In a report on Republican lawmakers maneuvering behind the scenes to be the person who replaces Donald Trump as the 2028 presidential candidate –– providing the president agrees to step aside gracefully –– a CNN reporter specializing in campaign coverage was surprised to find the Vice President J.D. Vance is not a prohibitive favorite.

In an interview with CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf, correspondent Eric Bradner said Vance “is obviously positioned as Trump’s understudy,” but that he also not a lock to be the face of the part three and half years from now.

As he explained to Wolf, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has a legion of admirers among party activists.

“I was a little surprised during a recent visit to Iowa how frequently the name of Secretary of State Marco Rubio came up, often in the same breath as JD Vance,” he recalled. “Both of them, despite their own very public criticism of Trump in the past, now seem to be viewed as team players; as closely aligned with Trump and with his current administration, obviously, as leading members of it.”

He added that Rubio has certain advantages over Trump’s veep.

“There’s interest in Rubio in part because he has run for president before, unlike Vance. A lot of people in the early voting states remember Rubio visiting them in 2016, when he finished third in Iowa in what were pretty competitive caucuses. So a lot of these early-state Republican voters have met Rubio before,” he elaborated before saying of Vance who is still new on the scene as a GOP lawmaker, “They like Vance, but they don’t know him yet. They haven’t had a chance to go through the usual process with him.”

He added, “He obviously starts with an advantage as Trump’s legacy, but based on the conversations I’ve had, it doesn’t appear to be a lock.”

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