Sen. Cory Booker hasn't made a decision yet on whether he'll run for president in 2020, but he said in New Hampshire on Saturday that he'll make a verdict in about a month. 
 
 Booker, D-N.J., was in the country's first primary state on Saturday for a number of events. He was the key speaker at the state's Democratic post-midterm celebration in a crowded auditorium at New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester. He was also guest of honor at a house party in Nashua hosted by former state Sen. Bette Lasky -- alongside Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess and state Sen. Cindy Rosenwald. 
 
 He was in a spirited mood at both, but talked little about his presidential ambitions. He was more candid about his plans Saturday morning. 
 
 "During the holidays I'm gonna sit down and take a lot of stock about what I want to do next -- whether I want to run for president or stay in the Senate and help this continued movement in our country to reinvigorate our democracy," Booker told Manchester ABC affiliate WMUR in a one-on-one interview. 
 
 AP 
 
 That he's considering a run for the top of the ticket is hardly a surprise. He's been testing the waters in both Iowa, the first caucus state, and New Hampshire for months. Booker was in Iowa on Oct. 6, exactly one month before the midterm elections. 
 
 There he railed against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court after grabbing national headlines during the confirmation hearings. 
 
 On Saturday, Booker echoed the last Democratic president speaking about "hope." 
 
 "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 -- hope is generated from within," he told the overflow crowd in Manchester. 
 
 In Nashua, Booker spoke at length about his own personal story growing up in New Jersey split between inner-city Newark and suburban Upper Saddle River and the issues facing New Hampshire, including the opioid crisis. New Hampshire has the second-highest number of overdose deaths in the nation: 35.8 people per 100,000 in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. 
 
 WMUR 
 
 "This incredible city is struggling with opioid addiction, struggling with mental health issues," Booker said, referring to Nashua. "They're struggling with what my region is struggling with." 
 
 The house party also drew a large number of people, in the very same place Barack Obama held a similar event in 2007 when he was a senator. 
 
 "We've never seen it as packed as this and we've hosted quite a number of political people here," Elliot Lasky, an optometrist in Nashua who attended the party, told WMUR. 
 
 Booker will spend a second day in the state on Sunday in Keene. 
 
 The senator is part of a crowded field of potential Democratic contenders -- though none have thrown their hats in the ring officially. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren are among some of the top contenders to take on Donald Trump in 2020. 

 Will Mr. Booker’s approach work? “If it doesn’t, it doesn’t,” he said. 
 
 Mr. Booker has already carried his message to 24 states during the 2018 midterms, including the four that kick off the presidential nominating contest, campaigning for more than 40 candidates and raising more than $7 million for Democratic causes and campaigns, according to his aides. His New Hampshire swing is the last one on the calendar before his self-imposed timeline to make a final decision about running for president. 
 
 Back home, state lawmakers have cleared the path for Mr. Booker’s run. In November, the New Jersey governor signed a law that allows Mr. Booker to seek both the presidency and re-election to the Senate in 2020. 
 
 There is certainly interest in Mr. Booker: The fire marshal cut off access to Mr. Booker’s speech at the state party’s celebration on Saturday (though the room did not seem particularly full), sending extra people to a nearby overflow room. 
 
 Accompanied on Saturday by three aides, Mr. Booker is further along in his New Hampshire outreach than some other would-be candidates. He and his team are reaching out to potential staff, and Mr. Booker has made calls to winners in the midterm elections, which saw Democrats take over both chambers of the State Legislature. Both new legislative leaders got personal calls from Mr. Booker. 
 
 Still, few are making any commitments in what is expected to be a crowded field of more than a dozen candidates that could include liberal senators from two neighboring states: Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who won the New Hampshire primary in 2016. 
 
 Mr. Booker has a local political sherpa guiding him to the proper house parties and supplying a steady list of who to call. The guide, Jim Demers, is a New Hampshire lobbyist who was a key early supporter of Barack Obama’s 2008 primary campaign when Mr. Obama was a senator. 

