replied. “Take care.”
In April, Glover checked in again to ask if Epstein would be free in a few days in New York City, adding “Hope all is well.” He told her he was not in town that day. But the two met up in July after Glover emailed him again asking if he was in Manhattan, adding “Hope all is great.”
On her way to the meeting at his Upper East Side mansion, she apologized for being a few minutes late, saying “I am so sorry!”
Among the topics of discussion at their meeting was Epstein’s dealings with Bannon.
“On reflection, I don’t think any good can come from Steve being in your sphere,” Glover wrote to Epstein the next day. “I have only met him once but there is a malice and manipulative vengeful nature there that can only cause you harm. He will use his access to you to leverage something unwelcome – not sure what, but he’s conjuring dark forces and access to you is only energizing him.”
Epstein thanked her, and added, “I will take advice.” (Despite telling her that, hecontinued to talk to Bannon up until his arrest the next year on new sex trafficking charges and sat down for interviews with Bannon for a documentary he was making.)
Asked why she had warned Epstein about Bannon, Glover told Blue Light News that Epstein had mentioned to her he was seeing Bannon later in the day during their July 2018 meeting. “I warned Epstein away from Bannon, as I thought Bannon would block Epstein from saying what he knew about Trump,” she said.
A spokesperson for Bannon declined to comment.
The last instance of Glover in the files is in March 2019 when Epstein emailed hera link to a letter to the editor of the Times that his four lawyers had written defending Epstein and saying “the number of young women involved in the investigation has been vastly exaggerated.” It continued that the earlier “case lacked the credible and compelling proof that is required by federal criminal statutes.”
She did not reply.
He died by suicide in his New York jail cell five months later on Aug. 10, 2019.
Michigan’s Democratic coalition is fragmenting in real time days before a critical Senate election.
After it seemed like former primary rivals Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens might finally appear together, they’re back to sniping at each other. And it could hardly come at a worse moment as Democrats look to unite behind El-Sayed and hold on to a pivotal Senate seat.
El-Sayed’s campaign is asking Stevens to stay away from all future campaign events in the closing days of the race, two people familiar with the decision told Blue Light News, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign dynamics. She should stay away “as not to distract from the central issues of the campaign,” one of the people said.
The brushoff capped off a day of the two lobbing increasingly pointed statements back and forth at each other, frustrating Democrats who say the infighting risks imperiling a state the party can hardly afford to lose as they try to flip control of the Senate.
“I have no idea what the hell Haley Stevens is doing. This is a moment where we have to recognize the stakes,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who was squeezed out of the Democratic primary by the two other candidates, told BLN earlier on Friday, before El-Sayed issued his response. “People are not talking about ads. They are not talking about Haley Stevens. They are talking about the price of gas and groceries.”
Stevens did not immediately respond to a question on if she will now stay off the trail, and did not respond to an earlier question about whether her appearance was contingent on him apologizing. El-Sayed’s campaign declined to comment.
El-Sayed narrowly defeated Stevens in a bitter and hard-fought primary in August that exposed division over support for Israel.
Michigan is crucial to Democrats’ plans to take back the Senate: the party can hardly afford to lose retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters’ seat as it hopes to use an otherwise-favorable year for Democrats to win seats in much redder states and seize control of the chamber.
Stevens and El-Sayed have not campaigned together since a post-primary unity breakfast, but appeared on the verge of doing so earlier on Friday.
Stevens initially said she would appear alongside El-Sayed and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) at a church in Detroit on Sunday.
But she said she expected the Democratic nominee to apologize for some of his past comments and condemn an ad run by an outside group supporting him that she described as antisemitic. The ad featured a conversation in a grocery store where a woman told a man they couldn’t buy eggs because they had to set aside money for “killing Palestinians.”
El-Sayed’s campaign had previously noted he was not affiliated with the ad.
In response, El-Sayed did not touch on the ad or his past comments on Israel, instead saying that has campaign “has always been focused on addressing the most critical challenges Michiganders are facing” and that that focus “is why our people-powered campaign defeated a historic $70 [million] in outside spending from big corporations and AIPAC on behalf of Congresswoman Stevens.”
