(TNND) — Some prominent figures in President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement are tossing their hats into the ring for governorships.

The Hill noted that Trump allies are running for governor in 2026, including Rep. Byron Donalds in Florida, Sen. Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee, Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, Rep. Andy Biggs in Arizona, and Rep. Nancy Mace in South Carolina.

A GOP operative told The Hill that it was “the next stage of the movement” for those folks to run their own states.

And it could set some of them up to run for president down the line.

“You got to keep your bench up, and Trump isn't going to be there forever,” Jake Neiheisel, a political scientist at the University at Buffalo in New York, told The National News Desk on Wednesday. “And you need kind of the next generation of people coming up behind him if you're going to keep this thing a viable movement.”

But is keeping the House or winning these gubernatorial seats more important to MAGA and the GOP in next year’s elections?

“Conditional on having a fixed amount of money and really having very few expectations that they're going to keep the House anyways, I think it makes a lot of sense to focus on governor's races,” Neiheisel said.

History suggests Democrats might recapture the tightly contested House from Republicans next year.

The sitting president’s party has lost seats in the House in eight of 10 midterm elections going back 40 years. Trump’s Republicans lost 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms.

“My gut is telling me that I don't think it's going to be as bad (for Republicans) in large part because there's just not that much room to maneuver on the battlefield here, so to speak. There's just a lot of districts that are locked up for one party or another,” Neiheisel said of 2026 midterm expectations compared to Trump’s first term. “And so, there's just fewer and fewer (swing) districts.”

But he said Democrats are still favored to flip the House.

MAGA allies leading states might also be beneficial to Trump, as his administration pushes more federal authority back to the states, Neiheisel said.

“And I think if you're trying to game out the MAGA movement in the long-term, if that trend continues, it does become a lot more important to control things at the state level,” he said. “Because that's where a lot of the policymaking is going to be happening.”

Running a state for someone like Donalds, Ramaswamy or Mace could be a valuable training ground for a future presidential run, Neiheisel said.

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An ideal scenario for the MAGA movement and the GOP would be Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio succeeding Trump in 2028, then one or more of these MAGA governors could be poised to run in 2036, Neiheisel said.

But it’ll still be hard for the GOP to recapture that Trump magic, Neiheisel said.

He pointed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as an example, who was very much aligned with Trump on policy but couldn’t generate the same voter excitement in the last election.

And that will be a challenge for the MAGA movement in finding people to take the baton from Trump.

“I think they're trying to figure out how they can tap back into that, and I don't know that there are any simple answers there,” Neiheisel said. “I mean, he's just got this thing. I don't really know how to describe it. As a quantitative social scientist, it's really uncomfortable to say things like, ‘Well, he's got the ‘it’ factor.’ Because how do you quantify that, and how do you operationalize that?"