Booker: U.S. Senate "clearly a job I'm interested in"
(CBS News) The New Jersey Senate seat being vacated by five-term Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., is "clearly... a job I'm interested in," Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker said today on "Face the Nation."
Booker, the headline-prone mayor made famous by his hands-on acts of gallantry, has filed federal papers - "what we had to do by law," he said - to explore a run for the seat in 2014. The rising star would be the apparent front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
"I'll spend the coming months working on and exploring that," Booker told Bob Schieffer. "But right now we have one election in New Jersey, which is our state-wide gubernatorial and legislative elections. As a Democrat in New Jersey, that's where my focus is, next year's election for Senate will take care of itself."
Asked whether he was still harboring once-admitted ambitions to seek the New Jersey gubernatorial seat, Booker said, "no... we in New Jersey take one election at a time."
A Monmouth University poll last week showed that 38 percent of New Jersey Democratic primary voters already say their party should align behind Booker should he seek the nomination.
