In this article, Shane Goldmacher (for The New York Times, 22 September 2026) interviews Puerto Rican congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who “offered her most detailed insight yet into how she is thinking about a possible presidential run.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said she will weigh the decision of whether to run for president after the midterm elections. The decision is clearly already weighing on her.
In an interview with The New York Times, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez revealed the electoral equations she is crunching and the mental “math” she is calculating as she approaches the biggest crossroads of her political career.
Her gender. Her ethnicity. Her electability. Her eggs. Her movement. Her moment.
“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 said. “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.”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 36, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, is now in her eighth year representing parts of the Bronx and Queens. She could simply keep winning re-election. But in 2028, she has two other choices: run for the White House, or seek the seat now held by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.
“Every element of this is something that’s within consideration,” she said.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez weighed aloud the pros and cons of running for president with unusual candor, sounding less strategic than searching, as if the right answer were somewhere nearby. [. . .]
“Pretty candidly, I think about my identity,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez went on. “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. And I think that there’s a lot of conversation about electability, and I don’t kind of shy away from those realities.”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez arrived in Congress as a left-wing outsider and remains one of the party’s most progressive voices. [. . .]
Back in May, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez went viral for an answer she gave at a forum with David Axelrod, the onetime adviser to former President Barack Obama, in which she said her ambitions were not a “title or a seat.”
“My ambition is way bigger than that,” she said. “My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but single-payer health care is forever, a living wage is forever, workers’ rights are forever, women’s rights, all of that.” [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/us/politics/aoc-2028-presidential-race.html?b
[Photo above by Gordon Welters for The New York Times: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has several choices ahead of 2028: Keep her House seat, run for the Senate or seek the White House.]