Democrat Russ Feingold said in an interview Thursday that he plans to decide by Labor Day whether to run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by his longtime colleague Herb Kohl.

“I am looking at it, but I feel I should take some time to think this through,” said Feingold, the former senator who was defeated last fall for re-election after three terms. “For me the question right now is whether it’s a good idea for me to go back into this sort of life.”

After spending 28 years in the Wisconsin Legislature and U.S. Senate, Feingold called his break from politics “a healthy one for me to be doing something different at this point in my life.”

Feingold said he has been approached by Democrats in Wisconsin about running either for Senate or for governor. Republican Gov. Scott Walker isn’t up for re-election until 2014, though Democrats may try force a recall election next year. The Senate seat will be open because Kohl, a four-term Democrat, plans to retire after 2012. Feingold has had little to say until now about his potential interest in the seat.

Asked which of those two jobs -- senator or governor -- held more interest for him, Feingold said “I don’t have any specific thoughts about the different offices.” He said his first decision is whether he wants to be a political candidate again, when “not being in office has certain appeals to it.”

Said Feingold: “I’m not down to the level of which office or when, but I realize I have to come to grips with whether I would be a candidate for Senate in 2012 in the reasonably near future.”

Feingold said he would be attending the state Democratic convention in Milwaukee this weekend, but said he declined an offer from the state party to speak, since speaking slots typically go to office-holders and announced candidates.

Feingold said he had talked to other potential Democratic Senate candidates in his party and “urged them to get out and start doing things.”

In a recent statewide poll by Public Policy Polling, Feingold was easily the best known and most popular Democrat statewide. When Democratic voters were given eight possible candidates to choose from as their 2012 Senate nominee (including U.S. House members Tammy Baldwin, Gwen Moore and Ron Kind) Feingold was the choice of 70% of those surveyed. He also led in hypothetical matchups against several potential Republican candidates, including former Gov. Tommy Thompson and former congressman Mark Neumann.

Feingold said Thursday he didn’t want to draw out his decision in a way that slows down other Democratic candidates.

“My goal here is to make sure a Democrat wins this seat” and make sure it’s “somebody who will be a good representative of the progressive tradition in Wisconsin.”

Since he left office, Feingold has been teaching at Marquette University Law School and writing a book about foreign policy. He also has launched “Progressives United,” a political committee whose stated mission to fight “exploding corporate influence in Washington.”

“I’ve had my opportunity to (serve) … I’m enjoying everything I’m doing … I certainly don’t need to get back into politics,” Feingold said. “I don’t know for sure whether I will, but … I’m certainly not ruling it out permanently and I’m not even ruling it out at this point for the current election cycle. That’s what I am looking at it right now.”

Feingold said a more immediate focus for Democrats than the 2012 U.S. Senate race is the legislative recall elections slated for this summer. Feingold sent out a fundraising appeal through Progressives United Thursday tied to the recall elections, saying his committee will support “every single Democratic candidate on the ballot in July.”

Feingold is coming off an election in which he was one of only two Democratic senators in the country to lose their seats to GOP challengers. But 2010 was the GOP’s best election in Wisconsin since 1938, and the election climate next year is unlikely to be as bad for Democrats as it was last fall. It will also be a presidential election year, which draws a larger, broader electorate than a mid-term election. Feingold fared better running as a Senate candidate in presidential years (winning by 7 points in 1992 and 11 points in 2004) than in mid-term elections (winning by 2 points in 1998 and losing by 5 points in 2010).

"I think it will look very different than what happened in 2010," Feingold said of the 2012 election.