“So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the task at hand: that’s beating Mike Rogers,” El-Sayed said.
Some Democrats tried to downplay the fight heading into the final days of the race.
“There’s been a lot of efforts to coalesce Democrats, both from Abdul and from the congresswoman. I think everybody’s on the same page of Democrats just beating Mike Rogers,” said Joe Tate, a state representative from Detroit who supported Stevens in the primary and is now backing El-Sayed. But he acknowledged that “when you have people that have competed through a primary, I know it can always have those lingering effects.”
Republicans have sought to play up the Democratic divisions.
“If you’re Black, or if you’re Jewish, and you vote for Abdul, you’re not smart,” President Donald Trump said at a Friday night rally in Daytona, Florida.
And Stevens’ comments so close to the pivotal election left some Democrats wondering what her goal was.
“If you are someone with a large platform — whether you are, say, an outgoing member of Congress or an out-of-state streamer — who genuinely wants Abdul El-Sayed to become the next U.S. Senator from the state of Michigan and for Democrats to take back the Senate and put a meaningful check on Donald Trump, before you speak publicly I would implore you to ask yourself ‘is what I’m doing actually helping, or am I just seeking attention?’,” Democratic operative Adam Carlson, who has polled for a pro El-Sayed super PAC, wrote on X.
Sophia Cai contributed to this report.
Democrats are poised for a good night next Tuesday. That doesn’t mean they’ve figured out how to win.
More than a dozen lawmakers, campaign operatives, strategists and pollsters warned in interviews that national Democrats risk drawing the wrong conclusions if they take back control of at least one chamber of Congress next week.
Those figures from across the party worry that the midterms, which have become a referendum on President Donald Trump, have done little to improve the Democratic Party’s brand. They caution that a favorable political environment has papered over persistent problems for a party still grappling with why it lost the 2024 presidential election. And they admit they are still sharply divided over what its message should be heading into 2028.
“Don’t confuse them losing with us winning,” said Morgan Jackson, the senior adviser to Democrat Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign in North Carolina. Cooper has consistently led in the polls by a wide margin in a state Trump won three times.
“This is not an affirmation of the Democratic Party in any which way,” said one veteran Democratic pollster working on Senate campaigns, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It is very much a rejection of Trump.”
The Democratic Party’s approval rating plummeted in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, and remains relatively weak. That’s even as voters tell pollsters they are more likely to trust Democrats than Republicans on several fronts, including addressing the cost of living, which voters consistently say is their top issue this cycle.
Democrats’ quest for a coherent, positive pitch to answer rising prices and perceived corruption in Washington has at times been stymied by infighting between the party’s progressive and moderate factions over the best way to respond to the Trump administration.
Democrats fought over whether to prolong government shutdowns to protest funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the slashing of health care subsidies in late 2025 and early 2026. They were quick to attack their own upon release of the Democratic National Committee’s formal autopsy on where the party went wrong in 2024.
But as Americans soured on Trump’s agenda and the Iran war drove up costs, Democrats zeroed in on a broad “costs, chaos and corruption” message that blamed the White House — without having to resolve their own internal tensions and disorder.
“When your opponent is destroying themselves,” said Matt Barron, a Democratic strategist who has done work across the rural Midwest and Rust Belt, “just get out of the way and let it happen.”
Nabbing wins in a midterm election with a historically unpopular president is one thing. Building a winning brand for a party that was soundly defeated at the polls just two years ago is another.
“If all you do is say the other people are terrible, that only gets you so far,” said Democratic donor Oliver Libby, who has advised Democratic House candidates Cait Conley in New York and Johnny Garcia in Texas this cycle. “You can have a minimum viable product of a midterm with criticism. You definitely don’t win a presidential year with just criticism.”
