Sen. Cory Booker thinks there is time for his message of love and unity to catch fire in the roughly 80 days before Iowa’s caucuses.
The New Jersey senator is lagging well behind the leaders in polls of the 2020 Democratic field, and has sent urgent fundraising appeals recently. He hasn’t yet qualified for the December primary debate.
That is no reason to change course, Mr. Booker says.
“I’m not going to be the campaign that changes its message six or seven times, you know, or our strategy or whatever,” Mr. Booker said in a recent interview. “I’m going to drive this message the whole time because I think it’s actually the best way to beat Donald Trump and to put us in a position for us to create transformative change.”
The latest hurdle for Mr. Booker came last week, when former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick made a late entry into the race with calls for unity and solutions to “heal” a divided nation that sounded similar to the senator’s ideas.
Several of Mr. Booker’s Democratic rivals have already adjusted their strategies to maneuver out of polling, fundraising or organizing ruts, with varying levels of success.
Former Vice President Joe Biden initially tried to seem above the fray in debates, but he hit back at rivals after a rocky first performance. California Sen. Kamala Harris’s has had well-documented message resets. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders fired key staff in Iowa and New Hampshire when polling was sluggish. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren homed her message after a slow start to her candidacy.
Mr. Booker has tried new tricks to shake up his fundraising. Between April and September, he burned through more campaign cash than he raised, so he said in September that he needed to raise $1.7 million in a 10-day period or he would drop out of the race. It worked.
But the senator doesn’t want to change how he talks to Americans. He has emphasized proposals like a national gun-licensing program (which other candidates have adopted), federal “Baby Bonds” for all young Americans and a more lenient criminal justice system.
His campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, said the New Jersey senator believes voters will realize Mr. Booker is the candidate they have been looking for.
“Our challenge is and has always been: In a field this large…how do we get the oxygen to deliver [our] message to the voters? But there is nothing wrong with our message,” Mr. Demissie said.
“We just need someone to sort of say, ‘Wait a second,’” he said. “He’s right in front of you.”
Some Democratic strategists say when campaigns are struggling, a messaging or staff shake-up should be on the table.
“You can never win a race by hoping something happens—hoping an opponent falters, or hoping a message gets through,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist who isn’t currently working for a presidential campaign. “Moments don’t happen. You have to create them.”
Ms. Marsh said Mr. Booker’s fundraising gambit was effective because the campaign “set the goal, set the timeline and set the stakes…They need to do the same thing with their message.”
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Mr. Booker got attention earlier in the campaign over his tough words for Mr. Biden’s criminal-justice record, calling him the “architect of mass incarceration” and criticizing him in a debate for “tough-on-crime phony rhetoric.” But he hasn’t gone after his rivals so personally since.
“People that supported me were worrying, ‘Is this counter brand?’ and so forth,” Mr. Booker said of the debate moment. But he said it “wasn’t a sucker punch.”
“I was smiling, I was joking—heck, I was talking about getting in the Kool Aid,” he said. “I didn’t demean him, didn’t demean his character, didn’t take away from him being who he is: a statesman in our party. I talked about the issues.”
Mr. Booker, one of the three African-Americans in the U.S. Senate who says he is the only senator who lives in an inner city, added: “I think I am the best person in this field on issues affecting urban communities to excite those folks to come out to vote.”
The candidacy of Mr. Patrick, one of the few African-Americans to serve as a state’s chief executive, has challenged Mr. Booker’s notion that he owns that space—though the former governor’s late entry means he doesn’t have the same level of campaign infrastructure as the New Jersey senator. Mr. Patrick told reporters in New Hampshire that Mr. Booker and other candidates “are just not getting traction.”
Mr. Patrick’s “we will build as we climb” pitch in his announcement video strikes a similar note as Mr. Booker’s slogan, “We will rise.” Comparisons with Mr. Patrick as another charismatic, moderate, unity-pushing African-American man have earned grumbles at Booker headquarters. Mr. Demissie said Mr. Patrick’s entry “is an indication of the power” of how Mr. Booker has campaigned.
Mr. Booker’s team says once people meet the candidate, they commit to caucus for him in Iowa. Mike Ladehoff, a factory worker from Marshalltown, Iowa, said he decided to back Mr. Booker after hearing how much he talks about unifying the country after a Trump presidency.
“Most politicians probably mention that,” he said, “but Cory starts and ends with it.”
Mr. Booker says he is willing to lose on love. “I think this is the message we need,” he said. “And by the way, if it’s not, I will go back to being a United States senator with a sense of peace in my soul.”
—Julie Bykowicz contributed to this article.
Write to Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com
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