With less than two years remaining until US voters will decide who will serve as president of the United States from January 2025 to January 2029, former Republican government officials are starting to jockey for position in the coming fight for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, while at least one prominent Democrat (California governor Gavin Newsom) has reportedly pledged not to challenge President Joe Biden in a Democratic primary.
As the 2024 campaign takes shape, here are the names you need to know:
Joe Biden
Mr Biden is the current president of the United States and is now officially gunning for a second term, having announced his reelection bid in a video message on Tuesday 25 April.
The only US president in recent memory to forgo a run for a second term was the 37th occupant of that office, President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson declined to seek a second term amid upheaval over the Vietnam War despite having won a massive landslide over Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, just one year after the Texas native assumed the presidency after President John F Kennedy was murdered by an assassin.
Although Mr Biden has never suggested that he would follow Johnson’s example, his status as the oldest person to ever serve as president and his lacklustre approval ratings fuelled speculation that he might stand down so a younger candidate could take up the Democratic Party mantle. But the Democrats’ better-than-expected results in the 2022 midterms appeared to put new wind in Mr Biden’s sails before he officially announced his 2024 run.
Donald Trump
Of the more than 12 people who the Federal Election Commission lists as declared candidates for 2024, the only one whose name is well-known to the public is also the first former Trump administration figure to throw a hat into the ring, former president Donald J Trump.
Mr Trump, the only US president to face two separate impeachment trials – one after fomenting a violent attack on the US Capitol in hopes of remaining in power despite losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden – officially filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to declare himself a candidate in the 2024 election on 15 November, just minutes before he announced his candidacy at the same Palm Beach, Florida location where FBI agents had conducted a search for stolen classified documents just three months earlier.
Now based in Florida, the ex-real estate developer turned television presenter turned politician is hoping he can become the first ex-US chief executive to reclaim the White House since Grover Cleveland accomplished that feat more than a century ago. But he faces a series of obstacles on what was once assumed to be a smooth glide path to the GOP nomination, including several of his former top aides and at least one governor he once endorsed.
Marianne Williamson
The self-help author and former spiritual adviser to television mogul Oprah Winfrey, who participated in several Democratic primary debates during the 2020 election, has said she will enter the 2024 race to challenge Mr Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In an interview with Northwestern University’s Medill News Service, Ms Williamson confirmed her intention to run next year.
“I wouldn’t be running for president if I didn’t believe I could contribute to harnessing the collective sensibility that I feel is our greatest hope at this time,” she said.
During her aborted 2020 presidential run, she garnered a measure of notoriety for making statements widely considered bizarre, such as a vow to make then-New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern the first head of government she would call as president, and an assertion that she would win the election by "harness[ing] love for political purposes" against Mr Trump.
Nikki Haley
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley spent two years as Mr Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, and during that time garnered at least a measure of media attention for the way she avoided engaging with the myriad controversies engulfing his administration while staying in the then-president’s good graces.
Although the former governor turned diplomat previously pledged not to throw her hat into the ring for 2024 if Mr Trump was still running, she appears to have thrown that non-campaign promise away.
On 15 February, Ms Haley announced that she was indeed entering the race.
In a video released by her campaign, she even went so far as to take a veiled swipe at Mr Trump by noting that “seven out of the last eight presidential elections” have seen the GOP candidate lose the popular vote. She also said it is “time for a new generation of leadership” who will “rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border and strengthen our country, our pride and our purpose”.
Mike Pence
Once Mr Trump’s most loyal defender and steadfast right-hand man, former vice president Mike Pence’s relationship with the man who led the GOP ticket in 2020 was irrevocably upended by his decision not to unlawfully hijack Congress’ certification of Electoral College votes in an attempt to keep himself and Mr Trump in power against the wishes of American voters.
Mr Pence has not officially declared his intent to run for president against Mr Trump in 2024, but since leaving office he has kept up a steady stream of appearances in key primary states (hello, New Hampshire!) and campaigned for numerous GOP candidates in the midterm elections earlier this month. He also appeared at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual convention in Las Vegas, a traditional cattle call for potential GOP presidential contenders.
While the former vice president has taken pains not to criticise Mr Trump in the way some anti-Trump Republicans have in recent months, he has also made clear that he would not do things the way the ex-president did during their four years in office.