In a new Blue Light News Poll conducted by PF Global, more than half of Americans said if Republicans lose control of both the House and the Senate, it would be either because of Trump’s actions since he became president, or because Republicans have run weak campaigns. Just one in four said a Democrat-controlled Congress would be because the party had run a strong campaign.
“There are people who are going to vote in this election who are going to vote against Republicans,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist and adviser to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “That does not mean they are in love with Democrats. It just means they are voting against the people in charge.”
Democratic strategist Lis Smith, an architect of Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, said the Democratic candidates performing well in historically deep-red territory are the ones distancing themselves from the national party.
“That should tell party leaders something,” she said.
Smith helped found the moderate groups Majority Democrats and The Bench, and is advising Democratic Senate candidates like Adam Hamilton in Kansas, James Talarico in Texas and Josh Turek in Iowa — all of whom have taken on that tack.
In Kansas, Hamilton publicly asked former Vice President Kamala Harris to stay away from his campaign, and said he would vote against Chuck Schumer remaining the party’s leader in the Senate. In Texas, Talarico vowed to challenge the party’s “establishment” and “change the Democratic Party.” And in Iowa, Turek says he rarely thinks about the party, while Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state, has said he wants to end the two-party system altogether.
“The reality is that a lot of very average and even mediocre candidates get across the line in a wave election,” Smith said. “A wave can hide a lot of weaknesses, and so we need to be able to make sure that the party can survive when the wave recedes.”
Assuming Democrats take back control of at least one chamber of Congress next week, top party operatives see an opportunity for their side to deliver for voters who have wanted more checks on the Trump administration’s expansive use of executive power. But many caution that Democrats on Capitol Hill should avoid leaning too hard into an anti-Trump message next year, while others argue that the anti-corruption message will continue to galvanize the electorate.
“The thing that I would be concerned about, if you go from 2026 to 2028, is that people think that corruption, that elite control over our economy, is just a Trump issue,” said Bill Neidhardt, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and is now advising left-leaning Democratic candidate Will Lawrence and working to boost Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan. “What they need to focus on is that corporate power, those billionaire elites who are dictating the terms of our economy, that’s what people are upset with.”
William Garcia, the co-chair of Wisconsin’s La Crosse County Democratic Party, has been canvassing extensively for his party in the state’s rural-heavy 3rd district, where voters swung toward Trump in recent years. Democrats are now trying to claw back that support.
“I think we’re going to have a great night on Nov. 3. And then all these Democrats are going to have to deliver on all of these things we’re talking about,” Garcia said. “If we get to the end of 2027 summer and we haven’t passed bills to make a substantial difference in people’s lives, that’s my biggest fear. We gotta deliver.”
Others acknowledge that voters may hold the party to a higher bar if they succeed in taking back control of both chambers of Congress — and they’ll be ready to punish Democrats in 2028 if they don’t follow through on their campaign promises to hold the Trump administration to account and bring down the cost of living.
It’s a slippery slope for a party that has historically struggled to convince voters that it is well equipped to handle the economy. In 2024, Trump persuaded the majority of voters they would be financially better off with him in the White House, while painting Democrats as a party more concerned with social issues.
“If we start getting back into a party that cares more about non-economic issues, then we haven’t learned the lesson,” warned Pete Giangreco, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on House, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns this cycle. “People just are going to keep hitting the change button until the economy starts working for them again.”
Samuel Benson and Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting.
POCONO RACEWAY, Pennsylvania — High up in the starting stand of a famed race track, Josh Shapiro waves a black-and-white checkered flag with an unmistakeable meaning: It’s over.
The metaphor isn’t entirely accurate.
“We may have a lead, but you’re coming down this home stretch. People are nipping at your heels,” the Pennsylvania governor told Blue Light News. “You’ve got to run hard.”
Shapiro, the potential 2028 contender and 2024 veepstakes short-lister, does have reasons to be optimistic — and careful.
He’s threatening a double-digit blowout over Stacy Garrity, a candidate backed by President Donald Trump, in the most important swing state in the nation.
He’s also putting his coattails to the test.
