U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez inched closer to a potential 2028 White House run in a new interview that also left open the possibility that she'll challenge powerful fellow New York Democrat Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat.
“There’s an argument that some make that this is a very unique political window and, oftentimes in politics, you do only get one shot,” she told The New York Times. “And you don’t — and just in life in general — life doesn’t wait for you to be ready for things. Sometimes life just makes things ready for you.”
But the House's highest-profile progressive said she hasn’t made a decision, which she previously said would come after the crucial November midterm elections for control of Congress.
“Every element of this is something that’s within consideration,” she said.
The remarks, published Tuesday, came during a wide-ranging conversation last week that began when Ocasio-Cortez — widely known as AOC — called a reporter to discuss transferring funds from her $16 million campaign war chest to fellow New York Democrats and campaigning for them upstate, the NYT said.
They also followed comments she made to The Independent in July after a poll showed her with a narrow lead over other potential Democratic contenders in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary elections.
“I think my main focus is really genuinely just the midterms right now, and we have to make sure that we win this majority,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time.
Neither the Republican National Committee nor a spokesperson for Senate Minority Minority Leader Schumer immediately returned inquiries from The Independent. Schumer, 75, hasn't said if he’ll seek a sixth Senate term.
In August, President Donald Trump told Fox News that he expected AOC to seek the White House after she echoed New York City Council Member Chi Osse's assessment that the pandemic-era “woke 1” movement “was crazy.”
“If you really look at it, they're all saying the same thing,” Trump said, referring to progressive Democrats. “They're all trying to disavow themselves from what they said about crime and, well, they're saying, ‘We love sanctuary cities.’”
At one point in her NYT interview, Ocasio-Cortez — who rejoined the Democratic Socialists of America in August after letting her membership lapse in 2019 — framed the process of deciding whether to run for president in purely subjective terms.
“I think about it personally,” she said. “I am 36, I’m about to turn 37 years old — and what that means for my life.”
Ocasio-Cortez, whose mother and paternal grandparents were born in Puerto Rico, also said, “Pretty candidly, I think about my identity.”
“I’m not naïve to the fact that we are living under a very regressive administration, and I happen to be a woman, and I, you know, happen to be Latina,” she said. “And I think that there’s a lot of conversation about electability, and I don’t kind of shy away from those realities.”
Ocasio-Cortez said her gender was "of course" a major factor, noting that women comprise about 27 percent of Congress and no woman has been elected president.
“What is very odd about our political culture is that for some reason when you raise it, people just freak out,” she said. “They get so defensive at the mere suggestion that gender could play a role.”
Trump's defeat of the only two women to secure a presidential nomination — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 — also figures in her thinking, she said.
“It may or may not be related, but I absolutely empathize with the heartbreak that people feel around that and, frankly, how those women were treated,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she'd discussed the issue with Harris, who's also weighing a 2028 White House bid, but declined to discuss their conversations, the NYT said.
AOC won her House seat by ousting an entrenched and powerful incumbent, former Rep. Joe Crowley, and she acknowledged that Democratic control of the Senate could complicate a decision to challenge Schumer.
“That would honestly be the best possible problem we could have as a country,” she said. “We’re working hard to have that problem, and I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
Ocasio-Cortez is seeking re-election in November to a fifth term representing her overwhelmingly Democratic district, which covers parts of the Bronx and Queens in New York City.
She's being challenged by Republican Diamant Hysenaj, a real-estate developer and first-time political candidate.
Hysenaj's campaign website plays up his roots on a farm in Kosovo, which his family fled in 1991 when the “communist dictatorship tightened its grip and instability spread across the region.”
Hysenaj had just $31,000 in campaign cash and nearly $28,000 in debts at the end of June, according to the Federal Election Commission.
There aren’t any public polls about the race, but the Cook Political Report rates it solidly in AOC's favor.