Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) declined on Sunday to say if she would endorse President Biden if he runs for reelection in 2024, saying she is focusing on this year’s midterm elections.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she told CNN “State of the Union” co-anchor Dana Bash.
“But I think if the president has a vision, and that’s something certainly we’re all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes,” she continued.
Bash pressed Ocasio-Cortez on her declining to endorse the sitting president of her own party.
“That’s not a yes,” Bash noted.
Ocasio-Cortez then reiterated her focus on this year’s elections.
“I think we should endorse when we get to it, but I believe that the president’s been doing a very good job so far,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And, should he run again, I think that we’ll take a look at it.”
Ocasio-Cortez has made challenging her party’s establishment a hallmark of her tenure in Congress.
The New York Democrat on Tuesday endorsed progressive New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi (D) in her primary bid to unseat Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.).
Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), received criticism from Ocasio-Cortez and some other Democrats after he announced he would run in New York’s 17th congressional district shortly after a new map was announced that pitted some incumbents against each other.
The district is currently mostly represented by Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), but Maloney avoided a potentially awkward member-on-member primary when Jones subsequently announced he would run in a separate district.
“By endorsing somebody who wants to beat and take out a member of your own party leadership, the very guy who is trying to get Democrats elected to keep control of the House, you’re obviously comfortable with that,” Bash said on Sunday.
Ocasio-Cortez responded by noting younger generations were underrepresented in Congress, arguing that lawmakers should not be elected “in perpetuity.”
“We need to have a generational shift in the United States Congress in order for us to have a policy shift in the United States Congress,” she said.