Presidential aspirations begin for ’20

WASHINGTON — In the days after the midterm election, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker worked the phones with Democratic luminaries in Iowa. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock courted high-dollar donors in New York. Other Democrats openly mused about their White House ambitions on live television.

Motivated by an urgency to unseat President Donald Trump and the prospect of a historically large primary field, Democrats see little incentive to delay or downplay their 2020 presidential hopes. Their more transparent approach is upending one of Washington’s favorite “will they or won’t they” parlor games and pushed the campaign calendar up earlier than ever before.

“No one is waiting for anyone in the race to run for president,” said Jim Messina, who managed President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Two long-shot Democrats have already declared their candidacy.

West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda, a retired Army paratrooper who lost a race for Congress last week, announced his plans to run for president on Monday. Ojeda joins Maryland Rep. John Delaney, who has been running for the Democratic nomination since July 2017, and has already traveled to Iowa 19 times and made 12 trips to New Hampshire.

Higher-profile Democrats have also started to lift the veil on their White House hopes.

On Monday, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, said he was “seriously looking at” a presidential campaign, saying in an interview that his election to a third term shows “a strong progressive can win.” He called his Senate campaign “a blueprint for our nation in 2020.”

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was also up front about her White House ambitions, telling ABC’S “The View” Monday that she was indeed considering a campaign.