Cory Booker has yet to officially decide whether he will be running for president in 2020, but his schedule may have given it away.
The New Jersey senator just made a trip to the key early primary state of New Hampshire, meeting with Democrats at the home of a former state senator and building some name recognition among potential voters. As the Guardian reported, Booker gave this thoughts on how to approach Trump supporters and laid the groundwork for what could be a run in a little over a year.
Booker has some big backers in his corner. Jim Demers, the man who co-chaired Barack Obama’s campaign in New Hampshire in 2008 and worked for Hillary Clinton in 2016, is now pushing Booker to run and helped arrange his recent tour of the state.
“I think this weekend is going to be a really good experience for him, to get a taste of what campaigning in New Hampshire is really like,” Demers told The Guardian .
Winning in New Hampshire is important and the state, along with the first caucus state of Iowa, gets outsized attention from potential candidates in the months leading up to the start of primary season. Cory Booker still has some work to do with New Hampshire voters, with an August poll from the University of New Hampshire showing that just six percent of voters pegged him as their top choice. That put him behind Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren.
But Booker is putting in the work already. During his recent trip to New Hampshire, he channeled a bit of Barack Obama in 2008 in preaching a message of political unity among Americans at a time of sharp division.
“The definition of hope isn’t that you see some light at the end of the tunnel, or something on the horizon that gives you hope,” Booker said (via WMUR ). “Hope is generated from within.”
While the signs point to a potential 2020 presidential run, Cory Booker said he hasn’t made any decision yet — though it could be coming very soon.
“During the holidays, I’m going to sit down and take a lot of stock about what I want to do next, whether run for president or stay in the Senate and help this continued movement in our country to reinvigorate our democracy,” he said.
Interesting ? @RubensteinAdam ? profile of ? @CoryBooker ? https://t.co/8RjIU584cu
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 8, 2018
If he does run for president, New Hampshire voters will likely be seeing a lot more of Cory Booker.
