This Ivy League-educated, African-American politician who talks a lot about hope and is seen as a rising Democratic Party star has spent time in the last few months on the campaign trail in places like South Carolina and Ohio.

No, Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

"To me, it's just a natural evolution of the country," the 38-year-old Booker said in a telephone interview. "My father grew up in a very segregated world. I grew up in a very integrated world."

Experts say many politicians in this group tend to do well among non-black voters in elections.

Others considered part of the group include Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee, and current U.S. Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois and Artur Davis of Alabama.

"It's hard for me to be caught up in the novelty," she said.

They met in 2005, introduced by Oprah Winfrey and her friend Gayle King, the editor of Winfrey's "O" magazine.

Booker, a former tight end for Stanford's football team, Rhodes scholar and Yale Law School graduate, got widespread attention because when he moved into public housing in Newark to try to help the city's downtrodden.

By the time Obama announced his candidacy for president early last year, Booker was in office as mayor and was spending his free time lecturing at colleges across the country, giving him the sort of attention that mayors of a city Newark's size _ it's the nation's 64th largest _ rarely get.

The mayor has hosted the candidate in Newark and stumped for him around the country. He even sent a busload of his supporters to go knock on doors on Obama's behalf in Cincinnati on the eve of last week's Ohio primary voting.

"If he desires to dedicate his life to public service, I think he will be going places," said Bonnie Watson Coleman, a member of the state Assembly and the former chairwoman of the Democratic State Committee.

McLin, the mayor of Dayton, said that Booker's work for Obama helps the younger politician in a few ways. For one, it raises his profiles among the Democratic party loyalists who go to the rallies where he speaks.

And if Booker does not become a player on a national stage, says G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., other African Americans who have similar characteristics will follow Obama.

Booker thinks so, too.
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