Fired Cabinet Member Considered Herself Potential 2028 VP Pick

By: Sam Massey

Lori Chavez-DeRemer did not last fifteen months as Labor Secretary before being shown the door. The former Oregon congresswoman, who resigned Monday after being summoned to the White House and given an ultimatum to resign or be fired, leaves behind a tenure so comprehensively scandal-ridden that it is genuinely difficult to know where to begin cataloguing it. An inspector general probe launched in January covered allegations of travel fraud, drinking on the job, taking staffers to strip clubs, and an inappropriate relationship with a bodyguard who was subsequently placed on leave. Her husband was banned from the Department of Labor’s headquarter building, after at least two female staffers alleged he sexually assaulted them. Her father was found to have sent suggestive texts to young female department employees, who were instructed to “pay attention” to him. Three additional civil-rights complaints alleged she retaliated against staffers for cooperating with investigators and dispatched aides to bring wine to her hotel room during the workday. She resigned days before a scheduled interview with the Labor Department’s own inspector general.

The White House’s official line was that Chavez-DeRemer would be “leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector,” a formulation that has now been applied to Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem in quick succession. Three Cabinet secretaries in four weeks, all women, have been removed from their positions, while Pete Hegseth continues to serve despite allegations of excessive drinking and mixing family with official business. And, Kash Patel faces reporting about FBI aircraft being used for personal travel. The pattern is not subtle. When the walls close in on this administration, the women go first.

Chavez-DeRemer’s departure is, at its core, less a personnel story than a political one. Trump’s approval rating sits in the mid-to-high thirties. Gas prices are above $4 a gallon nationally. The war in Iran is not going the way he said it would. His handling of inflation is disapproved of by 68% of Americans in the latest NBC News polling. When this president cannot change his circumstances, he changes his staff. Chavez-DeRemer, who had become so toxic that business leaders stopped taking meetings with her to avoid being seen in a photo op, fit that description perfectly.

But here is the part that deserves more attention than it has received: according to Bloomberg Law, aides around Chavez-DeRemer had harbored ambitions that her “America at Work” listening tour, in which she traveled all 50 states meeting with industry leaders and workers, would serve as a platform for a future as JD Vance’s running mate in 2028.

This is worth sitting with for a moment, especially for those politically inclined. A cabinet secretary who was allegedly drinking on the job, allegedly running personal errands through government staff, whose husband was banned from her own workplace for sexual misconduct allegations, and whose father was texting young female employees with instructions to pay attention to him, was positioning herself as a potential Vice Presidential pick.

Join Gambit Forecaster’s Newsletter Here!

Even setting the scandals entirely aside, the Chavez-DeRemer as VP theory does not survive basic scrutiny. She was a one-term congresswoman from Oregon who lost her re-election bid in 2024 before being nominated to the Cabinet. Her appeal was supposed to be as a bridge between Trump and organized labor. Such a political goal became largely irrelevant once Trump’s approval among the working class eroded alongside his broader numbers.

Let’s be frank: she brought no electoral geography that Vance would need, no ideological coalition, and no public profile beyond the one she generated through controversy. The VP ambition was not a serious political calculation. It is fantasy. It’s as realistic as notable salad-lover Rahm Emanuel winning the 2028 Democratic nomination.

The actual 2028 Republican primary, should Trump continue to be constitutionally barred from running again, is shaping up to be a genuine and consequential race. JD Vance is the prohibitive frontrunner by virtue of proximity and Trump’s implicit blessing, and the populist working-class positioning that he attempts to portray gives him some real structural advantages in a Republican Party that has shifted decisively downmarket. His position as the RNC Finance Chair also gives him an unprecedented power over his own financial destiny within the party in the leadup to the 2028 primaries.

Marco Rubio has spent Trump’s second term as Secretary of State (and like 20 other titles) accumulating foreign policy credibility and has never stopped being a plausible national candidate. Though, his 2016 collapse against Trump remains a scar the party remembers and might not be able to reconcile. The question for Rubio is whether the party that humiliated him once will forgive the attempt and whether he can thread the needle between his establishment past and the MAGA present he has dutifully served.

What all of this means is that the 2028 Republican primary, whenever it materializes, will be fought between figures who have either been defined by their proximity to Trump or by their failure to replace him. Vance inherits the coalition. Rubio inherits the donor class and the foreign policy establishment. Cruz and DeSantis represent the party’s restless right flank, perpetually convinced that the correct answer was always more ideological purity. None of them are Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who by the time the 2028 cycle gets underway will be a private sector footnote, remembered primarily for the inspector general investigation, the birthday party she insisted was not a birthday party, and the staffers who were instructed to pay attention to her father.

Check out Gambit Forecaster’s most recent election forecast here.