Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker. | Nati Harnik/AP Photo Booker getting primary challenge for Senate from Sanders supporter

Cory Booker will have at least one Democratic primary challenger next year for his Senate seat if his presidential campaign doesn’t take off — a Bernie Sanders supporter from his hometown.

Lawrence Hamm, a longtime Newark civil rights activist who chairs the People’s Organization for Progress, said Thursday he plans to run for U.S. Senate in the 2020 Democratic primary.


Hamm, who announced his plans on social media, said in a brief phone interview he will seek the nomination and wants to appear on the same ballot line as Sanders.

"I support Bernie Sanders for president because I believe in the agenda and the platform that he’s running on," said Hamm, who is the New Jersey chairman for Sanders’ campaign. "And if Bernie Sanders becomes president, he’s going to need a senator from New Jersey who will fight wholeheartedly for those reforms and agenda items and platforms that he campaigned for as president."

It remains to be seen if the Democratic presidential race will still be competitive when New Jersey holds its primary on June 2. New Jersey’s primary is one of the last in the country and just a month and a half before the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.

Booker’s presidential campaign has remained mired in the single digits in polls, which has made the former Newark mayor ineligible to participate in Thursday evening’s PBS NewsHour/POLITICO Democratic debate. However, he has refused to drop out of the race for president. Booker is also considered a potential 2020 vice presidential candidate.

Any primary campaign against Booker would be a long shot. While New Jersey’s Democratic politics have been notoriously fractious during Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s first two years in office, Booker has managed to bridge the divide, retaining support from both Murphy and his South Jersey Democratic rivals.

Grassroots progressive groups who have criticized New Jersey’s political boss-centered system have also been generally supportive of Booker, even though they criticized him for raising money with South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross and Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo. Essex County’s jail has a multimillion-dollar contract to hold undocumented immigrants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and has been cited for poor conditions.

New Jersey Democrats last year passed a law to ensure that Booker can run for Senate and president or vice president on the 2020 primary and general election ballots.

Hamm has been politically active since his teens and was a protege of the late poet and activist Amiri Baraka — father of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka — according to NJ Advance Media.