Politics

How top Democrats are already gearing up for 2028 online

Published

11 months ago

August 2, 2025

Several Democrats are already laying the groundwork for potential 2028 presidential runs, new campaign finance filings show, recruiting donors and running online ads that build their national profiles.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg led the way among Democrats talked about as presidential contenders with $1.6 million raised for his leadership PAC in the first half of the year, and a few Democratic governors raising hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Together, they have already raised and spent millions of dollars this year, according to disclosures filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. The bulk of the money was spent on fundraising activities, including acquiring donor lists and running digital ads, that would facilitate a presidential run.

“If you’re thinking about running for president in 2028, job number one is being seen doing everything you can to help Democrats win in 2026, which raising money for your leadership PAC allows you to do — to travel, to test out messages, to make contributions to other candidates, to build your online following,” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic consultant who worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “Investing in your leadership PAC money now is critical because you have to build your fundraising operation now.”

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg led among the Democrats talked about as presidential contender, with $1.6 million raised for his leadership PAC.

While official campaign launches are likely to come after the 2026 midterms, several rumored White House contenders have leadership PACs, which allow them to raise and spend money not tied to a particular election. The PACs linked to these potential candidates largely focused on growing their digital presences over the first half of the year, the filings show, with governors who have less of a national profile running ads online nationally and spending money to build fundraising infrastructure.

Buttigieg and Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan spent to acquire donor lists — a top expense for their leadership PACs. Beshear recently stumped in the early voting state of South Carolina; Whitmer appears less likely to mount a presidential bid.

List-building signals candidates’ ambitions for higher office, particularly with online fundraising a key pillar of successful Democratic campaigns over the past decade. By purchasing or renting Democratic donors’ contact information, candidates can more effectively target potential supporters, introduce themselves to a national audience and convert some of those donors into their own.

“You want to build up a strong email and text list for a few reasons — it’ll increase your name ID, you can raise money for other candidates, and then raise money for yourself,” said Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital consultant. “If you’re not spending money on growing the biggest possible audience for yourself right now, then you’re being foolish. Frankly, all of them could be spending more money on it.”

Leadership PACs also allow political figures in blue states to steer money to competitive races, including by directly donating to vulnerable candidates or state parties, or by fundraising on their behalf. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, has long tapped his extensive email and text lists to raise money for other candidates. Such efforts help blue-state Democrats build relationships across the country and engender goodwill within the party.

The PACs also run ads aimed at recruiting online backers. Newsom’s leadership PAC, Campaign for Democracy, invested another $1.5 million in digital ads in late June, according to its filing. The PAC, which launched in 2023 with a major transfer from Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign, reported $4.4 million cash on hand at the end of June.

Digital advertising helps candidates expand their name recognition and recruit donors outside their home states.

“It’s the small donations from folks like you that have the greatest impact,” read one ad that Beshear’s PAC, In This Together, ran on Facebook in June. “Your support helps us do what matters most: elect decent, compassionate leaders in Kentucky and nationwide.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear ran digital ads this year that focused on his home state but also reached a national audience.

Beshear’s group, which has $496,000 cash on hand, spent $30,000 on digital advertising through the end of June, according to its FEC report.

While Beshear’s PAC has run Facebook ads that predominantly target his home state of Kentucky , it has also reached an audience across the country, according to data from Meta’s digital ad library. Similarly, Facebook ads from Whitmer’s group, Fight Like Hell PAC, have predominantly targeted Michigan users — but with some national promotion, too. Hers has $2.6 million cash on hand.

Both their PAC filings reflected their home-state advantage. Among itemized donors, those giving at least $200, each got more funds from their home states than any other — despite neither Kentucky nor Michigan being hotbeds of Democratic giving.

Buttigieg’s Win the Era PAC, which was largely dormant while he served in former President Joe Biden’s cabinet, also began spending on Facebook ads in July, according to the platform. It was the first time Buttigieg had run ads on his personal page since the former South Bend mayor ended his presidential campaign in 2020.

“While my name won’t be on a ballot in 2026, I am committed to doing the work that must be done to rebuild trust in our system: supporting emerging leaders, showing up in communities we too often ignore, and helping win more elections,” read one recent ad from Buttigieg on the platform.

A person close to Buttigieg said the former secretary will continue traveling to support Democrats in 2026 and host more of his own town halls , as he did in Iowa this spring. Buttigieg, who is not in elected office, employs a small staff through his PAC, which has $2.4 million on hand.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s leadership PAC also ran digital ads that targeted her home state while also reaching a national audience.

