A series of potential Democratic presidential contenders have signed off on memoirs ahead of the 2028 election cycle, laying the groundwork to build inroads with crucial demographics.
Several of those viewed as likely candidates, Govs. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) and Andy Beshear (D-KY) have made faith central to their autobiographies, a move that comes as Republicans have dominated religious conversations in a country where around three-quarters of Americans identify with a religion. Elizabeth Ashford, a Los Angeles-based strategist, said that emphasizing faith won’t necessarily push a candidate across the finish line. But it could appeal particularly to younger voters thirsty for “moral leadership,” she suggested.
“For a long time, Democrats have probably avoided talking about their, you know, authentic faith and faith practices to, like, their own detriment,” she said. “The Right, Republicans, I think, have done a very strategic job of making that theirs.”
Josh Shapiro
In Where We Keep the Light, Shapiro ushered his views on faith, Jews, and Israel into the limelight. In one passage, the Pennsylvania Democrat, who is a practicing Jew, detailed facing antisemitic treatment from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s team when she was considering him to be her running mate in 2024. That account, among others, particularly stirred the waters, marking his potential appeal to pro-Israel voters.
Ashford suggested Shapiro is laying the groundwork early to make it clear to voters who he is, explaining that being on the campaign trail is “brutal, and you have to really be on your toes and have positions.”
“What’s happening in our nation, around Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, you know, there’s a real demand that people have a position,” she said.
“If this is part of your fundraising base, and who you are and your family, it might be difficult to shift away from being in a position that is pro-Israeli, if you are on the record for your whole career being that, to shift gears spontaneously for the purposes of this election,” she continued. “People turn away from inauthenticity. So, Shapiro might just be like, This is who I am.”
In his book, Shapiro said that during the vetting process, Harris staffers asked him if he had ever been an agent of the Israeli government or “ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel.” Shapiro replied he found the question “offensive,” writing that he has struggled with living out his faith in a time when it “is more tenuous than ever to be Jewish in America.”
“[I] wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way,” he said.
Shapiro also writes of facing his son’s questions last April about whether the firebombing of their home shortly after the family celebrated the first Seder of Passover happened because they were Jewish. Though he says vitriol has “only intensified” in recent years for daring to “live my Judaism out loud,” the governor pitched faith as the great unifier.
“Now more than ever, we yearn for and need a world defined by faith. It’s universal, this belief in others to help us through what feels unsettled, uncivil, un-American. It’s a guidepost, a path through the woods. When the dark feels like it could consume us whole and churn us up and lose us, it is where we keep the light,” he wrote.
Andy Beshear
Beshear announced in February that he, too, would have a memoir released this year. The Kentucky governor has adopted a more overtly progressive take on religion than Shapiro. His book, Go and Do Likewise: How to Heal a Broken Country, is set to be published in September. The memoir will be centered on faith “as a force for good in public life” and a “rebuke to how faith has been hijacked, profaned, misused, and corrupted by Donald Trump.”
It’s an approach that could ingratiate himself with progressives, who are often younger, a demographic Ashford said is “certainly” turning to faith in greater numbers than older generations. She particularly referenced voters who see “moral harm” in the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
“Is there a return to faith? Yeah, but I think that as diverse, maybe, as America itself,” Ashord said. “Like for some people, returning to faith and having a thirst to hear more will take the form of looking for some moral leadership in very painful and difficult times from a democratic perspective.”
Beshear’s interpretation of Christianity has led him to embrace anti-Trump positions on a range of issues, which could broaden his appeal to the progressive movement. Last year, during a tour of South Carolina, a Bible Belt state that plays a key role in Democrats’ presidential nominating process, Shapiro said he’s a “proud pro-LGBTQ+ governor” and used his faith to explain his position to voters, including why he vetoed measures that would have restricted children from pursuing sex changes or undergoing transgender operations.
“My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids,” Beshear said.
The pre-order page for the Kentucky governor’s memoir describes him as “a leading Democratic voice against the cruel, corrupt, and immoral practices of Donald Trump and his administration.” Go and Do Likewise, which is a direct reference to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, is touted as “a book for everyone who believes in justice and doing right by their neighbor.”
As a red-state governor, Beshear has also sought to cast himself as proof that Democrats can compete in Republican strongholds.
“I’m a proud pro-choice governor, I’m a proud pro-LGBTQ+ governor, and I’m a proud pro-diversity governor,” Beshear said during a dinner for Democrats in South Carolina’s conservative Georgetown County. “Some people would tell you that a Democrat can’t win in a state like mine or yours with that resume. Yet here I am.”
Ashford suggested that the trend of Democrats, including Beshear, being more open about their religion could be part of a strategy to take back voters who crossed party lines to support Trump. If so, it would be a strategy Beshear is well-positioned to play. The president won reelection in Kentucky by over 30 percentage points in 2024. Beshear won his gubernatorial reelection in the state by 5% the previous year.
“Faith doesn’t play badly in vast tranches of America,” Ashford said. “There were folks who moved over to Trump, who, you know, are Democrats….And Democrats intelligently want to bring them back.”
Gavin Newsom
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) released his memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, on Tuesday. The governor has promoted the book as a means to reveal the “messy” underpinnings of his life, in contrast to “sanitized” memoirs he slammed others for releasing.
“There’s a line in the book about plaster crumbling. That wasn’t metaphorical. That was real. I had built armor — professional, polished, controlled. I thought it was a strength. Sometimes it was. Sometimes it was fear,” he wrote in a Fox Digital op-ed highlighting the book. “For years, I believed that if I worked harder, responded faster, and explained more clearly, I could reshape public perception. But caricatures persist because they serve a purpose. Fighting them endlessly can become a trap in itself,” he continued, musing that he had to come to accept “my insecurities rather than masking them” and recognize “that I had sometimes been too self-absorbed to see how my ambitions affected the people closest to me.”
The California Democrat is using his book tour, with stops planned in Georgia, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, as a strategic bid to court black voters, according to Brian Arbour, a political science professor at the City University of New York.
“The reason it’s important on the Democratic side is that usually slightly over half of the electorate in the South Carolina Democratic primary is African American,” he told KPVI. “It plays a very important role, because obviously African Americans are an essential part of the Democratic base.”
In the book, as on his national tour, Newsom has appeared intent on shedding perceptions that he is a slick member of a privileged and out-of-touch political establishment, telling a predominantly black audience in Atlanta earlier this week, “I’m like you.”
“I’m not trying to impress you,” Newsom said. “I’m just trying to impress upon you I’m like you. I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy.”
The governor tells a similar story in his book, recounting a childhood spent grappling with dyslexia, philandering bachelor years, carrying on an affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, his aide’s wife, and watching his mother die by assisted suicide after struggling with breast cancer. It’s a memoir aimed at peeling back the “guarded” he’s cultivated to compensate for the feeling of inner inadequacies, according to Newsom.
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Ashford said politicians like Newsom write books because “obviously they want to get ahead of any narratives that might be negative,” including opposition research that typically comes out during campaigns.
“There’s obviously that very tactical part of it, which is you just want to get everything out that you can, and then it’s taken care of, right? Because you have owned that narrative, and it’s in the public record,” she said.