Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker will face Republican challenger Darren Bailey in this year’s gubernatorial election, after Bailey secured the GOP nomination on Tuesday. Pritzker will attempt to become the state’s first Democrat to win three terms.
Bailey defeated three opponents in the Republican primary, according to the Associated Press. A farmer and longtime conservative figure in Illinois politics, Bailey previously won the GOP nomination in 2022 before losing to Pritzker by more than 12 percentage points in the general election, Fox News reported.
In this year’s primary, Bailey defeated conservative commentator Ted Dabrowski, who had backing from several major Republican donors; businessman Rick Heidner, who largely self-funded his campaign; and James Mendrick.
Pritzker, who is considered a potential contender in the 2028 presidential election, will now face Bailey in a rematch of their 2022 race, the outlet said. Pritzker ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
“This year’s gubernatorial election, in which Pritzker is the clear favorite in Democrat-dominated Illinois, is seen by political pundits as a tune-up for the governor as he likely gears up for a 2028 White House run,” Fox reported.
Meanwhile, a Republican senator who has become a thorn in the side of President Donald Trump and his administration is considering a 2028 presidential bid, which would likely pit him against the presumed heir apparent, Vice President JD Vance.
“We’ll decide after 2026,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said in a weekend interview, adding that “without question” trust in the Trump administration is broken.
In 2016, Paul ran for the Republican presidential nomination but withdrew after finishing a distant fifth in Iowa’s GOP caucuses. Later that year, he was re-elected to the Senate and secured another term in 2022.
For years, the senator has been a prominent advocate within the GOP for fiscal conservatism, civil liberties, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. He has expressed concern about the declining support for these principles within a party increasingly influenced by President Donald Trump. He has also committed to working towards revitalizing this agenda, Fox News reported.
“The most important thing to me isn’t necessarily me or what my role is, but that there is someone who’s advocating that international trade is good and makes us rich. That big is not bad,” Paul said in an interview on “Sunday Night with Chuck Todd.”
Paul argued that “the populists also want to break up big business. They want to break up Google because they’re liberal or Meta because it’s liberal. I’m not one of those people, but that is sort of the Trump-Vance populist wing.”
Referencing Trump and Vice President JD Vance, the latter of whom is perceived to be Trump’s GOP successor, Paul emphasized that “there needs to be a free-market wing of the Republican Party. And I want to be part of trying to ensure that still exists.”
Paul, a vocal critic of Trump’s unprecedented use of tariffs and a member of the GOP, voted last year against the president’s large domestic policy measure due to its contribution to the national debt. Since last summer, he has been hinting at the possibility of a run in the 2028 election during interviews.
“I think in the Republican Party, though, there needs to be someone representing that international trade is good for America, that we get richer and more prosperous in the world we trade,” he told Kentucky’s Courier Journal newspaper last July. At the time, Paul added that it was “too early to tell” if he would make another White House bid.
In an interview with Spectrum News in September, he stated, “We will see in the future what happens,” regarding another run for the presidency.
In a December interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Paul also said he didn’t see Vance as the heir to Trump or the 2028 GOP frontrunner.