The massive grassroots movement that twice rallied behind a Bernie Sanders presidential bid is facing its most consequential question yet: Who will emerge as its next leader?

With the race for the White House still two years away, fierce behind-the-scenes competition is already underway for the voters, operatives and organizational muscle that powered Sanders’ insurgent campaigns. The outcome may well determine whether the hard left can mount a serious challenge for the Democratic nomination or whether the progressive lane fractures before the race even begins.

Interviews with more than a dozen major liberal groups, progressive activists, operatives and elected officials reveal that many in the most liberal faction of the party are not yet sold on one person; they’re open to a number of candidates, including those who are not perfectly aligned with litmus test principles of the past.

To many, the Sanders mantle is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s for the taking, should she want it. But others say the New York progressive wouldn’t be the inevitable heir, arguing that Rep. Ro Khanna of California also has Bernie-like bona fides, and several other candidates have potential.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, the organization founded by Sanders, said the group’s 8 million members have “an open mind” on whom they’d like to see run for president in 2028, particularly after watching someone like newly minted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani emerge from nowhere and become a national sensation.

“I don’t think the field is written. There’s always somebody who’s surprising. They can step in and really scramble the field,” he said. “AOC, Ro Khanna, potentially others would have an advantage given they’ve been leading on issues that are important to the base.”

Like Sanders, “AOC” is a singular figure in American politics, a force capable of drawing enormous, energetic crowds. Her superpower is small-dollar fundraising, which could catapult her to the top of the pile in any electoral contest. She has through-the-roof name recognition and consistently polls in the top five among Democratic leaders potentially seeking the White House. Ocasio-Cortez has not decided whether to run for Senate or mount a presidential bid, but she has not ruled anything out, according to a source with knowledge of her thinking.

01:40

Several Democrats interviewed pointed to Khanna landing high-profile wins, including working with a Republican to force the release of the Epstein files, and said that aside from Ocasio-Cortez, his positions most closely align to Sanders’.

Still, progressive leaders name-checked other potential short-listers whom they wanted to hear more from including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jon Ossoff of Georgia.

“There are a lot of people who are going to come into this race and move to the left. They’ll not be Bernie but they’ll chip away at his coalition,” said Mark Longabaugh, a veteran strategist who worked on Sanders’ presidential campaigns. As far as consolidating the progressive lane: “It makes the task harder.”

Ro vs. AOC

“In the Bernie lane, those are the two, and then there’s a gulf,” a person deeply involved in the dynamics on the left said of Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez. “AOC is clearly the most popular.”

Those interviewed were unanimous in their view that should Ocasio-Cortez run, she’d explode onto the scene, dominate early and potentially help set the policy agenda. She’s already done so, having announced a position against U.S. military aid to Israel even for defense, with other potential candidates soon following.

Others held up someone like Sanders-backed Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine. They contend he has the potential to leap to national prominence if he defeats longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a purple state.

Sources with knowledge of internal thinking on both sides say that neither Khanna’s nor Ocasio-Cortez’s candidacies are dependent on the other’s.

Pivotal Sanders operatives have migrated to Ocasio-Cortez, a sign they view her as the most closely aligned or even the heir apparent. They include Sanders’ former deputy chief of staff and spokesperson Mike Casca, who is now her chief of staff; Matt Duss, a progressive foreign policy expert and former Sanders adviser; Faiz Shakir, who has worked as an outside adviser; and Oliver Hidalgo-Wohlleben, Ocasio-Cortez’s political director, who held various past posts with Sanders.

03:19

But Khanna has aggressively moved to stake his own claim to Bernie-world infrastructure as well. Longtime Sanders senior strategist Jeff Weaver is working as an adviser to Khanna, as is Shannon Jackson, who led Sanders’ New Hampshire operation in 2020, and Sarah Michelson, who headed his Nevada operation in 2020, according to two people with knowledge of the moves. Sanders won both states. Julian Mulvey of the Fight Agency, who produced some of Sanders’ most iconic ads, is also on board, as is Melted Solids, the group behind Mamdani’s viral videos.

Hovering over all of it is the question of how Sanders himself weighs in. Sanders steadily holds high favorability, including being ranked by Morning Consult as the most popular senator in the country. His endorsement, multiple sources said, is the north star of the progressive primary. If both Ocasio-Cortez and Khanna run, the consensus is that Sanders is likely to stay out, at least initially, to see how the race develops.

But as of now it is just speculation. Sanders aides said he is not focused on the 2028 election. Sanders has a close relationship with both Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez, though he has a special bond with the New York congresswoman. She toured with Sanders during the wildly successful, post-November 2024 “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. The crowds swelled into the tens of thousands when Ocasio-Cortez joined him — a sign of her star power.

Ocasio-Cortez was also an important backer of his 2020 run, stepping in with an endorsement just after Sanders suffered from a heart attack and his campaign teetered.

“I just think the entire shape of the race is different if AOC gets in vs. if she doesn’t,” a co-chair of a major progressive organization who is closely watching the field said in a text message. “Very hard to imagine any other candidates challenging her for the post-Bernie lane if she’s in.”

Some have likened the possibility of both Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez running to the 2020 primary, in which Sanders competed against Warren and they had an anti-disparagement pact with each other — at least initially.

