The 2020 presidential election is still about 21 months away, but multiple presidential hopefuls have announced their campaigns, and Ferris students are already picking their favorites.
Though few Republicans are likely to run, many supporters of the party do not believe it is in the best interest of the party for someone to oppose Trump’s reelection.
“Donald Trump is not my ideal candidate. In fact, I did not vote for him in the 2016 primary. That said, the president has since earned my full support and I believe it will be an absolute mistake if the party does not unify and rally around President Trump in the 2020 presidential election,” Ferris business administration senior and College Republicans President Lukas Sizemore said. “The damage done in a primary battle will only work in favor of whatever radical candidate ends up emerging from the Democratic primary, and in the case of an independent bid, the vote will split enough to guarantee an easy victory for the Democrats in 2020.”
It’s still to be seen if politicians from within the Republican Party will challenge President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2020, but 17 Democrats have already announced their plans to run. According to The New York Times, there are 10 other Democrats that either might run, or are likely to run for president, including former vice president Joe Biden.
As of mid-March, only one person has decided to run against Trump for the Republican presidential bid. Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld ran for vice president with Gary Johnson as a Libertarian in 2016, but has joined the Republican ticket for the 2020 election. Like Johnson, Weld has been a vocal opposition to Trump and has focused his campaign on criticizing Trump’s character, along with his economic and immigration policies.
For the Democrats, many prominent names have already announced their bid for the primary and more may be on their way.
Headlining the Democratic Party already in the race are longtime Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, New Jersey senator Cory Booker and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, amongst others such as Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and California senator Kamala Harris.
Of the bunch, Sanders is likely the most well-known following a grassroots movement in the 2016 election that earned him 43 percent of the vote in the Democratic primaries against Hillary Clinton, who will not be running in 2020.
Though much of Sanders’ support comes from millennials, some Ferris students don’t believe he is the right choice to take on Trump.
Ferris pre-medicine freshman Sara Laforce said she’s glad that Hillary Clinton will not be running this year after multiple failed presidential election attempts, but that she doesn’t believe Sanders is capable of winning, even with Clinton out of the race.
“With Hillary not running, he does have a better chance of winning, but also because there are a lot of minorities and women running, I feel like him running will end up splitting the vote for the Democratic Party,” Laforce said.
Many sources believe that either Sanders or Harris are the favorite to win the Democratic primary leading into the presidential election.
Compared to Sanders, who has served in a public office for all but two of the past 39 years, Harris is a relative newcomer but still has much experience in the political spectrum.
Harris served as the district attorney of San Francisco for seven years, then took on the role of district attorney of California from 2011 to 2016 before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016. Her campaign focuses on tax cuts for lower-class Americans, the climate and economy focused “Green New Deal” and marijuana legalization, amongst many other ideas and plans.
Currently, there are six minority candidates running as Democrats and six women, two of which are minorities. Both candidates on the Republican ticket are white men.