Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s prospects for the 2028 Republican nomination may have risen as Democrats wrenched control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections and voters punished the GOP for high gas prices and the Iran war.

Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, said Rubio was the ultimate victor of the GOP’s disappointing night.

“There’s one winner tonight on the Republican side, and that is Marco Rubio,” Gowdy said on Fox News early Wednesday.

While President Donald Trump won’t ever be on the ballot again, his allies will be, Gowdy said. Republican strategists are beginning to debate who from Trump’s camp will be able to mount a successful bid for the 2028 Republican nomination.

The field is likely to be broad. Outgoing Florida governor Ron DeSantis has hinted that he is open to running for president again, as he did in 2024 before being overshadowed by Trump in the Republican primary. So has Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who said in August that it was “no secret” he wanted to be president.

Inside Trump’s administration, speculation about who can carry Trump’s mantle forward centers on Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.

Rubio’s chief rival, Vance has already publicly blamed the war with Iran for the massive midterms rout, in what appears to be an early effort to put distance between himself and one of his boss’ most unpopular policies. From the start of the war, Vance had privately voiced opposition to it, and later led U.S. negotiations to end it.

Rubio, who was hawkish on Iran as a senator, is likely to be grouped into the pro-war camp as various GOP factions duke it out.

But Rubio has so far avoided stepping too far out front as the face of Trump’s Iran war.

Vance, Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have instead done much of the public messaging on Iran. But Rubio may have a hard time fully distancing himself after serving as Trump’s national security adviser and chief diplomat.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance said. “Any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

When asked if he would seek the Republican nomination, Rubio has said he was focused on his current national security roles and had no plans to run.

One person close to Rubio, granted anonymity to discuss the secretary’s thinking, said he had left the door open but was focused on his current roles. “No one knows but him,” the person said.

Voters across the country trained their backlash on Trump’s broken promises to lower prices and keep the country out of foreign wars. In exit polls, 63% of voters said going to war with Iran was a mistake, two-thirds said Trump’s policies had worsened the economy, and 61% said Trump was more focused on his own interests than the country’s.

While serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, Rubio morphed from one of Trump’s chief rivals of 2016 to one of his most trusted lieutenants by loyally executing policies often in conflict with his record in the Senate, including gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, lashing out at NATO and supporting overtures to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Rubio has focused much of his energy on Latin America, helping to plan Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s ouster, overseeing the country’s caretaker government and squeezing Cuba’s ruling Communist Party.

Tuesday’s results showed that Florida, Rubio’s home state, could be a hard-fought battleground election in 2028 with mixed results for Republicans. Ashley Moody held the party’s Senate seat, and Byron Donalds won the open governor’s race. But Democrats held or captured three of the four House districts Republicans had redrawn to give themselves an edge, with the fourth still too close to call.

When Rubio ran in 2016, he lost the Florida primary to Trump and ended his campaign that night.

Republican candidates may have a hard time following Trump’s unpopular presidency.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro predicted that Rubio would look at Tuesday’s rough electoral math and calculate that he would be better off sitting 2028 out.

“Number one, 2028 is likely a poison chalice, number two, if he runs against JD and JD runs and he loses to JD, he’s toast,” Shapiro said, adding that there were other 2028 scenarios that would still see Rubio as the heir apparent in 2032.

“If you’re Rubio, every math ends with you’re not going to run,” Shapiro said.

Hailey Wharram contributed reporting.

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