Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Tuesday that she’s not focused on running for president in 2028, despite the progressive base increasingly calling for her to seek higher office.
Instead, she said she wants the rallies she’s participating in with Sen. Bernie Sanders to energize demoralized Democrats.
“These rallies and the intention of them are so much bigger than any one person,” Ocasio-Cortez told NOTUS. “We want to maintain this energy to win the midterms and take back both chambers of Congress and the White House, of course. But ultimately, the most important thing about this is bringing people together and organizing them right now.”
Ocasio-Cortez spent recess touring with Sen. Bernie Sanders at rallies, which heightened the attention on her as the possible next in line to inherit the progressive mantle. Sanders’ aides told The New York Times that one of those events drew the “largest crowd of his career.” She told NOTUS she doesn’t think her recent campaigning is a precursor to a run for higher office.
Meanwhile, her colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus are happy to weigh in on how she could do in a race that is years away. Progressives love the idea of a presidential ticket, but centrist members of the party were more hesitant.
“If she’s interested in running for president I think she should do it,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, who entered Congress the same year as Ocasio-Cortez and is also a member of the progressive group of lawmakers known as The Squad, told NOTUS. “That is a question for her.”
As Democrats grasp for a strategy to push back on President Donald Trump, there’s more chatter about the role Ocasio-Cortez may play in the party’s future. Colleagues have reportedly urged her to primary Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat after he sided with Republicans on a procedural vote to advance Republicans’ government funding legislation earlier this month. And others are hoping she thinks even longer term and runs for president.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, reportedly told a group of over 140 Latino leaders Monday night that Ocasio-Cortez running would be “a great opportunity for us.”
“I saw Alexandria Ocasio Cortez this afternoon. I told her, ‘Madam President. How good that sounds on you,” Espaillat said, according to The Washington Post.
While prominent progressives on the Hill supported the idea of her running for president, they also pointed out that the decision to run was also ultimately hers to make.
“I have huge respect for the congresswoman,” Rep. Greg Casar, a progressive, said. “She’ll definitely make decisions about her own future.”
Democrats encouraging Ocasio-Cortez to run for president isn’t unusual — Ocasio-Cortez possesses a kind of star power that had Democrats calling for her to run three weeks after she took office in 2019. Similar calls have also been renewed over the years when progressives have been in the limelight. And a month after the 2024 election, Ocasio-Cortez’s name was in the mix of Democratic speculation about who their best shot at defeating the GOP in 2028 could be.
But moderate Democrats on the Hill are taking the calls for what they are — just calls — and argued that it’s too early to begin thinking about 2028. Rep. Jerry Nadler, whom Ocasio-Cortez unsuccessfully ran to replace as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, was one of several moderates who made this argument.
“The one thing I do know is that in three years things are going to change tremendously,” Nadler told NOTUS. “Which way? Who knows.”
Rep. Jared Huffman told NOTUS he doesn’t believe the energy Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have generated at their rallies necessarily translates into a presidential campaign. He said Ocasio-Cortez’s efforts are part of Democrats’ greater plan to oppose Trump.
“This is a moment where everyone’s got to bring whatever they can to the table,” Huffman said. “The fact that they’re doing those rallies is awesome, and the rest of us doing our town halls and community level work in whatever way we can is also part of the answer.”
Should Ocasio-Cortez choose to run, she has political celebrity status that would immediately make her a strong candidate, some Hill Democrats said.
Other names are also getting thrown around as possible contenders. Rep. Jen McClellan ticked some of them off: Govs. Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer. But she said that relative to them, Ocasio-Cortez would likely have an advantage when it comes to coalition building.
“I have observed that she is willing to meet a wider variety than they are, and that she listens,” McClellan said, describing Ocasio-Cortez as someone whose “ideas would probably be good anywhere.”
But Ocasio-Cortez faces the challenge of winning over a Democratic party that has in the past been averse to progressive politics, and progressive candidates have gotten mixed results in elections across the country. In a Trump era where Democrats are moderating themselves in some policy areas to try to appeal to voters, a progressive candidate like Ocasio-Cortez may not be the top choice as a Democratic nominee in 2028.
“It’s a free country, and whoever wants to run should,” said Rep. Seth Moulton, who called on Democrats to move away from messaging around transgender rights shortly after the 2024 election. He grinned, then promptly walked away.
In the meantime, Democrats have plenty to do in their current elected roles.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, another progressive who described himself as a “close friend” of Ocasio- Cortez, told NOTUS that while “our country would be so lucky to have a person like her in a position like that,” Ocasio-Cortez is more focused on her current job.
“We have a lot of work to do in the house,” Frost said. “I know she’s focused on that.”
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Correction: An earlier version of this story misinterpreted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comments to NOTUS about the intention of her participation in recent rallies.
Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.