None of the other potential 2028 Democratic candidates has more at stake in their own backyard on Tuesday than Shapiro. He doesn’t have California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s map-breaking Proposition 50, designed to beat back the GOP redistricting, nor his platinum email list. He doesn’t have Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s billions or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s deep bench of donors or former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s large map or the red-state credentials of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Shapiro is on the brink of flipping four hotly contested congressional seats — and guaranteeing Democrats the House. Pennsylvania Democrats could also take control of the state Senate, including some heavily gerrymandered seats, giving the party a governing trifecta for the first time since 1992.
“I’m not thinking about this as a victory for me,” he told Blue Light News during a swing through the state. “I’m thinking about this as a victory for our country.”
All of which paves the way for him to pass a $15 minimum wage and a raft of other measures that could buttress a 2028 presidential bid.
Shapiro is very much following the Ron DeSantis theory of a presidential primary campaign: demonstrate dominance at home before branching out nationally — a strategy, it should be noted, that didn’t pay off for the Florida governor.
“I think what really hurt DeSantis was that he decided he wasn’t going to announce until after his legislative session, and that was May,” political strategist David Axelrod said. “Time is at a premium. If that’s his plan, that would be a miscalculation.”
Will we see him venture beyond Pennsylvania’s boundaries before the end of the year?
“I don’t know what my plans are,” Shapiro said.
The day had the feeling of both an ending of one campaign and the beginning of another. Even as he urged a midday audience of about 100 people to vote for Paige Cognetti, the Scranton mayor running against Rep. Rob Bresnahan, and Brian Wrightson, the state Senate candidate challenging Sen. Rosemary Brown, he is nationalizing his rhetoric.
“Don’t let Trump take away your hopefulness,” he told people gathered at East Stroudsburg University. “Don’t let him make you feel pessimistic. Don’t let him feel like change can’t come or that we have to look in the rearview mirror for answers. The answers are always straight ahead.”
Then there’s his set piece about the “American dream slipping away.”
He’s broadening out his message beyond the commonwealth.
“I think the work I do here in Pennsylvania, the confidence I give them about their government here can hopefully restore some of their faith in democracy, and I want in our democracy, and I want them to feel like they’ve got power to be able to shape the future of that American dream,” Shapiro told us.
A few hours later, Shapiro materializes inside Salerno’s, a tavern in Old Forge known for its American cheese-topped pizza. He sets a room in which patrons already have had a few too many Rolling Rocks and pumpkin martinis.
On the televisions, his own ad for Wrightson is playing on TV. He grips and grins and backslaps his way through the room.
At the end of the bar, he picks up five pizzas for the road, ducks out the door and boards his bus for another Cognetti rally.
Shapiro’s gubernatorial reelect isn’t drawing the buzz of some of the more razor’s-edge, online Senate races in the waning days of election season. But his project is no less remarkable.
“If we can win enough seats here in Pennsylvania to change the balance of power in Washington and be a check on Donald Trump, then we can both hold the president accountable and get stuff done in Washington,” Shapiro says. “Likewise, here in Pennsylvania, if we can win a trifecta for the first time since Bill Clinton’s election, I can raise wages almost immediately for tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who are at or below minimum wage and raise wages for others. That’s a concrete thing that we can accomplish.”
At the raceway, he has just finished cutting a video racing around the Pocono Raceway’s Tricky Triangle when he flashes a grin.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says, inviting Blue Light News to the starting stand above the storied three-turn NASCAR track in the Pocono foothills.
Up the stairs, the burnt-orange fall foliage dances on the Pennsylvania horizon. It’s a vantage point Shapiro, as a NASCAR fan, has taken in many times.
Despite the apt setting, he deflects when asked if he’s ready to announce the launch of his campaign.
“If this is a metaphor,” he says, “it’s for finishing the race strong.”
There is just one wrinkle: Before he brandished the black-and-white flag, he picked up a green one, waving it vigorously.
“I think you mis-saw that,” Shapiro said with a smile. “I was waving a checkered flag to finish the governor’s race.”
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