NEW YORK - Democrat Cait Conley, who is seeking to unseat Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in one of the nation’s most crucial House races, in the suburbs just north of New York City, was asked last month if she would campaign with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“I’m good,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sept. 6, about joining hands with Ocasio-Cortez, a high-profile figure in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party who serves in an adjacent district.
Conley, a former Army combat veteran who served as a national security expert in the Biden administration, said she wanted to focus on local voters.
Exactly 10 days later, she campaigned with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The following day, it was a rally with Arizona Democratic Sen.
Mark Kelly in Yorktown, a suburb in the Lower Hudson Valley where Ocasio-Cortez grew up.
Ocasio-Cortez, Buttigieg, Kelly, along with former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are among the top polling Democratic presidential candidates for 2028. Conley's campaign did not comment on whether Harris, who was the Democrats' unsuccessful 2024 presidential nominee, had been invited to campaign in the district. It is one of only three congressional districts nationwide that voted for Harris in the 2024 presidential election while electing a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives.
At a time when Democrats across the country are wringing their hands about the lack of a party standard-bearer, could these potential candidates’ presence on the midterm campaign trail serve as a signal about their viability in 2028?
Conley is not the only candidate keeping her distance from Ocasio-Cortez and Harris.
Among those refusing help from Harris are Adam Hamilton, the candidate for U.S. Senate from Kansas; Josh Turek, who is running for U.S. Senate from Iowa; Rob Sand, the candidate for governor in Iowa; Mary Peltola, the Alaska Senate candidate; and Rebecca Cooke, a Wisconsin swing-district House candidate. Cooke, meanwhile, campaigned with Buttigieg and Kelly. Sam Forstag, a progressive House candidate in Montana who appeared with Ocasio-Cortez at a rally in May, scrubbed her endorsement from his campaign website.
Is it a sign that voters view the most viable female candidates as having too much baggage to be competitive in purple states? After Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024, cautious voters might worry that for Democratic female presidential candidates the third time may not be a charm.
To be sure, 2028 is still two years away and Democrats’ performance in the midterms could change the political landscape. And district-level elections can hinge on local factors far removed from the national debates that dominate presidential level politics.
But experts say campaigns in swing states are choosing surrogates that will best appeal to the voters in that state — the same voters that will help decide the next presidential election.
Melissa DeRosa, a Democratic strategist, said for candidates trying to win over independents and moderate voters, sometimes the most valuable surrogate isn’t the one who generates the most excitement — it’s the one who doesn’t alienate the voters they need to win.
"I don’t think it’s necessarily that Pete Buttigieg is additive so much as he’s unobjectionable," DeRosa said. "He’s disciplined, articulate and doesn’t come with the ideological baggage or political controversy that can make other national Democrats a liability in competitive districts."
Buttigieg, who launched an unsuccessful presidential primary bid in 2019, has campaigned in-person with 50 candidates across 37 states, according to his political organization Win the Era.
Ocasio-Cortez, commonly known as AOC, is widely popular among progressives but is also seen by many moderates as a polarizing figure aligned with the far-left wing of the Democratic party who once supported defunding the police and continues to call for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As for Harris, the Democratic National Committee's autopsy of why the party lost the 2024 election, released this year, cited her inability to energize voters as one of the reasons.
"Losing a whopping 6.8 million voters who supported Biden in 2020 proved pivotal in this extremely close election," the autopsy report said. "Harris's inability to mobilize these pro-Biden voters may have been the campaign's biggest failure."
Newsom, meanwhile, has also been on the campaign trail, sticking largely to early calendar southern states, such as South Carolina, and swing states like Nevada, Michigan and North Carolina.
Donna Brazile, a former acting chair of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime Harris ally pushed back against the notion that the campaign trail choices are "about women."
She said candidates in red states often emphasize distance from national politics.
"Those in red or purple states tend to use fewer surrogates than typical blue state candidates. They must appeal to center-right voters or independent-leaning Republicans," she said. "Trust me, it’s not about women. It’s about reaching the voters you need to put you over the top."
Ocasio-Cortez, 36, who became the youngest woman to be elected to Congress in 2018 at age 29, has said that she has not ruled out a run for president in 2028. Polymarket, meanwhile, currently has her as the top Democratic contender. In a Harris poll conducted at the end of September, Harris tops the list, with Ocasio-Cortez in third place.
Despite some candidates' hesitancy, both Harris and Ocasio-Cortez have been welcomed by many.
A self-identified democratic socialist, Ocasio-Cortez has been crisscrossing the country rallying for other progressive candidates.
She traveled to Kissimmee, Florida, to rally and campaign for Angie Nixon, the U.S. Senate candidate. She campaigned for Tennessee state Representative Justin Pearson in his bid for Congress in Tennessee's 9th Congressional District. In July, she campaigned for Abdul El-Sayed, the U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan.
For her part, when asked about some red state Democrats shunning her, Harris told MS NOW that the "candidates know what they need to do to win" and that she supports them in the effort.
Last month, she campaigned with El-Sayed in Michigan. In October, she attended a fundraiser for Nevada's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford in Los Angeles and spoke at a fundraiser with Shomari Figures, D-Alabama, who is running in a very competitive red district in that state's 2nd Congressional District. She will also campaign alongside Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff as he seeks reelection.
Eduardo Negrón, Harris' spokesperson told USA TODAY that in the coming weeks, "Harris will continue doing all she can to elect Democrats up and down the ballot."
In Wisconsin, while Cooke has turned down help from Harris in the most competitive House race, party leaders are happy to welcome Harris to help mobilize the voters.
Bakari Sellers, a former Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a political commentator, said both parties are trying to make the midterm elections "hyper-local because national Democrats and national Republicans are underwater when it comes to likability."
"I mean, sometimes they can help you gin up excitement and sometimes they can help you raise money," he said. "But what you don't want to be doing is answering questions about their politics. So you have to find that balancing act."
Kelly and Buttigieg, for example, have been able to go into competitive territory "without asking candidates to embrace an ideological brand that is toxic in their districts," DeRosa said.
DeRosa pointed to Conley's district, an area she knows well as the first woman to be appointed to the position of the secretary to the governor of New York, serving under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
While Ocasio-Cortez represents a much more "defined political and radical ideological identity," Harris has a history of losing every single swing state in 2024 to Trump, she said.
"The bigger message for Democrats is that the path back to a durable majority runs through places like the Hudson Valley," said DeRosa. "A big tent only works if candidates are able to reflect the voters they’re actually asking to represent, rather than being forced to adopt the politics of the loudest or most fringe faction of the party."
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can the midterm campaign trail point to 2028 presidential viability for Democrats?
