Dem
53
Ties
2
GOP
45
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a lot of star power and has to decide what to do with it next cycle. Her most likely choices are one of these:
Many people are talking about AOC as a presidential candidate. She would be 39 on Inauguration Day, so she is old enough. However, getting the Democratic nomination against a giant field of highly qualified candidates (see above list) and beating them all would be no mean feat, especially since women are 0 for 2 running for president. She would probably have the progressive wing of the Democratic Party behind her, but that is maybe 30% of the primary electorate. She doesn't have a lot of gravitas and people would ask: How are you going to win Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina? She would be an extreme long shot. She is surely aware that many Democrats want a straight white man as their candidate. Besides, only one person in history has gone from the House directly to the presidency, and that was James Garfield almost 150 years ago. It's a big jump. And note that even Garfield hedged his bets; on the day in 1880 he was elected to the White House, he had already been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio legislature, and so had a fallback job available.
If AOC challenged Chuck Schumer for the 2028 Senate nomination, she would be the favorite. She is viewed more favorably than Schumer and led in at least one poll. If Schumer knew AOC was going to run, he might even retire, to avoid the embarrassment of losing a primary to such a young woman. Given her young age, she could serve a term or two in the Senate to gain more experience (e.g., foreign affairs) and then run for president.
AOC is obviously looking carefully at the latter two options. She has traveled all over the country with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and has seen large turnouts at their rallies. But she is also checking out the Senate option. She has been barnstorming upstate New York to get a better feeling of how she would do far from her Bronx-Queens district.
Her visit to Buffalo and Ithaca was nominally to help boost Democratic turnout in the midterms, but it also gave her a chance to meet voters and party officials who have never met her. In Buffalo, she met with Mayor Sean Ryan and held a press conference with him, which made the local news. She also visited a training session for activists who will try to get inactive voters to the polls in November. In Ithaca, she appeared at an apple festival with Rep. John Riley (D-NY). She also headlined a "Students vs. Billionaires" town hall. With Cornell University dominating the area, it was friendly territory for lefties like her.
AOC has said she hasn't made up her mind. If she runs for president, she might inherit Sanders' mantle as Lefty-in-Chief. But she would most likely fail to get the nomination. New York does not forbid running for the White House and the regular House at the same time, but voters tend to see trying to execute Plan A and Plan B at the same time as a lack of confidence. While she is not a shoo-in for the Senate, she is probably the favorite and could run for president in 2032 or 2036, depending on who wins in 2028. Campaigns for the Senate and presidency are very different so she will probably have to decide fairly early in the new year. (V)