Two Trump Allies Will Lead the GOP's Fight to Win Back Congress in 2028

The 2028 campaign started on Tuesday. Not for president, at least not officially. For Congress.

Behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans picked Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno to run the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and House Republicans picked Georgia Rep. Brian Jack to run the National Republican Congressional Committee. Those are the two offices that recruit the candidates, raise the money and decide where it gets spent. Both men are first-termers, both are close to President Trump, and both now own the job of getting Republican majorities back, according to Roll Call.

Democrats take control of both chambers in January. Moreno and Jack have two years to change that.

A car dealer who already beat Sherrod Brown once

Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman who built his fortune selling cars, was elected to the Senate in 2024. He got there the hard way. He first ran in 2022, dropped out of a crowded primary that JD Vance eventually won, and came back two years later with Trump’s endorsement. He won a tough primary and then beat longtime Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown that November.

He replaces South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who ran the committee for the last two years.

“I am honored my colleagues elected me to chair the NRSC for the 2028 cycle,” Moreno said in a statement from his office. “Republicans must enter this next election clear-eyed: the road ahead back to a Republican Senate majority will by no means be easy but the fight has never been so important.”

He didn’t soften the contrast. “Senate Democrats have been overrun by a wave of far-left extremists who seek to undermine the very founding principles of this great nation, pushing everything from open borders to historic tax hikes to a radical social agenda,” he said. “Republicans must rebuild a bulwark against the dangerous Democrat agenda while never forgetting the working men and women our country was built on.”

Talking to reporters afterward, he said Republicans would be “absolute savages” about ending government corruption. And he named what he thinks will be his best weapon. “I suspect the best tailwind we’ll have is that the Democrats will learn all the wrong lessons,” he said.

The map Moreno has to work with

In 2028, 35 Senate seats are on the ballot. Republicans hold 19 of them and Democrats hold 16, his office said. That means Republicans have more seats to protect, but Roll Call laid out real places to go on offense: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

On defense, Republicans will be protecting battleground seats in Alaska, Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin, plus Republican-held seats in Kansas and South Carolina.

And then there’s Ohio, which is personal. Brown is coming back to the Senate after winning last week’s special election for the rest of Vance’s old term over appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted. That seat is up again in 2028. Moreno made it clear he intends to win it back, offering Brown some advice about life in Washington: “Make sure you rent. Do not buy.”

Moreno’s own seat isn’t up until 2030, so he can put all his attention on everybody else’s race. That’s not a small thing. A committee chair who has to watch his own back can’t spend as much time on the map.

Jack knows the recruiting job already

On the House side, Jack beat Indiana Rep. Rudy Yakym III for the NRCC chairmanship. He replaces outgoing chair Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who won’t be back next year.

Jack is new to Congress but not to campaigns. He was White House political director during Trump’s first term and a senior adviser on Trump’s 2024 campaign. He won an open seat outside Atlanta in 2024, and for the last two years he’s been the NRCC’s recruitment chair, the person in charge of finding candidates. Now he gets the whole operation.

His job is a big climb. Democrats will hold a House majority of more than 40 seats. But Roll Call made a point worth repeating: when a party wins that many seats, a lot of them are in places that usually vote Republican. That gives Jack a long list of districts where the right candidate could flip the seat straight back.

Same floor team, new campaign boss

Senate Republicans kept their whole leadership team on Tuesday. John Thune stays as leader, John Barrasso as whip, Tom Cotton as conference chair, Shelley Moore Capito as policy chair and James Lankford as vice chair, MS NOW reported. The only new face at the top was Moreno.

That says something. Senate Republicans kept their experienced hands running the floor and handed the campaign to a newcomer from outside politics who beat an entrenched Democratic incumbent in a state that was supposed to be tough. On the House side, they picked the guy who spent two years recruiting candidates and handed him the whole shop.

There’s a reason both picks lean toward Trump allies. These two committees live and die on recruiting candidates and raising money, and the president is still the party’s biggest draw for both. Moreno and Jack both got to Congress with his backing.

Midterm wave years often set up the next swing. Parties that win big tend to overreach, and the side that lost tends to come back hungrier and better organized. Moreno is betting on exactly that. His line about Democrats learning “all the wrong lessons” isn’t just trash talk. It’s the plan.

The first test comes fast. Candidate recruiting for 2028 Senate races starts now, long before most voters are paying attention. The people Moreno and Jack talk into running over the next six months will decide a lot more about who controls Congress in 2029 than anything said this week.