OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
12:58 PM – Saturday, May 9, 2026
U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not deny having presidential ambitions when asked about her plans for 2028.
Democratic strategist David Axelrod, former adviser to former President Barack Obama, asked the congresswoman at an event at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics on Friday if she planned to run for president in 2028.
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Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pushed back on the assumption that her “ambition is positional.”
“What’s funny is they assume my ambition is a title or a seat,” the New York Democrat replied. “My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go.”
“But single-payer healthcare is forever,” she said, referencing her idea for a national healthcare plan, which she supports over the country’s private system. “A living wage is forever, workers’ rights are forever, women’s rights, all of that, and so anyways … to a finer point to your question is that when you aren’t attached, when you haven’t been like fantasizing about being this or that since the time you were seven years old, it is tremendously liberating.”
She asserted later in the exchange that she would prefer to “make decisions from a place of ‘how are we going to change the country?’” and “meet the moment.”
“Conditions change radically all the time, so I make my response less to an attachment to some positional, like title or position, and working backwards from there, but I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window and observing the conditions of this country and saying, ‘What move or what decision can I make today that is going to get us closer to that future, stronger, faster, better than yesterday?’” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez barely met the age requirement to run for president in 2024, needing to be at least 35 years old by the day she would assume the presidency. In light of her age, she has been added to a list of possible presidential hopefuls within the Democrat party, joining the likes of term-limited California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D-Penn.), term-limited Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) and term-limited Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D-Ky.).
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D-Ill.), whose state does not limit its governors to two terms, and has therefore launched a campaign to become the first in its history to complete three full gubernatorial terms, was also recently asked about a potential presidential bid.
“Look, we have a pretty good bench,” Pritzker said, deferring to the other possible candidates. “So that’s my answer. My answer is: I don’t know what I’ll be doing after — I hope I win reelection, after. But I can tell you this: I’m going to fight like hell to elect a Democrat in 2028.”
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are widely viewed as the top Republican candidates for the next presidential election.
“I’m not sure if anyone would run against those two,” Trump told reporters about Vance and Rubio in October. “I think if they ever formed a group it would be unstoppable.”
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