Guess he's going to need that Senate web domain after all. After privately conceding that Chris Christie's surge in popularity made a run for governor impossible, Newark Mayor Cory Booker very publicly announced Thursday morning that he is exploring a run for a New Jersey Senate seat in 2014, if — and it's a big "if" — Sen. Frank Lautenberg retires. Speculation had been brewing for weeks, and a report surfaced earlier in the morning that Booker would tweet his intentions, and then came the tweet to the popular (if controversial) mayor's 1.3 million followers late in the morning. Here it is:

Thank you for your support up to this point. Read about my upcoming plans here: bit.ly/QnTP8 #finishingthework

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) December 20, 2012

The tweet, of course, pointed to a YouTube video on CoryBooker.com:

The video spends a lot of time defending his record as mayor, but it's clear that Booker has long sought the national spotlight — as if it wasn't clear he was in it already. It's also clear, as Politico's Byron Tau points out, that the Koran is prominently on Booker's desk in the video:

Via @reidepstein, Cory Booker has the Qur'an and other holy-looking books sitting on his desk in his latest video. twitter.com/ByronTau/statu…

— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) December 20, 2012

What's not exactly clear just yet is whether Lautenberg will, in fact, retire before Booker seeks to replace him:

Booker is putting a BIG bet on Lautenberg retiring. If Frank stays, it could get VERY awkward.

— The Fix (@TheFix) December 20, 2012

One of Booker's tweets earlier today struck a philosophical note (perhaps due to recent negative coverage of — you guessed it — his prolific tweeting ):

Life is about purpose not popularity, significance not celebrity. If u have no detractors, critics or adversaries ur probably not doing much

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) December 20, 2012

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at jtrotter at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
J.K. Trotter