Mr Pence has also begun to build out the beginnings of a 2024 campaign operation by bringing on former Ben Sasse spokesperson Ali Kjergaard to his Advancing American Freedom nonprofit. Ms Kjergaard joins other former Pence White House mainstays, including his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and his former press secretary, Devin O’Malley.
Ron DeSantis
The current governor of Florida is thought by many in the GOP to be the perfect successor to Mr Trump.
Mr DeSantis, a former Florida congressman who won his 2018 gubernatorial campaign after receiving a coveted endorsement from the then-president, is viewed by Republican pundits as a worthy avatar of the current “anti-woke” GOP who is hated by all the right people, and his star has been on the rise in conservative circles since he made a show of ending any and all pandemic-related restrictions and mandates in the Sunshine State.
When Mr DeSantis took the stage at his 2022 election victory party, supporters even chanted “two more years” in a nod to his potential status as a GOP presidential contender. And Florida legislators are reportedly considering changing state law to make it easier for him to seek his party’s nomination while running for governor.
Recently, Mr Trump debuted a derogatory nickname — “Ron DeSanctimonious” — for his onetime ally, a sure sign that the Florida native is considered to be a serious adversary by the New York transplant.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Mr Ramaswamy, a wealthy biotechnology entrepreneur and conservative activist, announced his intention to compete in the 2024 Republican primary during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s eponymous Fox News programme.
The Yale Law School graduate has become somewhat of a celebrity in right-wing circles for his denunciations of stakeholder capitalism, big tech censorship, and critical race theory.
Last year, he founded Strive Asset Management, an “anti-woke” investment firm opposed to businesses that use environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) practices.
Robert F Kennedy Jr
Mr Kennedy Jr – a lawyer, vaccine skeptic and the son of US Senator Robert F Kennedy – filed candidacy papers with the Federal Election Commission on 5 April 2023.
The filing places the 69-year-old as the second long-shot Democratic candidate to challenge President Biden, behind Marianne Williamson.
While he intends to run as a Democrat, Mr Kennedy Jr has ties to former president Mr Trump. In 2017, he was tapped by the then-president-elect to oversee a presidential panel to review vaccine safety and science - despite having repeatedly expressed scepticism about vaccines. He continued pushing those beliefs through the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Kennedy Jr’s father was a candidate in the 1968 presidential election before he was assassinated.
Larry Elder
Mr Elder, a former attorney, and current conservative talk radio host, announced Thursday, 20 April on Tucker Carlson Tonight that he will be running for president in 2024.
The right-wing candidate said that he felt a “moral, religious, and a patriotic duty” to join the race for president. He named policing, crime, and government overreach as areas of concern.
“We’ve incentivised women to marry the government,” Mr Elder told Tucker Carlson. “We’ve incentivised men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility. And if I do nothing else in this race, but focus people on those two issues… I would perform this service to my country.”
Prior to his announcement, Mr Elder had been the host of the popular conservative radio programme The Larry Elder Show on KABC since 1993. He left in April 2022.
Mr Elder has some political experience as he unsuccessfully ran to replace California Governor Gavin Newsom in 2021.
Ryan Binkley
Pastor and businessman Ryan Binkley has announced his entrance into the 2024 race, the latest long-shot contender to challenge Mr Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
“We have to be unified,” Mr Binkley said at a recent event. “We have to be in this place, because if we’re in a time of uncertainty, what it’s going to take is faith in God and faith in each other to get us through, and it’s not time for us to back down. It’s time for us to believe.”
Mr Binkley has said he is “absolutely” confident that he could take on Mr Trump, despite having little name recognition and no experience holding elected office.
Asa Hutchinson
Former Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, formally announced his campaign for president on Wednesday, 26 April.
In Bentonville, Arkansas, Mr Hutchinson told supports that is “optimistic” about the future of the US and hopes to carry out the same “conservative values” to the White House as he did as Governor.
“In this campaign for president, I stand alone in terms of my experience, record and leadership,” Mr Hutchinson said.
Before becoming Governor of Arkansas, Mr Hutchinson was a representative for Arkansas, an administrator for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, and transportation security of the US Department of Homeland Security under former president George Bush.
Mr Hutchinson discussed the economy, crime, and border security during his campaign kick-off speech.
