More Democratic women are serving as governors than at any point in American history. They might all sit out 2028 — and leave Democrats without a single top-tier female presidential candidate.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s announcement last week that she will “not be one of” the Democratic candidates for the presidency in 2028 has resurfaced the complex question of gender in Democratic politics and leadership. While Whitmer subsequently seemed to slightly walk her statement back — she told a panel later that day, “never say never” — it seems as close to a shut door as any major prospect has offered thus far. It’s also not surprising: veterans of Whitmer’s Michigan campaigns and national operatives have told me over the past year that they did not expect the governor to run.
Whitmer’s decision, if it indeed sticks, matters for another reason: it has removed one of the field's few female candidates. Of the ten polling the best in the RealClearPolitics average, only two others (more on them later) are women. When combined with the party’s deep skepticism about the prospect of a female president — a 2025 AP/NORC poll found 40% of registered Democrats do not believe they will see one in their lifetime — it’s enough to make one wonder: could the 2028 Democratic field be without a top-tier female candidate?
Amid this, women have broken new ground in executive experience. With last November’s election of Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, there are currently 14 women serving as governors, an all-time high. Of those, 10 are Democrats, comprising about 40% of the country’s 24 Democratic governors. That number is likely to stay around flat after the 2026 midterms: multiple incumbents, including New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, Kansas’s Laura Kelly, Maine’s Janet Mills, and Whitmer, are term-limited and retiring. Their ranks are set to be replenished by the likes of Deb Haaland in New Mexico, Jocelyn Benson in Michigan, Helena Foulkes in Rhode Island, and Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, who are all favored in their races. It could even increase, depending on the outcomes of the general election in Georgia, where Democrats have nominated Keisha Lance Bottoms, and the August primary election in Wisconsin, where two viable female candidates are in the mix.
The progress in governor’s mansions is all the more significant given executive office has typically been a steeper climb for women in politics: Studies have long found that voters are more willing to elect women to legislative roles than to a single, executive position. That women are now equally represented in governorships as Congress — literally dead-even at 28%, per the Pew Research Center — would seem to be particularly helpful in priming voters to accept the prospect of a female president. And the fact that women have been elected to lead some of the nation's most competitive states, including Arizona, Michigan, Virginia, and New Hampshire, all of which ranked among the ten closest states in 2024, would seem to undercut at least some Democratic concerns about women's electability. And yet, it appears increasingly likely that none of these women will be candidates for the 2028 Democratic nomination.
Interestingly, that’s far from a historical anomaly. In the past, female candidates for president have almost exclusively brought federal and legislative experience. The sole exception is the 2024 candidacy of Nikki Haley, who served as South Carolina governor, though her highest level of experience came as UN Ambassador during Donald Trump’s first term.
All of this is particularly notable given two separate factors. First, we are likely to see more governors in the mix in 2028 than at any time in modern history. As I’ve written before, the last time multiple sitting governors competed for a Democratic nomination was back in 1992. Now, at least four — Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear, and Josh Shapiro — appear likely to enter the 2028 race. If states are to be viewed as incubators of national political trends, this would seem to indicate that, for all other progress, one other longstanding dynamic — that women and men approach the prospect of running for office far differently — is still intact. Secondly, the remaining two major female candidates, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are by no means locks to enter the race.
Harris’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s calculations are very different. For example, if Harris, who is 61, were to pass on running, she’d almost certainly be ending her political career. Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, could opt to run for Senate or, at 36, spend decades more in politics. But I don’t know any smart, plugged-in observer who considers themselves certain that either will enter the race. And, as difficult as it may be to imagine now, there is a real chance both could decide against it. So far, they’re certainly not approaching the shadow primary in the same way as their counterparts: Over the past year, AOC and Harris have done fewer media appearances combined than all four of the aforementioned male governors have done individually, according to Jesse Lehrich’s Nobody’s Listening.
The current field is, of course, by no means locked — if anything, recent history has shown that we are likely to see some major upheaval in the top tier over the next eighteen months. I’ve heard more rumors recently about former Rhode Island governor and former Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo potentially making a run, for example. Raimondo distinguished herself as a head-down technocrat during the Biden administration, though it's unclear if her brand of Bloombergian centrism (she was literally the only sitting governor to endorse the former New York mayor’s 2020 run) could draw much of any constituency in the modern Democratic Party.
The potential dearth of female candidates also helps explain some of the moves by Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who is making increasingly overt visits to politically important states. Slotkin no doubt sees a niche for her personal brand, as a mainline Democrat from a Trump-Biden-Trump state. But she could very well be sensing something key: in the modern era, female candidates have consistently been a presence in the top tier of presidential primary contests.
Here’s an overlooked part of recent political history: Since 2008, every presidential election has seen a female candidate poll in at least the top two of a national party primary contest: Hillary Clinton in 2008, Michele Bachmann in 2012, Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren in 2020, and Nikki Haley in 2024. (This excludes polls taken before candidates have announced, like Sarah Palin in the 2012 cycle or outlets’ perennial insistence on polling Michelle Obama).
There are, to be sure, any number of ways to downplay this. Clinton’s two bids are in a category of their own, Bachmann caught tea party lightning in a bottle, Fiorina and Harris both rode stellar debate performances to brief surges, and Haley simply outlasted her rivals. Another way to look at it: Fortune favors the bold, and most of the women who have chosen to run in recent years have left elevated in some way, with new influence, a Cabinet position, or even the vice presidency. Ahead of 2028, the opportunity appears increasingly open.
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