RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Sunday that she hasn’t ruled out a potential run for president or the Senate 2028, echoing remarks she’s made while campaigning for congressional candidates ahead of November’s midterm elections. “I’m focused on winning the midterms. I’m running for Congress right now,” Ocasio-Cortez first told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday when asked whether she plans to run for president in two years. Pressed further by “This Week” host Jonathan Karl, Ocasio-Cortez added, “I haven’t ruled out the possibility. And I’m very humbled to the tremendous amount of support out there.” But she reiterated her focus on the upcoming midterms over her own political future. Asked whether she’d consider running for the Senate in New York in 2028, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will be up for re-election, Ocasio-Cortez, 36, answered, “I think that anything is possible at this juncture.” The congresswoman’s political future has been the subject of speculation for years as she’s wielded her national political power to endorse insurgent progressive candidates who have beaten more moderate, establishment candidates with bigger campaign war chests. Most recently, Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate who pledged to reject funding for Israel and promote “Medicare for All,” beat Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., in the Great Lakes State’s Democratic primary for Senate last week, overcoming the tens of millions of dollars spent by Stevens’ supporters to attack him. “I think that we are in a time of renewal for the Democratic Party. And it’s tremendously exciting for all of us, for the big tent of the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday in the wake of El-Sayed’s victory. “We have really an ascendance of a young, inspiring, exciting electorate, energizing wave of candidates that I think really inject a new energy to the Democratic Party and add to the toolbox of candidates that we have to win the midterm elections hopefully in November.” El-Sayed’s victory was fueled in part by Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement and by the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who ran for president twice as a progressive, anti-establishment alternative to traditional Democrats. Sanders has all but ruled out another presidential run in 2028, drawing questions about who might take up the mantle of the movement he began in 2016. Ocasio-Cortez, to some, appears to be a natural successor, especially as she and Sanders crisscrossed the nation together since the last presidential election, urging supporters to fight oligarchy and support Medicare for All. In July, while campaigning for El-Sayed in Michigan, the congresswoman told Politico when asked about a presidential run: “I mean, I can’t say that I’ve ruled it out.” She was first elected to Congress in 2018, winning her party’s nomination for New York’s 14th Congressional District in a shocking upset to the Queens machine after she challenged longtime Rep. David Crowley in the Democratic primary. On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez reflected on her political rise since 2018, telling Karl: “It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be able to represent the working people of my congressional district. And I think some of the ways that it’s changed me has been to be able to come in with so many aspirations for our country, and then to have the remarkable opportunity to be in the arena and try to make the country a better place, challenges and all.” “And I love that it’s hard,” she added. “I love that I have to and I get to engage with people from all across the country, elected officials from all across the country, to try to actually fulfill our dreams to guarantee healthcare to every American.” The congresswoman also spoke about a personal milestone she revealed on Instagram last week — freezing her eggs — and why she decided to publicly share such a personal decision. On Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez posted videos of herself on Instagram administering the first injections in the egg-freezing process. “I want to share this because I’ve been weighing this for a very long time … and there isn’t a lot out there, and sometimes it can feel very daunting,” she said in her posts from Saturday night. Asked by Karl about the decision, Ocasio-Cortez said: “In this political environment where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us as leaders to have these conversations and share these processes, especially for working women across the country, and normalize them.”
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