AOC Reportedly Gearing Up for Big 2028 Campaign

Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is gearing up for a big campaign for a bigger office in 2028 — they’re just not sure which.

According to Axios’s Alex Thompson, Ocasio-Cortez and her political operation are laying the groundwork for a campaign to either succeed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or win the White House.

While polling shows that the young, progressive congresswoman would enter the race against Schumer as a favorite and Ocasio-Cortez has held eyebrow-raising events in Upstate New York, many believe she might skip a step and take a shot at securing the Oval Office, “some close allies,” per Thompson, “believe that even if Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t think she could win, she may want to run for the White House to ensure that the Democratic Party’s progressive wing is represented in the primary.”

One longtime aide to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the democratic socialist many see Ocasio-Cortez as the political successor to, told Thompson, “She has a supporter base that, in many ways, has a larger potential width than Bernie’s. She has been in the glare of the spotlight from day one and has the national campaigning experience a lot of other potential candidates are now trying to get” adding that “It would be the height of arrogance to assume she couldn’t win the 2028 nomination.”

A Yale University poll released earlier this year found that among Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez boasts the single highest net favorability rating (62%) of all the party’s many potential 2028 presidential candidates. A Data for Progress survey, meanwhile, found that she would easily dispatch Schumer, 55%-36%, should she choose to challenge him.