Amanda Stitt, who led Whitmer’s 2022 campaign, said in a statement that the governor “is hard at work serving her constituents, helping to lower their costs, grow jobs, and protect their freedoms. She’s proud to support candidates throughout the country with the same goals, especially in the toughest districts like the ones she won in Michigan.”

Representatives for Beshear and Newsom declined to comment.

Leadership PACs have also covered travel and other expenses to help candidates set up 2028 bids. Beshear’s group, for example, spent $18,000 on polling in March and April.

Not all potential 2028 candidates are raising money federally right now — Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Wes Moore of Maryland, both of whom are seeking reelection next year, do not have federal leadership PACs. And billionaire Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is funding an advocacy group set up as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that does not face stringent campaign finance reporting requirements.

Politics

Pete Buttigeig says he was targeted by false abuse allegation in Michigan

Published

12 minutes ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he was kept apart from his two young children for 24 hours after someone made a false complaint about him to child protective services in Michigan.

In a Friday post to substack, Buttigieg said an anonymous caller who claimed to have met him several years ago at a conference in Alabama had reported him to CPS for committing “unspeakable violent crimes” and the caller believed his four-year-old twins were still at risk.

Buttigieg said the twins were placed with their grandparents’ and underwent a forensic interview as authorities investigated the allegations.

“For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen,” Buttigieg wrote. “We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime.”

Michigan State Police confirmed in response to questions about the Substack post that they had responded to an anonymous report this week, which they determined to be false.

“False reports are dangerous and divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families,” Shanon Banner, spokesperson for the state police, said in a statement.

Despite the conclusion that the report was false, Buttigieg said he was told it would “take a bit longer” before the case is officially closed. A spokesperson for the former Cabinet secretary referred questions to the state police.

Buttigieg pointed out that it is a crime to file a false report, adding that “if there is any way to press civil or criminal charges over this, we will.”

Buttigieg, who formerly served as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and ran for president in 2020, called the false report “the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”

“I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this. They are four years old. Four. They do not know or care what a Democrat or a Republican is,” he said. “For God’s sake, they are just kids.”

Politics

The World Cup game the White House cares most about today

Published

12 minutes ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SEATTLE — Iran faces off against Egypt tonight in a match that will have wide-ranging implications for the nation and its U.S. hosts, just hours after the American military conducted a strike in response to an Iranian attack on a commercial ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

As the Washington-Tehran ceasefire frays, a draw tonight in Seattle would help set up a situation where Iran plays its potential next two games at a Canadian stadium, rather than again in the United States, a scenario that would offer the Trump administration a two-week reprieve from the complicated task of trying to host a tournament while imposing unique travel restrictions on just one of the 48 competitors.

The Iranian Football Federation decided to move its base camp from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, amid concerns that the U.S. could not ensure its security. The State Department did not extend visas to Iran’s full delegation, including government officials and support staff, and limited the team’s players and coach to arrival within 24 hours of kickoff. The Department of Homeland Security relaxed those rules this week, allowing Iran’s team to spend two nights in Seattle before today’s match, although several players complained they were held for extended questioning upon arrival.

“Undoubtedly, the fact that the management and administrative staff could not accompany the team has negatively affected the players’ peace of mind and further complicated the national team’s work,” Abolfazl Pasandideh, Iran’s ambassador to Mexico, told Blue Light News. “Despite these difficulties, the Iranian team has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to stay focused and perform at the highest level, even under adverse circumstances. The professionalism shown by the players and coaching staff in the face of these challenges has been paramount, and the results achieved clearly reflect that reality.”

“Any measure that facilitates athletes’ participation and competition on equal terms is a positive step,” Pasandideh said of the Trump administration’s relaxed travel rules for the Iran team.

Nonetheless the World Cup’s one cross-border commuter squad sits on the precipice of advancing to the knockout rounds depending on tonight’s results and an impenetrably complicated formula that FIFA tournament organizers are using for the first time.

“The White House FIFA Task Force has prepared for and is aware of all potential scenarios involving 32 teams that will move into the knockout rounds and will advance from there,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle.

There are, according to The Athletic’s invaluable World Cup tracker, 625 plausible scoring combinations between the two final Group G matches that will take place concurrently tonight — Iran’s encounter with Egypt, and Belgium’s against New Zealand in Vancouver.

In 21 percent of those situations, according to The Athletic, an Iranian draw against Egypt would set the team on a path to play its next two matches in Vancouver: on July 2 against Switzerland, and then potentially again there five days later.

That would shift responsibility for managing Iran’s travel arrangements from the U.S. to Canada, whose Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday that he would like to restore diplomatic relations with Iran after 14 years of suspension. (Ironically, it is Switzerland that has served as a “protecting power” for Iranian interests with both the U.S. and Canada in the absence of direct connections between those governments.