One powerful counterargument to Ocasio-Cortez is already splitting some progressives who would rather see her wait.

“I think she should run for Senate,” said Norm Solomon, executive director of RootsAction, a liberal grassroots organization. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York is “rotten fruit ready to drop from the tree,” and those on the left are beyond eager to see him go, Solomon said. “I don’t think she can build a wide enough base to win in 2028, but I think she can in the next decade. And she doesn’t yet convey that she has a real firm handle on foreign policy.”

Some critics panned Ocasio-Cortez as unprepared for the world stage after she appeared at the Munich Security Conference in February. The congresswoman expressed frustration, saying the hyperscrutiny — spliced into brief social media sound bites — shrouded her message backing the working class and warning of the spread of authoritarianism.

For his part, Khanna is the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party and holds a senior position on the House Armed Services Committee.

“He has a sort of foreign policy seasoning that is really lacking with these gubernatorial candidates, whether from Illinois or Kentucky or California,” Solomon added. “I think that matters.”

Longabaugh said Khanna could be formidable because he attracts some on the far left but still has the ability to extend an arm to the establishment part of the party.

“She would create a lot of excitement right away, but I don’t know that she necessarily locks it up,” he said of Ocasio-Cortez. Longabaugh in past years did some advising for Khanna but said he is not doing so now and is not paid by Khanna. “She’d start out as the front-runner progressive in the race if she decided to run. But going into ’28, I think Ro can make a real strong move and make a real strong claim on it.”

Critics, though, point to Khanna’s struggles with small-dollar fundraising, something they say he’d need to turn around to truly be considered in the Bernie lane. He’d also have to overcome low name recognition and so far is not even showing up in early national polling.

The Bernie-adjacent contenders

Sanders, as well as progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have already succeeded in helping shape the Democratic Party’s policy platform moving forward, with 2028 short-listers largely tapping their economic framing, including corporate accountability, corruption and fairness around tax policy.

01:15

While Murphy would not be viewed as in the “Bernie lane,” he has become a leading voice on economic populism and has increasingly pushed the idea of “breaking up concentrated economic power.”

“That economic message, the message that speaks to a lot of things that Bernie Sanders talks about, is a unifying message in this country,” Murphy previously told NBC News. “And a lot of people in the Democratic Party tried to make it sound like Bernie was divisive, when in fact Bernie’s message, still to this day, speaks to a lot of folks that voted for Donald Trump, a lot of folks that we would love to have back in our camp.”

Progressives said they still needed to learn more about him but brought up Pritzker as a possible candidate who could vie for at least parts of the left. They applauded his aggressive stance against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his early and consistent anti-Trump messaging and his longtime support for taxing the rich.

“There was a lot of skepticism when JB Pritzker ran in 2018 that he would govern as a progressive. Just, you know, look at his resume. This guy’s a billionaire hotel heir,” said Trip Venturella, who launched the Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker X account as a “winking acknowledgement that, ‘Yeah, you have to admit that the guy has won some of us over.’”

For others though, Pritzker being a billionaire is disqualifying, and some feel he hasn’t appropriately distanced himself from AIPAC. Others have held up Van Hollen, Ossoff and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico for their effective “top vs. bottom” economic messaging.

What the hard left wants

The litmus tests of the past are not necessarily what will animate the left-most spectrum of the Democratic Party today. Our Revolution’s surveying of its membership showed that “Medicare for All” fell from the top ranking as a chief concern, giving way to government and corporate corruption as a top issue.

“You’ve got to be able to go up against corporate monopolies and entrenched power,” Geevarghese said of any 2028 candidate. The group, which has backed billionaire Tom Steyer in the California gubernatorial race, believes that billionaires — including someone like Pritzker — would “be perfectly viable and somebody that progressive voters would be open to,” Geevarghese added.

Others, though, have a more set list of demands, including a growing push behind a $25-an-hour minimum wage, a billionaire tax and calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.

Ashik Siddique, the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America — now more than 100,000 members strong after starting the decade at 6,000 — said Ocasio-Cortez was a compelling candidate given her record and relationship to DSA. The New York DSA chapter recently endorsed her for re-election.

He said members have a deliberative process before making any presidential endorsement and it was too early to say where the group would land, though at a recent convention, he added, attendees valued a strong labor organizer.

Siddique said the group still knew too little about other potential candidates but noted that membership was generally not supportive of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and most would be “inherently skeptical of a billionaire” like Pritzker. Khanna, he added, had no formal relationship with the organization.

“Even if they might be good on a particular thing like accepting some taxes on the rich, I think we would still need to see a strong commitment on a range of things: supporting workers directly, ending wars,” Siddique said, as well as opposing U.S. aid to Israel and “ending ICE occupation.”

Josh Orton, who worked as a policy director on Sanders’ 2020 campaign and as an adviser to Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign, said looking forward, the left will see right through someone who is “building policy reactively to the story of the day or controversy of the week.”

“If you’re asking who would be able to inherit some of the space that he occupied in 2020, it’s someone who has an internally consistent set of values and can paint a picture of what our country should be and how it should be building a system of government that’s good and fair for everybody,” Orton said.