Democratic presidential prospects on Thursday converged in New York to court Black activists and made their message about the party’s 2028 field inseparable from what they described as threats to voting rights in the 2026 midterm elections. Speaking during the National Action Network’s annual four-day gathering led by Rev. Al Sharpton, several high-profile Democrats criticized the Trump administration’s approach to election rules and urged attention to what they said could affect whether people are able to vote.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Democrats should treat the midterms as a near-term test of whether voting will remain fair, warning that the fight over voting rules is already shaping the early stages of the 2028 presidential contest. Pritzker charged that President Donald Trump is actively working to undermine Americans’ right to vote in 2026 and warned that the administration would deploy federal immigration and border enforcement officers to intimidate voters. “If we don’t have a fair election in November, we won’t have any more elections,” Pritzker said, adding that he believes Trump will send Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents to “scare people away from the polls.”
Pritzker’s warning also took aim at a set of election-related actions he said Trump has taken through executive orders. The AP report said Trump signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, and it said legal experts have described the move as unconstitutional for attempting to seize states’ power to run elections. The report also said the order seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to people not on each state’s approved list, an approach Pritzker framed as part of a broader attempt to shape who can vote.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore echoed the warning in sharper terms, describing what he said Trump was doing as a deliberate effort to make voting pain “permanent.” Moore condemned Trump’s actions as an attempt “to make the pain permanent,” and he called it “voter suppression” and “political redlining.” In his remarks, Moore said such tactics are among the oldest in the political playbook, but emphasized that he believes Trump is doing them more directly and at once: “This is voter suppression. This is political redlining. These are the oldest tricks in the books,” Moore said. “The only difference is usually it’s spread out, it’s never done all at once and in broad daylight.”
Moore also told the AP he wanted Democrats and voters to be alert to what he described as an effort to steal an election close to the moment it is held. He added, “We have to make sure that this election is not stolen right before our face.”
While candidates deflected questions about their 2028 plans, the Sharpton convention offered a roster of Democrats seeking to build support with Black voters and activists. The speaking schedule included Gov. Wes Moore, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was the first to speak, along with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, and Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego of Arizona. The report said former Vice President Kamala Harris was scheduled to speak Friday, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom would not attend, citing a previously scheduled family commitment and saying his team met with Sharpton earlier in the year.
Shapiro, like other speakers, argued that the contrast with Trump is a moral one rather than a narrow policy dispute. The AP report said Shapiro warned that “everyone is less safe” under Trump’s leadership and blamed him for a nationwide surge in antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and bigotry. Shapiro also argued that while Democrats may differ on issues such as health care and taxes, the election should still produce an “honorable president of the United States.” “There’s more chaos, there’s more cruelty in our world,” Shapiro said. “Even if we disagree on health care policy or tax policy or whatever, we should at least, at a baseline, have an honorable president of the United States. We do not have that right now.”
Khanna tied his message to what he said a 2028 contender must offer and urged progressives to connect their vision to civil-rights history. The AP report said Khanna told the Associated Press that a 2028 contender needs to articulate and run on a “new moral vision for America” and he said progressives should speak to “the Civil Rights tradition,” offering “a vision rooted in Black history.”
The convention also highlighted how Black voters often influence Democratic nomination contests. The AP report said that in 2020 Buttigieg performed strongly in the early caucus and primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, both overwhelmingly white states, before Biden dominated South Carolina with support from Black voters. It said Biden’s relationship with the African American community and perceived electability advantage helped him fend off a push by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The report further said that Rep. James Clyburn, reflecting on South Carolina’s continued status as a first contest for the Democrats, said he is not concerned about whether his state retains its top spot as long as it remains first in the South. Clyburn told the Associated Press that South Carolina’s demographic makeup helps prepare candidates for the general election, and he said, “South Carolina never made a request for that opening slot. That’s a decision that Joe Biden made for whatever reason.” He also described the timing of the presidential competition as premature given what he said Trump poses this fall for voting rights, adding, “I’ve been saying to everybody, and I hope they take heed — 2028 is a very shiny object, 2026 is a necessary process,” and warning, “If we fail to conduct ourselves properly in these off-year elections, there ain’t gonna be a 2028 election.”