Isaac SchorrMay 18th, 2026, 9:52 am

A budding rivalry between Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) is building ahead of the 2028 presidential race, according to Axios’s Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein.

The pair reports that while Khanna is replicating the team and strategy deployed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during his 2016 campaign, Ocasio-Cortez is hiring people associated with his 2020 campaign, as well as positioning herself as an across-the-board progressive rather than just an economic populist.

“Khanna has taken a slightly more centrist view than Ocasio-Cortez on issues such as crime and immigration. He’s hired key members of Sanders’ 2016 campaign, which had a relatively moderate brand on immigration and guns — and didn’t fear going negative on Hillary Clinton. AOC, meanwhile, has tapped strategists behind Sanders’ effort in 2020, when the Vermont senator moved left on social issues to back policies such as decriminalizing border crossings by unauthorized immigrants, and largely avoided bashing Joe Biden,” wrote Thompson and Otterbein, who cited Ocasio-Cortez’s recent rebuke of former Republican congresswoman-turned-Trump critic Marjorie Taylor Greene as a veiled shot at Khanna.

“I personally do not trust someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a proven bigot and anti-Semite, on the issues of what is good for Gazans and Israelis. I don’t! I don’t think that it benefits our movement, in that instance, to align the left with white nationalists. I don’t think it serves us,” submitted Ocasio-Cortez at an event earlier this month.

“I will not yield an inch when it comes to standing for progressive values and for the human rights of every person. But if conservatives are willing to support justice for Epstein survivors or stopping the war in Iran, I will work with them,” Khanna told Thompson and Otterbein.

A new AtlasIntel survey published last week found that Ocasio-Cortez is pacing a hypothetical 2028 Democratic primary field at 26%;  Khanna came in 10th place at .9%.

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