CHICAGO — U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declined to commit to a 2028 presidential or U.S. Senate campaign during a political forum at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics on Friday. Asked directly by David Axelrod whether she planned to run for the White House in 2028 or for the Senate, she said her focus was on policy goals rather than seeking a specific office. "My ambition is to change the country," Ocasio-Cortez said.

She framed her approach around long-term policy aims rather than any single campaign. "But single-payer healthcare is forever." she said. "A living wage is forever, workers' rights are forever, women's rights, all of that, and so to a finer point to your question, when you aren't attached, when you haven't been fantasizing about being this or that since you were seven years old, it is tremendously liberating."

Ocasio-Cortez said she wanted to "make decisions from a place of how are we going to change the country." She described her daily approach to her work. "I get to wake up every day and say, 'How am I going to meet the moment?'" she said.

She said her decisions were guided by circumstance rather than a fixed career path. "And conditions change radically all the time. So I make my response less to an attachment to some positional title or position and working backwards from there," she said.

Ocasio-Cortez elaborated on that approach. "I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window and observing the conditions of this country. And saying what move or what decision can I make today that is going to get us closer to that future, stronger, faster, better than yesterday," she said.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll taken in April showed support among Democratic voters for former Vice President Kamala Harris at 24%, for California Governor Gavin Newsom at 12%, and for Pete Buttigieg and Ocasio-Cortez each at 9%.