 Cory Booker, however, has acknowledged that he’s considering running for president. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo Murphy signs law allowing Booker to run for president, Senate simultaneously 
 
 Let there be no doubt: U.S. Sen. Cory Booker can run for president and Senate at the same time. 
 
 Gov. Phil Murphy on Thursday signed a bill — unofficially dubbed “Cory’s Law” — that would clarify that a U.S. senator or member of the U.S. House from New Jersey can appear on the primary and general election ballots for those offices as well as for the presidency. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Booker, a Democrat and New Jersey’s junior senator, is widely expected to run for president in 2020, the same year he’s up for reelection for a second full six-year term in the Senate. In recent weeks, he’s visited Iowa and New Hampshire — which have the first presidential nominating contests in the nation — ostensibly to help out other candidates. 
 
 Booker, however, has acknowledged that he’s considering running for president. 
 
 Even if Booker doesn’t get his party’s party nomination, the bill would still allow him to run for vice president and Senate at the same time should the Democratic nominee choose Booker as a running mate. 
 
 Although the bill does not mention Booker by name, it’s clearly geared toward him. Its sponsors said state law probably permits Booker to run for both offices, anyway, but the new law is meant to ensure that nobody can successfully challenge a dual candidacy in court. 
 
 “I think it was clear, but this was just to stop any lawsuits to slow him down,” Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), a sponsor of the bill, said shortly after the Legislature sent it to Murphy on Monday. “Realize, also, we don’t have a primary [filing deadline] until April. And normally we have a pretty good idea of who the candidate’s going to be by then.” 
 
 The bill Murphy signed, NJ A4674 (18R), consists of just one paragraph, stating that “no provision of [New Jersey’s election law], or of any other law, rule, or regulation shall be interpreted as to prevent a person from accepting a nomination by petition” to run for president or vice president and House or Senate at the same time. 
 
 Republican state Chairman Doug Steinhardt called Democrats hypocritical for rushing through the law, since some Democrats — including state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) — in 2015 introduced legislation that would have forced then-Gov. Chris Christie to resign if he ran for president. (The bill never advanced, and Christie ran unsuccessfully for president.) 
 
 Steinhardt said Democrats showed “the depths of their duplicity.” 
 
 Just before voting against the bill, state Sen. Gerald Cardinale said Booker should just make a decision about which office he wants to run for. 
 
 “Spartacus had the courage to make decisions," Cardinale (R-Bergen) said, referring to Booker's famous "Spartacus moment" during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. "He ain't no Spartacus."
– Sen. Cory Booker tested the political waters Saturday for a possible presidential run, displaying his warm and inclusive style in New Hampshire—at a time when many Dems are feeling combative, the New York Times reports. "This country has enough hate, enough bigotry, enough anti-Semitism," he tells a crowd of Democrats celebrating the midterms in Manchester. "What we need now is courageous actors who call to the conscience of our country a higher moral imagination, who call for a revival of civic grace." Chatting up voters at a house party in Nashua, the New Jersey senator says he gets the desire for an aggressive candidate to oppose President Trump. But "it's just not who I am, and I will continue to try to be as fearlessly authentic as I can." But he's also a strategist. During the midterms, the 49-year-old spoke in 24 states while stumping for over 40 candidates and raised more than $7 million for liberal campaigns and causes, his aides say. Back in New Jersey, Politico notes, the governor signed a bill letting Booker run for senator and president at the same time. And people seem interested: The fire marshall had to limit access to his Manchester speech Saturday, moving people to a nearby room. He's widely expected to run but says he won't decide for about a month, ABC News reports. So will his style work in an age of Democratic "resistance"? "You cannot lead the people if you do not love the people," Booker says. "Love is not a soft word. It is hard." (Sen. Bernie Sanders also says he might run.)