All eyes are on the 2024 presidential election, but 34 Senate seats are in play including seats in some states with what political pundits would call “vulnerable” senators.
Three seats up for grabs currently belong to Independents, 20 seats are currently held by Democrats, and 11 by Republicans.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the Democrat senators from New York, announced in January that she would seek re-election and a third term in the U.S. Senate.
“I love being senator of New York, and I think my ability to deliver for our state has never been greater,” Gillibrand told the New York Times.
Rumors began swirling among NY political insiders that Gillibrand could potentially face a Democrat challenger like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Rep. Ritchie Torres of the South Bronx.
To add some fuel to that fire, Ocasio-Cortez hinted at the possibility of running for higher office.
In a new Politico profile, AOC spoke about her future and was asked directly about challenging Gillibrand in a primary.
Her reply? “Don’t ask me that question…Print that,” she said jokingly. Her coy response elicited speculation in the political world.
Ryan Adams, a Democratic consultant, told The Post that “if she ran for Senate, the fundraising that would come in from all around the country would easily make her competitive.”
“And nobody campaigns like her. Everyone would come out. The apparatus that would spring up around her would be unstoppable. People would fly in from other states to volunteer with her,” Adams added.
“There’s a world where I’m here for a long time in this seat, in this position. There’s a world where I’m not an elected official anymore. There’s a world where… I may be in higher office,” AOC said to Politico.
AOC rejected any comparison between her “brand of politics” and the more vocal members on the Republican side like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
(Andrew Harnik-Pool/Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“There are people, including moderates, who sometimes try to draw this completely unfair, false equivalence between progressives and, frankly, the fascists that we see in the Republican Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said confidently.
In reporting on this story, Mediaite raised the fact that AOC will soon be of the age that would allow her to run for president and could potentially do so for the 2024 election.
Is that the higher office to which she aspires? For the sake of the nation, let’s hope not.
According to the Daily Beast, Gillibrand floated the idea to her potential donors that former Governor Andrew Cuomo could come after her senate seat.
Another fundraising teaser suggested that former Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, may challenge her in the next senate race.
During a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, Zeldin called Gillibrand “one of the laziest, most forgettable unaccomplished senators in the country. It is a wasted Senate seat.”
“Senator-what’s-her-name is wasting a Senate seat inside New York,” Zeldin continued, “and New Yorkers are getting rolled and screwed, because we have a senator who is not doing a good job representing all of us in New York.”
Zeldin was instrumental in securing a slim majority for Republicans in the state House because of his better-than-expected gubernatorial campaign against incumbent Kathy Hochul.
Who will challenge Senator Gillibrand? It will be interesting to see.
