New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said she has not ruled out a presidential run in 2028 as she seeks to build bridges with the left of her party, some of whose constituents claim she has drifted too close to the center of the political spectrum.
Often viewed as a natural inheritor of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ leftist mantle, the former waitress from the Bronx, 36, has regularly swerved questions about the prospect of her seeking the White House.
However, she has also consistently polled well, pulling ahead of Vice President JD Vance for the first time in one survey late last year, as voters seek serious engagement with their affordability concerns at a time when they feel President Donald Trump is not doing enough to help them.
Speaking to Politico in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the congresswoman was again asked whether she nurtures ambitions to succeed Trump in the executive mansion and answered: “I mean, I can’t say that I’ve ruled it out.”
Ocasio-Cortez was in the Wolverine State Sunday to stump for Senate Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, addressing a 2,500-strong crowd at the city’s DeVos Place Convention Center, having already hailed him as “a man of integrity and discipline” at an earlier event in Lansing.
She told the outlet afterwards that she felt it was potentially alienating to voters if Democrats spoke only from a place of “disconnected partisan motivation” and stressed the importance of providing “real” solutions to the economic problems they face.
“I come from a working-class family,” she said. “I didn’t come from a militant leftist family. I believe that these are the prescriptions that are going to help us as a country.
“And so I think that when we talk about it in that frame, it helps people understand that our conclusions are not just from this disconnected partisan motivation, but it is from a motivation to solve the real inequality that has been hurting us as a country.”
Axios recently reported that AOC had “fumed” in private about criticism she has received from left-wing allies for supposedly getting too close to establishment Democrats on Capitol Hill and courting mainstream popularity, which she considered “unfair and counterproductive.”
It quoted an unnamed strategist who said she “lamented that the left was not there for her, that they are never pleased.”
The congresswoman fell out with the Democratic Socialists of America in July 2024, whose members withdrew their endorsement of her after she supported Israel receiving defensive weapons from the U.S. during the war in Gaza.
The group alleged that she had conflated “anti-Zionism with antisemitism and condemned boycotting Zionist institutions,” which it called a “deep betrayal.”
However, she has since moved to reassure the DSA’s New York chapter that she opposes any U.S. funding to Israel, pointedly adding during a virtual forum that any distortion of her record on the matter “does not benefit us as a movement.”
Ocasio-Cortez has also previously caused upset in leftist circles by saying that some progressive groups have taken too much credit for her extraordinary primary victory in 2018, when she beat 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley for the chance to represent New York’s 14th congressional district.
“We had built everything from scratch and did the hardest parts, and then when it looked appealing enough they jumped in,” she told Ryan Grim for his book The Squad.
However, she was also an important voice in championing Zohran Mamdani’s triumphant run for New York City Mayor last year and could be seeking to mend alliances in New York with a view to challenging for the Senate, rather than the presidency, which she may consider a longer-term project.
