Cory Booker's not surging in the 2020 race – and his campaign says that's just fine

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Democratic Presidential Candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ): What to know

What to know about Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the issues he's advocating and some past statements he'll have to overcome.

Sen. Cory Booker’s not soaring in the polls, and he doesn’t appear to have the buzz that Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg have enjoyed the past six weeks.

But that’s just fine with the Democratic senator's presidential campaign, aides say.

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“We’re not building this campaign to win a poll in April of 2019. We’re trying to win the election in February of 2020, in March of 2020, in April of 2020. This is a long race where there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs,” Booker campaign manager Addisu Demissie told Fox News.

Demissie explained that the campaign’s philosophy is “you’ve got to organize and get hot at the end.”

He highlighted that the New Jersey senator and his team are “laser-focused on building strong teams in the states that are going the set the narrative around the primary starting in February of next year.”

Booker’s campaign manager detailed his strategy with political reporters on Thursday, ahead of Saturday’s ‘hometown kickoff’ by Booker in Newark. Booker served as mayor of New Jersey’s largest city for seven years before winning election to the Senate in 2013.

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The campaign’s putting most of its firepower in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, the four states that next February will kick off the presidential primary and caucus calendar.

“We’ve built our operation with the intention of having the strongest operation in the states on the front end of the primary calendar,” he said.

Demissie touted that the strategy’s paying off, noting that “we’ve earned the first legislative endorsements in Iowa and South Carolina and the first state senator to endorse in New Hampshire.”

And he spotlighted that “no campaign, I think, can boast the level of staff infrastructure and local support that we have.”

But that staffing up is expensive. And presidential campaign history is littered with candidates who grew their infrastructures too fast and spent too much, only to drop out -- in some cases -- even before the voting began.

Booker declared his candidacy at the beginning of February and quickly spent much of his time stumping in the first four states to vote on the road to the White House.

Demissie noted that Booker held 60 events and stops in the early voting states to show “the voters of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina that we were going to campaign in the best traditions of those states and planting that flag on the ground early and often.”

The concentration on visiting and staffing up in the early voting states may be one reason why Booker’s fundraising figures – $5 million in the first quarter of this year – were respectable but far behind the campaign cash leaders – Sens. Bernie Sanders ($18 million) and Kamala Harris ($12 million).

And while candidates like O’Rourke and Buttigieg are grabbing media attention, Demissie said he wasn’t concerned his candidate’s yet to have a breakout moment.

“We want to win an election, not a news cycle,” he emphasized.