While most Democrats are focused on the 2026 midterms and winning back the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate, whispers have begun about the party’s plan to win back the White House in two years.
And so far, nobody has sparked as much 2028 intrigue about next steps as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This week, a survey from AtlasIntel showed the socialist-leaning, 36-year-old New Yorker led a potential field that included former Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
But when The Independent asked her about the strong polling, she played coy.
“I don’t know how much stock I put into polls like that,” AOC, as she has come to be known, said. That’s a far different take on polling than in December when The Independent asked why she reposted a poll showing her beating Vice President JD Vance: “Because JD Vance is a goober, man.”
But if Ocasio-Cortez is not interested in a run for the White House, she sure has a funny way of showing it.
Last week, AOC spoke at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. David Axelrod, who runs the institute and served as the chief strategist to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, asked if she wanted to run for Senate or the White House, to which Ocasio-Cortez responded, “My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.”
The conventional wisdom around Ocasio-Cortez for the longest time has been that she would stage a primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer or become the frontrunner should Schumer not seek re-election.
That may be the most obvious route and the one most likely to help her build political power. But she’s also become a sought-after surrogate. On Friday, Ocasio-Cortez will head to Philadelphia to campaign for Chris Raab, who is running for an open seat in Pennsylvania’s 3rd district.
The 3rd is quickly becoming a proxy battle between progressives and moderates. As one House Democrat told The Independent, it’s the most solidly blue district in the nation, voting for Kamala Harris 90 percent to 9 percent in the 2024 election.
Pennsylvania’s popular Gov. Josh Shapiro, himself a potential 2028 candidate for president and a moderate, has endorsed former state party chairman and state legislator Sharif Street. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, another contender, is set to campaign for him as well.
This makes the primary something of a scrimmage. To win Pennsylvania, Democrats need to maximize turnout in cities like Philadelphia and Harris partially lost the commonwealth because of a drop off in city turnout.
In addition, last week, when she traveled to campaign for Ruwa Roman, who is running for state Senate in Georgia, she made a stop by Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s father once preached and where Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is the senior pastor. Furthermore, she also met with Dr. King’s daughter Bernice.
Warnock told The Independent that he’s invited many of his colleagues to the church and she had informed him that she would be in the area.
When asked why she went down to Georgia, she pointed to the Supreme Court virtually killing the Voting Rights Act.
“I think that in the striking down of the Voting Rights Act, we are all being called to do everything that we can in this moment,” she told The Independent. “I think this is an all-hands-on-deck situation. All of us need to be everywhere, I think, and I think it’s important to lead by example.”
As the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, Atlanta is a home base for African-American voters, the exact type of demographic any aspiring presidential candidate would need to win a presidential primary. In the same token, the 3rd district of Pennsylvania is about 50 percent Black.
These are the voters any potential progressive insurgent would need to convince can win. Notoriously, Ocasio-Cortez’s political mentor, Sen. Bernie Sanders, lacked deep ties to Black voters, which sank his campaign.
But Ocasio-Cortez is not just running in blue areas, next week, she and Sanders will head to Montana to campaign for Sam Forstag, who is running in the newly-opened first district.
“I think if we’re going to be fighting for a Democratic majority, I think we need the strongest Democrats possible to be taking their seats and winning seats in November,” she told The Independent.
She’s also helped other Democrats in tough races. In September, her leadership PAC sent a $5,000 check to Sen. Jon Ossoff’s re-election campaign. And she also campaigned for fellow New York Rep. Pat Ryan in 2024, who overperformed the Democratic ticket.
“She was a huge help to me in a really tough race in 2024 came to my district, made it, made a very big positive impact in getting voters energized and fired up, so I’m glad to see she’s doing that across the country,” he told The Independent.
It’s important to remember that this is just one poll and it’s an outlier at that. Harris continues to lead most surveys and it’s not even close thanks to her name ID. And Ocasio-Cortez would need to contend with the deep pockets of someone like a Newsom or someone with more mainstream appeal like Buttigieg.
And Ocasio-Cortez is just gaining enough experience and goodwill on the Hill after being seen as an insurgent. That has given her significant political capital to help pass legislation should another Democrat take the White House in 2028.
But, as her former boss Ted Kennedy told Obama before 2008, “You don’t choose the time. The time chooses you.” And it seems like the clock is hitting her at this moment.