In other scenarios, including any that involve an Iranian win tonight, the country would play its subsequent matches in Dallas or Seattle. The last path, which The Athletic estimates as a 18 percent probability, would set up the most geopolitically fraught face-off of all: a U.S.-Iran match July 6.

“We have reiterated on numerous occasions that we have no issue with the American people,” Pasandideh said. “Our disagreement lies with the hostile policies that the United States government has implemented against the Iranian people.”

If the Trump administration kept its current travel rules in place, that would mean Iran’s team would touch down on American soil on the 250th anniversary of the United States — a fitting culmination for the first World Cup to begin with a host country at war with a competitor.

Politics

A ‘pride match’ between Iran and Egypt — and Washington state’s gay leaders couldn’t be happier about it

Published

2 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SEATTLE — On Thursday, the Washington state House speaker and its Senate president — likely the country’s first-ever pairing of openly gay state capital legislative leaders — met to strategize with progressive campaigners against a pair of conservative-backed ballot initiatives that would impose new rules on transgender children in schools and sports.

To defeat the measures, the campaign will have to convince voters beyond Seattle’s progressive enclaves to accept their arguments about privacy, liberty and acceptance.

But on Friday, Washington’s LGBTQ+ leaders were thinking about how they might address an even more hard-to-reach constituency: citizens of Egypt and Iran, whose governments criminalize homosexuality but have seen their national teams paired through a scheduling quirk in the World Cup’s only official “Pride Match.”

Members of Seattle’s World Cup organizing committee set out to make the June 26 game a showcase of the city’s inclusivity before a random draw ensured two of the world’s most repressive states toward sexual minorities would take the field. While FIFA has banned critics of the regime in Tehran from flying the country’s pre-revolutionary flag (under rules prohibiting the display of political symbols), soccer’s governing body hassaid it will permit rainbow flags over objections from Iranian and Egyptian soccer officials.

“How many opportunities do you have to get positive messages about happy queer people beamed into Iran and Egypt?” said state Senate President Jamie Pedersen. “I don’t think there’s going to be any way for people who are watching the game and seeing images of the stands to be able to avoid the fact that there’s going to be a huge contingent of rainbow flags waving.”

Pedersen and House Speaker Laurie Jinkins have known each other since the 1990s, when they first worked together on a failed campaign to pass a statewide non-discrimination law. Both were subsequently elected to the legislature — she from Tacoma, he from a Seattle district encompassing Capitol Hill, the traditional seat of gay power — and rose to lead Democratic majorities in their respective chambers. Along the way they became friends, attending each other’s marriages and raising children in parallel.

Now they are collaborating with the No Hate in WA State campaign to defeat two separate initiatives that will appear on the November ballot after the two leaders refused to take them up in their legislative chambers. One,characterized as a parents-rights measure, would allow parents to opt out of classes related to sexual education or gender diversity and compel educators to notify parents if their children request medical attention. Aseparate measure would “prohibit biologically male students from competing with and against female students” in interscholastic sports, and require girls to receive a medical examination confirming their biological sex.

Both Pedersen and Jinkins said they expected to build on the coalition that helped enshrine gay and lesbian rights at the ballot, first bypassing a domestic-partnership regime in 2009 and then three years later by approving a same-sex marriage law that had passed the legislature before facing a citizen’s-veto threat. (Let’s Go Washington, the campaign committee organized to pass the two transgender-related initiatives this year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

“What we saw, going back to the 1980s and 1990s, is people didn’t think they knew anyone who was gay or lesbian. Once they started to realize they knew people, that started changing opinions dramatically,” said Jinkins. “It stopped the other side from being able to use stereotypes to characterize us.”

In interviews Friday morning, both of the legislative leaders cast the day’s unusual Pride matchup — and its likelihood for friction with soccer fans in Seattle’s streets — as a healthy development for the state’s LGBTQ+ community.

“That’s one of the best things about the World Cup, some of the exposure that different communities are having to one another,” said Jinkins. “It’s not just Iranian and Egyptian fans learning about Pride, it’s us learning about Iranian and Egyptian culture and thought.”

Neither, however, planned to attend the match itself despite receiving invitations to do so. Jinkins said she would likely visit a “fan zone” watch party being hosted by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians at its administrative headquarters in her Tacoma district. Pedersen, who concedes he is “not a sports fan,” was scheduled to participate in a Trans Pride event in Capitol Hill, the historic heart of gay Seattle where he is deep in an aggressive reelection campaign against a challenger to his left.

“I feel bad when I take up the ticket for something where there is a lot of demand,” Pedersen said. “People who really enjoy it should be having this experience, and probably not me.”