Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez steps onto a wider stage
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
By KELLEN BROWNING and REID J. EPSTEIN
Seven years after she swept into office as a progressive agitator unafraid to hammer fellow Democrats, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has emerged as an increasingly sought-after leader within the party she set out to disrupt.
She has positioned herself as a top antagonist of Vice President JD Vance, a potential heir to President Donald Trump’s political movement, sparring with him on social media.
She has stepped up her support of moderate and mainstream Democrats, sending a fundraising email last month asking her supporters to donate to the Senate campaign of former Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, a friend whose support for oil drilling and gun rights are at odds with Ocasio-Cortez’s stances.
And, at a time of tumult around the country and uncertainty within the Democratic Party, her direct and camera-ready speaking style is breaking through. After federal agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, she swiftly appeared on cable news and argued he had been “executed in the street.”
After years of inching closer to mainstream Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez is more forcefully trying to steer her party toward her populist, working-class message at a moment when economic worries are a top issue. Democrats of all stripes broadly agree that they need a more ambitious vision focused on bringing down the cost of living to win back blue-collar voters who fled to Republicans during the Trump era.
Plenty of Democratic politicians are now looking to Ocasio-Cortez, 36, and not their party leaders, for cues on how to get that message across, viewing her instincts as sharper than consultant-driven, focus-grouped direction out of Washington.Ocasio-Cortez routinely answers centrist Democrats’ requests for help on communications strategy and fundraising, and has served as a mentor for young House colleagues.
“She’s a coalition builder,” said Rep. Pat Ryan, a moderate Democrat in an upstate New York battleground district who campaigned with Ocasio-Cortez before the 2024 election. He said that she had, “to her credit, sought out engaging with me and, I know, other front-line members from very competitive districts to hear what’s going on for us, to get our take, to bounce ideas back and forth.”
Next week, she plans to expand her progressive pitch to foreign policy, by speaking at the Munich Security Conference in her most significant overseas trip since taking office, according to Mike Casca, her chief of staff. There, she is expected to present a left-wing alternative to Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip approach to world affairs.
Ocasio-Cortez’s heightened role comes as Democratic insiders begin to whisper more loudly about what she might do in 2028. She has long been seen as a potential presidential candidate or as a successor — or challenger — to Sen. Chuck Schumer, 75, the minority leader, who has not said if he will run again.
But Ocasio-Cortez, who declined an interview request, is unlikely to announce any choice until 2027, according to interviews with more than a dozen Democratic advisers, allies, colleagues and friends. They described a politician, known to a select few as Alex, who is known for making last-minute decisions and who is keeping her cards hidden.
“That’s her life — running for president, running for Senate, whatever it is, is a very big decision,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ocasio-Cortez’s political mentor, said in an interview.
“I’m sure she’s looking at all of the options right now,” he added.
From Pelosi protester to Biden defender
Sanders, a leader of America’s progressive political movement, has often operated as something of a lone wolf. An independent who never formally joined the Democratic Party, he has a personal and political rigidity that at times angers his colleagues.
For a time, it seemed Ocasio-Cortez might take a similar approach. She marked her arrival in Washington by joining a climate protest outside Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office and had a tense relationship with the former Democratic speaker. She refused to contribute to the House Democratic campaign arm during her first stretch in Congress.
But over the years, Ocasio-Cortez has tempered her critiques of moderate Democrats and is now a regular dues-paying member to the House campaign committee.
After Sanders lost the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, she swiftly endorsed Joe Biden — while still nudging him to the left — and was one of his key initial defenders when he faced pressure to drop his reelection campaign four years later.
Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., who appeared alongside Ocasio-Cortez at a town hall last year in a Republican-held House district in upstate New York that Democrats hope to flip, said she had demonstrated a “team spirit.”
Tonko suggested that Ocasio-Cortez’s blunt, plainspoken style appeared well suited for the moment and that voters were finding her economic ideas more common sense than radical.
“When we did the Plattsburgh town hall, I think it proved that her message resonates with rural and working-class Americans who feel abandoned,” he said.
If Ocasio-Cortez runs for president, her prominence and vast fundraising potential would probably make her the leading progressive, and potentially a front-runner, in a contest likely to include a dozen or more candidates to her right.
She offered a preview of what a presidential bid could look like in the spring, when she swept through a dozen cities with Sanders on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that energized beleaguered Democrats.
But Democrats remain divided over whether to embrace a fiery liberal who could excite the base or a candidate perceived as more likely to attract Republican and independent voters. Some may be wary of nominating a millennial progressive from a deep-blue House district in New York City.
“She can’t appeal to a broad electorate — that is the problem,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, a former senior official at the Democratic National Committee. “We need someone who can reach as many people as possible outside of the Democratic Party and in red and purple states.”
Increased visibility
In Munich, Ocasio-Cortez is expected to participate in a discussion about populist political movements and a debate on the United States’ role in the world, Casca said. Her trip will also include a town-hall-style event with students at a Berlin university alongside a politician in Germany’s Social Democratic Party.
The trip is Ocasio-Cortez’s most significant foray into foreign policy, a subject that has never been a particular strength of hers. The Munich conference is typically the realm of national security officials and heads of state.
Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance will undoubtedly ignite speculation that she is burnishing her foreign policy credentials before a White House run. But she is keeping everyone guessing.
Her heightened platform, allies suggested, reflects her desire to rise to the moment, be it now or in 2028.
“She’s going to be attuned to any election-year cycle to where she can do the most good for the most people,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., whom Ocasio-Cortez counseled in his own deliberations about whether to run for the Senate. “She has profound ambition for where she wants New York to go and where she wants the country to go.”