Booker: ‘If you want me in this race, then I need help’

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a 2020 presidential hopeful, on Sunday appealed to his supporters to help him stay in the race, stressing his strengths as a general election candidate.

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Booker said his campaign “is facing one of those moments that if you want me in this race, then I need help.”

{mosads}“There’s no candidates that has more endorsements than I do from people who are on the ground” in Iowa, Booker said, adding, however, that “it’s not translating to people choosing me in the polls.”

Booker compared skepticism that he could reach the top of the Democratic field to the attitude he heard when he became mayor of Newark, N.J., saying both were examples of “sort of a surrender to cynicism that I think we have to resist.”

Booker also pointed to African-American voters as a potential key to a surge in support for him. Reminded by host John Dickerson that former Vice President Joe Biden has carried the African-American vote by a substantial margin in polling thus far, Booker pointed to Biden’s stronger name recognition, adding “Barack Obama was behind Hillary Clinton among black voters until he won in Iowa.”

Both Booker and his fellow Democratic candidate, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, have previously inspired fundraising blitzes by warning they were in danger of being forced to drop out.