Cory Booker says lack of support putting White House campaign at risk

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey suggested Saturday that his struggling campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination could soon end over lack of support.

Mr. Booker said that his presidential campaign needs to raise nearly $2 million within nine days to remain viable.

“This isn’t an end-of-quarter stunt,” Mr. Booker said on Twitter. “We need to raise $1.7 million by September 30 to be in a position to build the organization we need to compete for the nomination—and we can do it—but if we don’t, we don’t see a legitimate long-term path forward.”

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“We can’t continue this without more support,” Mr. Booker told CNN later Saturday. “I won’t continue this unless I can look people in the eye and say we have a chance to win it.”

Mr. Booker’s campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, separately wrote in a memo posted online Saturday that the deadline will determine whether or not he can remain in the race.

“September is traditionally one of the strongest fundraising months for presidential campaigns. But after a surprisingly positive August, we simply have not witnessed the expected uptick in fundraising over the last three weeks,” wrote Mr. Demissie. “To put it bluntly, we need to scale our operation up in October and November to remain competitive and need a strong September to make that happen.”

Mr. Booker’s campaign previously reported fundraising more than $5 million during the first quarter of 2019 and more than $4.5 million during the second – a fraction of the amount raised by Democratic frontrunners during that same span.

Nationwide polling has placed Mr. Booker, a former mayor of Newark first who first won his Senate seat in a 2013 special election, as among the top 10 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to run against President Trump in 2020, albeit far behind the contest’s current frontrunners: former Vice President Joseph R. Biden; Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent; and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat.

Statewide polling conducted earlier this month among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters in New Jersey put Mr. Booker in fourth place behind Mr. Biden, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, respectively.