DALLAS - Days after Gov. Gavin Newsom took a 2028 presidential test run through the South, another '28 hopeful, Vice President JD Vance basked in the spotlight of the final night of the GOP midterm convention.
While Newsom may have a harder road in gaining his party's nomination over what's expected to be a crowded field of Democratic challengers, Vance is on a glide path after his chief rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said this week that he "has no plans at this time" to run. Rubio did not speak at the two-day convention that ended Thursday.
Yet Vance was all over the map during his 42-minute convention speech, careening from a Scripture-quoting, doting father of a newborn son to nativist culture warrior who mocked a protester who interrupted his speech by waving a Mexican flag. Vance told the protester: "'My friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there.'
That juxtaposition emphasized the identity crisis Vance will have to answer as he holds himself out as the GOP's next leader. Is he the loyal Trump acolyte, or the guy who once compared Trump to Hitler? Is he the heartland hero, or the Silicon Valley venture capitalist?
Thursday's crowd appeared to love the version of Vance that was eager to insult the protestor. Crowd members stood in approval, chanting "JD! JD! JD!" and "USA!"
Moments later, the crowd chanted "'28! 28! 28!" - virtually dubbing Vance as the heir apparent to the MAGA throne. Vance replied, "We've got to take care of business this November, and then we'll worry about what goes next."
Newsom isn't close to having that level of support from national Democrats. It's still unknown whether his appeal will translate east of California. He's got a big hill to climb, as he'll have to explain why California has 180,000 homeless people, unaffordable housing and the nation's highest poverty rate.
Vance, for his part, will have to answer why gas prices and inflation soared under his tenure and why the country engaged in an unpopular war with Iran that just entered its seventh month.
The war explanation just got harder for Vance: The New York Times reported Thursday that he has been more deeply involved in the war's planning than previously divulged. After engaging in backchannel conversations with military leaders, he had "deep concerns about the overall strategy and the prospects for success" according to the Times. Yet Vance didn't share those concerns publicly. Instead, Vance said during a news conference last week that "I wouldn't call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting."
It's an example of how Vance must grapple with the duality of his office. While being the vice president gives him a headstart to the White House, he must also deal with the legacy of Trump, to whom he has been unfailingly loyal and who is deeply unpopular outside of the MAGA base.
For now, Vance is hewing close to Trump. He urged Republicans Thursday to vote in November even if they disagree with the Iran war. "Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here and there," he said.
One Trump policy Vance notably didn't mention Thursday: The president's proposal to give every American $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate that he announced Wednesday. The proposal would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion, adding to the nation's $40 trillion debt, and would be a far more socialistic wealth redistribution than anything that Democrats have proposed.
Vance's fealty to Trump will help him in the GOP primaries, but could hurt him if he advances to the general election in 2028.
John Dennis, a San Francisco resident who is a top official with the California Republican Party, said Republicans are looking for "contrast with continuity" for life after Trump.
"You get these kinds of characters like Trump for a certain period, and then it's time to move on to a different personality type," Dennis said. Trump "is a one-off, but the policies of national populism can continue."
In addition to his ties to Trump, Vance will likely lean on his well-known biography - an advantage he has over Newsom, who split his youth between his mother who raised him while working three jobs and his father, who was tight with the billionaire Getty family.
Vance grew up poor in southern Ohio and Kentucky, an upbringing he mined in his bestselling memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." Less known is that he once was something that many Republicans loathe: a Silicon Valley investor living in San Francisco.
Vance lived in San Francisco after graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, and worked in the Presidio as a venture capitalist. Even though he moved back to his native Ohio in 2017, his Democratic opponent in the Ohio Senate race made fun of his San Francisco sojourn as a sign of how out of touch he was with the nation's heartland.
In San Francisco, Vance worked for Peter Thiel, a billionaire investor who was a Republican mega-donor and early supporter of Trump during his 2016 campaign.
Dennis said Vance's relationship with Thiel is something that "he's going to have to overcome. … But you know, he's also been very skilled at jumping off of those sort of former positions (he's held)."
Most notably: Vance's position on Trump.
In 2022, his former college roommate, now a Georgia lawmaker, released a social media message he received in 2016 from Vance that compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.
"I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America's Hitler," Vance wrote, according to McLaurin. "How's that for discouraging?"
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Los Angeles, who was in Dallas to provide a counterpoint to this week's Trumpapalooza, wants voters to know that Vance is "a big-time phony" who is "just as delusional as the president."
Vance graduated from Yale Law School, Kamlager-Dove told me Thursday, yet has been "antagonizing colleges and universities" for their diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He benefited from a public school system and his family was helped through addiction and unemployment by social services, but "his administration has been railing against them," she said.
He is married to an Indian-American woman, and "has a multi-ethnic, diverse family that he loves, cherishes and protects," Kamlager-Dove said. But "he is part of an administration that has been demonizing, terrorizing, deporting and killing immigrants."
Vance has other problems, too, that could haunt a presidential run. In July 2025, Vance led a group of Trump's top advisers in the Situation Room to strategize about how to handle messaging around Trump's involvement with the Epstein files. He proposed that "the White House enlist Tucker Carlson to interview [Jeffrey] Epstein's longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell," according to the New York Times.
"We have questions why JD Vance is leading the Epstein cover-up," Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach, told me Thursday. "J.D. Vance was holding meetings in the Situation Room in a room that's reserved for national emergencies, trying to cover up whatever happened with Ghislaine Maxwell."
Yet many of the party faithful love Vance. Mary Jane Avery, a Texas Republican party official from central Texas, said she "absolutely" would be a worthy successor to Trump.
Trump has "a whole team of worthy successors. I'd like to see JD Vance do eight years. I'd like to see Marco (Rubio) do eight years. I may be dead by then, but we will have left it in good hands for the people coming behind us."
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This article originally published at JD Vance is making his 2028 pitch, setting up a potential collision course with Newsom.