Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she believes she could defeat Vice President JD Vance if the two were to face off in the 2028 presidential election.
The 36-year-old congresswoman was asked by a reporter on Wednesday, Dec. 17, whether she thought she could beat Vance, 41, who is widely viewed as an early contender for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
Ocasio-Cortez laughed at the premise before answering. “Listen, these polls, like three years out, are, you know, they are what they are,” she said. “But let the record show: I would stomp him. I would stomp him!”
Earlier that day, she retweeted a poll from The Argument/Verasight that showed her leading Vance 51% to 49% in a hypothetical matchup. She reposted the results with a brief comment: “Bloop!”
When asked by The Independent why she shared the poll, Ocasio-Cortez replied, “Because JD Vance is a goober, man.”
Ocasio-Cortez has also been floated as a potential Democratic contender in 2028. In September, Axios reported that sources said the New York congresswoman and her team were “positioning her to run for president or the U.S. Senate” in the 2028 election.
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If she pursued a Senate run that year, she would be challenging New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the longtime politician and Senate Minority Leader. Axios also noted that Ocasio-Cortez has campaigned nationally over the last year and teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has twice run for president.
One of Sanders’ longtime aides, Ari Rabin-Havt, told the outlet in September that Ocasio-Cortez has “a supporter base that, in many ways, has a larger potential width than Bernie’s.” He added, “It would be the height of arrogance to assume she couldn’t win the 2028 nomination.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of pursuing a third term, though his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said in a Vanity Fair interview series that he is not serious about running again in 2028.
“He sure is having fun with it,” Wiles told the outlet, adding that Trump knows it’s “driving people crazy,” which she suggested is why he continues to bring it up. Wiles also said Trump has acknowledged that the 22nd Amendment bars a president from serving more than two terms.
That same Vanity Fair story noted Trump’s suggestion of Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio teaming up for a 2028 run. Rubio hinted at Vance’s potential future as the party’s nominee, telling Vanity Fair, “If JD Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him.”
Politico reported in November that Rubio had also expressed support for Vance’s hypothetical run and predicted the vice president would secure the nomination if he entered the race.
“He will do anything he can just to support the vice president in that effort,” a source close to Rubio told the outlet.
Vance himself alluded to possible 2028 ambitions in a Nov. 13 interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, though he emphasized that his focus is on his current responsibilities.
“I would say that I’ve thought about what that moment might look like after the midterm elections, sure, but I also, whenever I think about that, I try to put it out of my head and remind myself the American people elected me to do a job right now. And my job is to do it,” Vance said.
Still, he told Hannity he expects to discuss the idea with Trump after the midterms: “After that I’m going to sit down with the president of the United States and talk to him about it. If we do a good job, the politics will take care of itself. If we do a terrible job, the politics will take care of itself in the other direction, so I’m just going to focus on the job that I have.”
